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Fine Art Photography High Dynamic Range: Realism, Superrealism, and Image Optimization for Serious Novices to Advanced Di Review

Tony Sweet has long been admired for his imaginative approach to photography. In this book he turns his attention to HDR processing.
Although the book can be studied as a lovely portfolio, I found that Sweet's discussion of how he processed each image (or since this is HDR photography, series of images) added to my knowledge of this subject. Sweet discusses the use of two different pieces of software: HDR Soft's Photomatix and Nik's HDR Efex Pro. His discussions of each piece of software appear similar at first, but close examination shows a slight variation. For Photomatix he first describes the software itself, including a brief description of the effect of each slider. (His description of each of the functions is just different enough from the description the software itself provides when one rolls over a particular control to provide additional insights into its purpose.) He then provides a number of photographs, indicating in a chart the settings that he has changed from the default with his reason for the change. For example, for a particular picture, he states "Saturation: Default is 70, Set to 100 to add color to a very drab scene." Next he discusses the post-HDR processing that he used on the image, relying heavily on plug-ins like Nik Color Efex Pro Tonal Contrast and Viveza. Each example includes a film strip of the images captured, the picture as it emerges from Photomatix and a large picture of the image after post-HDR processing.
For HDR Efex Pro he changes his methodology a bit, using a narrative form rather than a chart of the changes that he made to the software default. I found this approach a little harder to understand, but that may have been because of my experience with Photomatix. (I was unable to follow his efforts as well as I would have liked because I was unable to successfully install the trial version of HDR Efex Pro on my Windows 7-64 bit machine; try the trial version before buying the software.) Even though the narrative alone did not seem as effective as the chart of changes, it should still prove useful in learning to use this software.
Sweet covers the full range of outcome from realistic to slightly surrealistic, but not all out surrealistic. His main emphasis in Photomatix is on Details Enhancer although there is an image processed in Exposure Fusion. Individuals who feared that the Details Enhancer could not provide realistic images should be able to achieve that goal after reading the book and may find that that Detail Enhancer offers a degree of control not found in Exposure Fusion.
The combination of the basic description of a function and the changes made, with an explanation of the reasons for the change worked for me. For example I never fully realized how the Photomatix microcontrast slider brought out details. As a result of his discussion about using Color Efex Pro Tonal Contrast, I decided to try that plug-in and now I am a confirmed believer.
The only thing I wish the book provided was a way to download a few of the images to follow along with the process described in the book, but even without this feature I found this book extremely helpful in honing my HDR skills. Even experienced HDR photographers may benefit from reading this book.

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Save 34% Off: A World in HDR Review & Ratings

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A World in HDR Review

Trey Ratcliff, aka StuckInCustoms, finally released his new book, "A World In HDR". Ever since he announced that he was writing a book, I couldn't wait to get it. I've been following Trey on his website and drooling over some of his wonderful images he's taken during his travels for quite a while now. I even use some of the techniques he discusses in his tutorial, which has really helped my processing. He's a big influence on my work. I think I signed up to get it on Amazon back in August. It finally came on Friday last week and I just finished reading it a day or two ago. Now take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt. This is my first book review and I still consider myself an intermediate photographer. With all of that said, here's what I think:
Overall, I'm a little disappointed. Maybe my expectations were way too high, but I really don't think so.
The book starts out with a chapter on what High Dynamic Range photography is and how your brain interprets light. He explains that the eye darts around quickly, taking in different levels of light and how your brain puts the different light levels together in a sort of snapshot, giving you a vision of the scenery around you that a normal camera cannot possibly express in one snap of the shutter. The next chapter quickly explains how art forms evolve, such as music, and how HDR is evolving photography. In these two chapters, he uses words such as "synethesia" and "eleemosynary" and speaks about art quite well, but that's not for my taste. I'm pretty simple and just want to get to the meat and potatoes of how to do it. Time to break out the dictionary. He then very quickly begins his showcase of amazing images and where he was when he took them.
The photography is stunning to say the least. He is certainly a pioneer in this medium. Some of my faves include, "The Magic of Disney", "The Icy Pit to Hell", and "Hong Kong From the Peak on a Summer's Night." Shots such as these fill the pages through chapter 4 and make up the bulk of the book. The descriptions of his images are a fun read. Trey has a wry sense of humor that I enjoy. When he talks about his Russian tent-mate Yuri or explains the steps you need to take to get a shot inside of a cathedral, I snickered a little too loudly.
Also included with the image on each page is a little technical blurb in red italics that tells you what he did in that particular photographic situation as far as f-stop, iso or even possibly processing. However, it's not too in-depth and most of this technical info does not explain the actual settings he used in the software, save for maybe a couple of shots. He really wants you to try to figure it out on your own for the most part. I was hoping for more things like how much luminosity he used, did he used LucisArt in this one, did he use other software in that one. Again, great shots, but not much technical info.
Speaking of technical, chapters 5 and 6 go into his tutorial and other software recommendations. His tutorial in chapter 5 is fantastic. After his instruction, one could really process photos into HDR quite easily. However, it's the one you can get on his website for free, except for a couple of minor updates. That was another little disappointment. The only new thing I found here is that he changed the opacity of the brush tool for masking from 30% on the tutorial on his website, to 50% in the book. He also explains double-tonemapping, which is new as far as I can tell. That's about it. Chapter 6 also reviews some other software that he uses and those reviews can be found on his website as well.
That's it! No conclusion or anything. So overall, I think it's a good book, but disappointing at the same time. I think the tutorial should've been more toward the beginning of the book. I think this would help prepare the reader with a foundation of what he did in some of the images where he actually does talk a little about the processing he performed. Also, I really expected this book to include more about the actual settings he used in the software while processing each image and what other camera settings he used. I remember watching one of his videos in Atlanta where a person he was with asked him what bracket settings he would use in a particular situation. He would say something like (I'm paraphrasing), " I would bracket at -1 to +1 here because of this type of light." THAT's the kind of stuff I was looking for! I also really didn't care for all of the artsy-fartsy references to Monet, Renoit and the like. But, this is an art form and I can't really ding him for this. It's just a little too high-falutin' for me.
I guess I expected a technical book and what I got was an art book. My first clue should have been the title, "A World In HDR". That is a good title since it really discusses just that.
It's a great coffee table book and a great book for those getting started in HDR photography or have never heard of HDR photography. But, for those of us who have been doing this for a little while now, you can get just about everything in the book from his website. Not that that's a bad thing, but unless you want to help him by buying his book as a thank you for the work he's brought to the world, you may just want to stick with his StuckInCustoms website.

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