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easyHDR 3 User Manual

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1. You can set the matching threshold so only pixels that are significantly different than their neighbors are affected It causes the noise to be wiped out while the other areas of the photo are left unchanged a Input photo Orion nebula b some dark bad pixels are easily removed with the median filter Threshold 0 12 horizontal bar 5 pixels 41 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 6 4 Bilateral filter noise reduction The bilateral filter is a great noise removal tool that blurs noise while preserving edges The example below shows how the filter works The low scale areas similar in luminance are blurred while the significant edges are not affected Apart from Opacity the user can control Sigma extent of blurring and Threshold edge detection level a Input photo b Sigma 2 0 opacity 100 threshold 0 5 c Sigma 4 0 opacity 100 threshold 1 0 6 5 Sample target balance This tool allows to change sampled color tones into target colors set by the user For greater flexibility you can apply changes to shadows highlights or middle tones separately Additionally you can limit the strength of the color transformation by lowering the Opacity 42 58 D e asyHD R 3 4 http www easyhdr com Select color Sample target balance Sample Target Shadows Midtones Highlights Opacity You can set the target color by clicking the left mouse button on the appropri
2. Tip you can check whether the alignment succeeded before generating the HDR image which is time consuming To do so just close the HDR generation window and use the Photo before processing option O O Ez 2 00 EV IMG_2306 JPG 0 00 EV IMG_2305 JPG 2 00 EV IMG_2307 JPG HDR Undoing the alignment When the results of the alignment are not as good as anticipated in case of automatic option and you d like to try again manually it is possible to undo the already done transformations Saving the aligned photos When the alignment is done it is possible to save the transformed photos for future use File Save aligned photos The files are saved to a chosen directory with a prefix added to the file names 17 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 3 3 2 HDR image generation options The HDR generation step is the moment when the preprocessed input sequence of photos is finally merged in order to form a single image the HDR radiance map It is possible to choose one out of three methods for HDR generation True HDR Smart Merge amp Image Stacking EasyHDR allows also tone mapping of a single LDR photo 1 e a single RAW or JPEG In such a case a HDR radiance map is not generated of course Instead the input image is prepared for being tone mapped In easyHDR it is called LDR enhancement The common post HDR generation LDR enhancement option is noise filtering This feature reduces the noise
3. greater compression of the dynamic range of the photograph while the details are not only preserved they are enhanced The Local Contrast operator is controlled by a number of parameters The Strength defines the power of dynamic range compression and local contrast boost The Range controls the extent of the local detail sensing The higher is the value the bigger areas of the photo are being treated as local 29 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com There is also a pair of parameters that control the brightness and darkness sensing thresholds of the operator The Highlights setting defines how strong should be the contrast enhancement in the brightest parts of the photograph At the same time it little affects the darkest parts The Shadows on the other hand controls the level of dynamic range reduction in the dark areas 7 a Strength 0 50 highlights 0 00 shadows 0 30 b Strength 0 50 highlights 0 60 shadows 0 10 By increasing the highlights parameter the clouds which are the brightest in this photo get more dramatic while by decreasing the shadows setting the darkest areas are more strongly amplified If the signal to noise ratio in the darkest parts of the photograph 1 e deep shadows or dark night sky is too small then it might be desirable not to enhance those parts so much because otherwise the noise level would be unacceptable Not enhancing the shadows t
4. level in the already generated HDR image before it undergoes tone mapping This approach ensures that the noise itself is not strengthened so much by the Local Contrast tone mapping operator It allows relatively stronger local contrast boost while preserving good signal to noise ratio in the final photograph Single RAW image tone mapped with high strength of Local Contrast operator Without applying noise filtering before the tone mappine left hand picture the noise level is very high If the noise filtering is applied the image is smooth while the fine details are preserved In this example the noise filtering strength was set at 6 and softness was 3 When processing an image which is an already assembled 360 panorama the 360 option should be checked In this case the tone mapping will be done as if the left and right border were connected with each other Otherwise they wouldn t match when virtual tour was made with the processed image 18 58 p amp e asyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 3 3 2 1 True HDR The True HDR method generates a radiance map that closely represents the real light radiance that was focused by the lens on the image sensor when the scene was photographed This method requires proper Exposure Values set for the particular photos in the sequence When the HDR generation window is opened the program reads the appropriate exposure time ISO and f number values from JPEG TIFF or RAW EXIF hea
5. light wavelengths in one point because of different refractive index for different wavelengths In the photo it appears as fringes of color around dark bright boundaries This effect gets stronger towards the borders of the photo and typically is the lowest or does not exist at all in the center of the image Chromatic aberration effect can be very low in the most expensive achromatic lenses however there is a way to reduce this effect even if the photo was taken with typical amateur equipment Chromatic aberration correction Magenta cyan Blue yellow Distortion correction s M lai Ce a oe ome a am eee L na w Chromatic aberration correction tool In easyHDR there is a manual Chromatic Aberration Correction tool that allows you to repair your photographs and to increase their quality It can be used right after the photos have been loaded but before they are aligned or used for generating a HDR image After starting the tool select one of the photos from the loaded sequence that will be used for previewing By default the middle exposed one is taken Pan around close to the image borders and find an area with chromatic aberration defects clearly visible Then try to reduce the defect by setting Magenta cyan and Blue yellow scale factors The Distortion correction setting may be useful if it s hard to fix the aberration with the two basic factors It
6. presets are just ordinary easyHDR settings files ehsx What makes them different is the place where they are stored nonme R m SS PPR ie ee a e Win XP C Documents and Settings name easvHDR 3 presets e Windows 7 C Users namej leasyHDR 3 presets e OS X Users name Documents easyHDR3 presets black and white POP amp Er gt M The built in presets are in the easyHDR appliaction folder dramatic bright e Windows C Program Files easyHDR 3 built in presets e OS X symbolic link Users name Documents easyHDR3 built in presets The user presets can be grouped into user defined SEE folders Group selection is possible only when user presets are filtered third button from the left To move an existing preset from one group to another just right click on it and choose the target Management is done with Settings Setup user preset groups Using the dialog you can create or remove the groups Renaming is possible after double clicking on an existing group name When removing a group that contains presets you can choose either to delete or to keep them as not grouped The user groups are just sub folders in the easyHDR 3 presets location on your hard disk which means it s very easy to manage all the user presets manually using Explorer Windows or Finder Mac Please note however that after manipulating files and folders there you have to restart easyHDR so it can refresh it
7. s own lists The simplicity of user preset handling adds another advantage you can easily back up or move your presets from one PC to another or even share them with other people 50 58 ma amp easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 10 Saving the result EasyHDR can save the results in TIFF and JPEG image formats It is also possible to save the generated HDR radiance map as Radiance RGBE hdr or OpenEXR exr However it is only allowed in the HDR generation window for the True HDR method The difference between TIFF and JPEG format is that the first of them is loss less even if the data is compressed It means that absolutely no detail is lost when the file is saved The LZW compression works well with 8 bit TIFFs but for 16 bit data the Deflate method produces in most cases smaller files For best quality you should save in 16 bit TIFF format especially if you want to do further post processing with other photo editing tools PD Save as JPEG Fi Save as TIFF Compression Deflate ZIP r W TransferEXIF X GPS ars M Transfer EXIF Save and open in external editor Save Save and open in external editor When saving in JPEG format it is additionally possible to resize the photo You can define the size in pixels manually The aspect ratio is locked EasyHDR is capable of transferring EXIF headers to the output photographs It uses an external Exiftool software to achieve this goal Exiftool is capable o
8. target balance Both the tone mapping and post processing panels are divided into several groups which can be shown or hidden In case of tone mapping all the settings are always used automatically upon any change to generate the preview image in the workspace Some of the groups vignette color adjustment and color saturation allow disabling the effect eye button This feature is useful when comparing the impact of the effect on the currently tone mapped image The other special button the padlock allows locking of the parameters so that they are not loaded from presets Additionally when lock is enabled the preset thumbnails are regenerated each time parameters are changed in the given group The post processing concept is a bit different Each group is a separate tool which can be used to apply changes to the current image It means for example that when you apply Gaussian blur twice the second 7 58 a Cc amp e asyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com iteration is done on image produced by the first iteration Undoing is possible just one step back but it s also possible to undo all applied post processing To do so just switch back to tab 2 and again to tab 3 For more details about each step please refer to the corresponding part of this document 2 3 Additional tone mapping options panel This panel appears only when you are working at the tone mapping step It contains two tabs Preset and Histor
9. 15x10 cm print are 1772 x 1181 just 2 megapixels An 18 megapixel photo can be printed on a ca 44 x 29 cm paper 10 1 Exporting to external editor If you want to do further processing on the photo generated with easyHDR you can use the export to external editor option instead of saving to file and manually opening it with the other software Before this option can be used it must be configured in the Program Options You have to provide a path to executable of the third party software you want to use AD Program options x Enabled Path to executable 56 Corel CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 13 Programs CorelPRexe Uncompressed r Configuration of the external editor Export to external editor allows transfer of 8 or 16 bit pixel format It is user selectable because not all image editing software support 16 bit photos It is also possible to select whether conversion to sRGB is needed or the color space should remain the same 11 Program options Most of the program settings are saved automatically when the program is closed eg image saving options There are several options however that are set manually In order to modify these settings click Settings Program options 52 58 i amp easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com AD Program options Appearance Scratch pad memory Performance External editor Saving result Miscellaneous Maximum number of cores to use in normal mode Maximum number of cores to use in batch m
10. 6 Leica Tether Plugin Y Plug in Author Tools Reload Plug in Reload plug in on each export Mikon Tathas Pingin Recommended for plug in authors only No diagnostic messages Y easyHDR 3 Lightroom Plugin Information This plugin requi asyHDR 3 to be installed At least version 3 0 is needed You can use it in two coe aji ually edt ine asyHDR pho ya selected in Lightroom Pro over photo hen tically with user defined settings In both cases the result is automatically added to the Lightroom catalog When doing manual editing you have to save the result to file on your own and dose easyHDR Add meme For more information please refer to easyHDR User Manual A Plug in Exchange Lightroom plug in Manager 12 2 Plug in usage In Lightroom select photos you want to process with the plug in Then go to File Export and choose Export to easyHDR 3 An export options panel will show up Depending on the mode you want to use you should select a single image several photos supposed to be merged to HDR or a set of photos you want to process separately 55 58 p amp e asyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com The plug in s export options are divided into several groups 1 Export Method Selection of the mode of operation for the plug in e Manually edit the photos with easyHDR 3 the selected photo or a sequence of photos to be merged to HDR is loaded into easyHDR You are responsible for
11. DR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 2 User interface The user interface of easyHDR s main window consists out of two base parts workspace 1 and three tab panel with tools and settings 2 Additionally when working in tone mapping mode a third part appears 3 The panels are resizeable They can also be folded completely to maximize the size of the workspace In order to change their width use the grip on the inner border one curve Histogram black amp white point w w A EasyHDR user interface The top of the window is occupied by main menu 5 and the tool box 4 The latter contains some of the most important options of the main menu In the bottom there is a status bar 6 which contains the main progress bar zoom control for the workspace and a label showing basic information about the image dimensions and pixel value under cursor When color management is enabled additionally there are also two buttons allowing fast access to color profile options Hover mouse cursor over them to see detailed information about color profiles in use 5 58 Gz amp e asyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 2 1 Workspace In the workspace you can view the input photos a HDR intermediate image and of course the preview of tone mapping What is visible depends on current step of operation but it s also possible to temporarily switch to other views using Photo before processing option It gives an easy way to comp
12. Those values are needed just for proper image calibration 1 Generate HDR 2 CS Mew ea Add ea Remove Ely Generate HDR X IMG_2306 JPFG MG_2305 JPG BOs 80100 FLO 000 Editing the EV values for a 3 photo HDR photo sequence The photos are automatically sorted by the EV values from smallest to highest In the bottom of the Generate HDR tab you can find several options for automatic EV setup EasyHDR selects by itself the option that seems the best The options are from left to the right e EXIF available when the EXIF headers contain valid data When selected the EVs are calculated based on exposure time ISO and the f number e EXIF AEB EV available when there are EV bias values stored in EXIF when photos are taken with a camera in Auto Exposure Bracketing mode When selected the EV are not calculated but taken directly from EV bias fields in EXIF e Automatic robot arm icon easyHDR calculates the EV values automatically by comparing the loaded photos e Manual EV spacing when a value is selected from the drop down menu the photos are sorted from darkest to the brightest and are assigned with EV values accordingly to selected spacing Auto EV options 11 58 D eas yHD R 3 4 http www easyhdr com When AEB sequence of photos is taken some cameras sometimes store slightly wrong values of exposure parameters In such a case easyHDR may warn and automatically select the EXIF AEB E
13. V option If you developed a single RAW image several times to produce two or more differently exposed images the third party software might have transferred the same EXIF data to all output images In such a case you should either manually set the EVs or select the Automatic option When no EXIF is available easyHDR attempts to calculate the EV values automatically You can experiment with HDR generation by disabling some of the already loaded input photos from being used for the HDR There is no need to remove the photos just uncheck the checkbox next to the name of the photo Generate HDR Automatic True HDR Save output HDR to file Generate HDR HDR generation options The HDR generation step can be divided into two stages pre processing which includes chromatic aberration correction and alignment and the actual HDR radiance map generation which can be done using three available methods 3 3 1 Pre processing Before generating the HDR image it is possible to pre process the input photographs The available options are chromatic aberration correction and image alignment After pre processing it is possible to view the modified photos in the main program window by using the Photo before processing option 12 58 B easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 3 3 1 1 Chromatic aberration correction Chromatic aberration is one of the optical defects of lenses It occurs when the lens does not focus all
14. a Underexposed patch means high level of noise and possibly some brightness mismatch In case of overexposed patch the area will be overexposed in the final HDR image and additionally it will not match in brightness will be darker The overexposed and underexposed areas are repaired when Repair over and underexposed option is checked It is done always in case of automatic ghost removal The mask should always be a bit larger than the ghosted area itself The mask is automatically smoothed to ensure better blending The calibration of input photos is crucial for matching the patches to the HDR image Therefore it is very important to provide valid EV values in the HDR generation window EV values are calculated automatically upon the EXIF data so if EXIF headers are available in the input photos there is no problem about that Tone mapped HDR image before a and after b manual ghost removal 21 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com In the manual ghost removal tool there are several previewing options By default the Mask edit mode is selected when the ghosted image with mask painted on it is visible In order to show the ghosted image without mask select the HDR before deghosting mode Preview of image after ghost removal is shown in the HDR after deghosting mode When the mask type is selected as a particular input photo the eye button can be used to show this image It can be usefu
15. ard drive you can choose a single preset from drop down list or finally you can select a set of available presets In the latter case tasks are processed several times for each selected settings The preset name is appended to the output file name This option is perfect if you want to compare results achieved with several settings and just choose those which you prefer The task list can be saved and loaded later There is an option to process only tasks that were not completed previously so it s possible to continue the once stopped job even after system restart It s just important not to change the input photos location on the disk and not to delete or remove the already done results If the automatic task creator failed to combine some of the photos Into tasks correctly you may fix it manually Each multi image task can be split into single image tasks Any set of selected tasks can be combined together These options are available in task s context menu right click Configuration common for the whole batch job 1s available after switching to the Options tab 4 47 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com gt Batch processing Overwrite existing files Rename if file already exists M Transfer EXIF X GPS Options common to the whole batch job The options are e Color space for the imported RAW and HDR images e Destination folder by default each task is saved in the same folder as the input photos b
16. are the result with inputs It also provides a way to examine the input images after they are pre processed aligned and corrected for chromatic aberration Lagi E 2 00 EV IMG_2306 PG 0 00 EV IMG_2305 JPG 2 00 EV IMG_2307 JPG w HDR Photo before processing The use of workspace is intuitive Zooming can be done with mouse wheel to pan around just press the left or right mouse button When in cropping mode double click inside of the crop area to accept or away to cancel There is a possibility to change the background color of workspace Just press the button in the lower left corner The images are always shown at full resolution the detail seen depends only on zoom factor The view is anti aliased for best viewing quality When tone mapping processed is only the visible part of the image which ensures the best performance It s possible to tune the performance of the program by toggling live anti aliasing and live tone mapping For these settings please see the Program Options section 2 2 Main tabbed panel There are three tabs that correspond to three steps of processing Switching between those tabs changes the mode of operation The steps are the following 1 loading pre processing and HDR generation 2 tone mapping 3 post processing optional In the first step it s possible to create new project add and remove HDR sequence photos configure the EV values and finally after optional pre pro
17. ate field Click on the sample to reset the target color If the target color is the same as sample the tool has no effect 6 6 Image transformations The image transformations can be done at any step right after images are loaded during tone mapping or post processing It is possible to rotate the photo by 90 left or right rotate by 180 and flip it horizontally and vertically There is also a combined crop and free rotate function 43 58 as D eas yHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com Cropping the image When in cropping mode an additional bar with options is shown The cropping area size and image rotation angle is displayed and can be modified There is also an option to show vertical and horizontal guidelines that are useful while rotating the image Finally there are buttons allowing to apply or cancel the transformation The best way to mark the cropping area is to just use the mouse The whole selection can be easily displaced with mouse button pressed Clicking away of the area means starting a new selection Moving the mouse while pressing left button and Shift key down allows free hand rotation Double clicking on cropped area applies the transformation while pressing Esc key cancels it Transtorm Settings Colo jo Rotate 90 CCW left oe aiii Note it is not possible to undo the cropping and free rotation Please use it with caution Please also note that applying free rotation several time
18. ccccssccssssscccccrsrssssssscccccccssssccssssccsssssccsesscces 50 10 Saving h FOS LI PE 51 10 VOM MOS NCL OL deo ZO KA metn tannin aes 52 11 Programi Op CL OUNG Z R ORA WEAR UEDA CRAY 52 12 Adobe Lightroom Pa Ms sss sessccctcseseldsenisccccccstesesontuecctessueldeensscccccesbeeessutsecceeuesdaneseatencstceseedeess 55 2 1 HHS AN ATO IN Ua RA ORA PA E ER A ORO O 55 122 00 1a Uc 8 pea kad eee A 55 You can find some additional documentation and other material regarding easyHDR software on the http www easyhdr com documentation php website The available articles Tips and Tricks What is the Exposure Value EV Astrophotography and the HDR image processing techniques HDR from MARS 3 58 a T amp e asyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 1 Introduction EasyHDR is an image processing software that produces and tone maps High Dynamic Range HDR images out of photo sequences taken with a digital camera The program works on Windows XP Vista 7 8 32 and 64 bit and on Mac OS X 10 7 and above The basic idea of High Dynamic Range image processing is depicted on the graphic below Bracketed HDR image Tone mapped result image sequence The first step is to take a set of photographs of the same scene at different exposure settings EasyHDR will produce a so called HDR image radiance map out of these photos The radiance map is nothing else than just an artificial photograph but what makes it differ
19. cessing of the input photos generate the HDR image When HDR image is generated and some precalculations are made it s possible to work at the second step the tone mapping At any time you can go back and 1 e regenerate HDR image with different options or realign input photos etc When you are happy with the parameters you can just save the result to file or proceed to the last step the post processing In both cases the whole image is first processed at full resolution previously only the visible area was processed It s still possible to go back to tone mapping or even to the first step In that case however the applied filtering is lost 6 58 Gz amp easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 1 Generate HDR Ci New 2 Tone mapping 2 le Add ee Remove Tone curve EJ Generate HDR X IMG_2306 JPG 1 3200 50100 FLO 200 mo FV Sigma Threshold X IMG 2305 JPG 1 800 s 150100 F10 0 00 EW 0 00 X IMG_2307 JPG Histogram black amp white point Te hee Toh ar dae Lt a ee be eg 0 20 12 0 3343 ris zg cal HH Mark overexposed and underexposed areas Tone mapping Compression Gamma Local contrast Strength Highlights Shadows Blackness Range Micra Highlights Shadows Sharpness Color saturation EXIF AEB Ev Three step approach to HDR processing 3 Postprocessing Gaussian blur Unsharp mask Median filter Bilateral filter Sample
20. constant bias and thus is easy to subtract by a slight contrast boost In other words by taking an average of photos the signal to noise ratio SNR is increased Also the dynamic range is expanded given the image quality improvement for the darkest areas The following example shows the comparison between a single enhanced LDR enhancement photo and a stack of 5 photos that was processed with easyHDR You can see the dramatic decrease of noise The 5 photos were taken with Canon 350D at exactly the same exposure settings 25 seconds ISO400 f number 3 5 single phota not processed Single phota LDR enhancement Enhanced stack of 5 photos You can also try to stack differently exposed photos instead of generating a HDR image The result will be characterized by improved dynamic range but cannot be called a High Dynamic Range radiance map because the input photos are not calibrated and the luminance scale is untrue Nevertheless the result may be pleasing in some cases 24 58 p amp e asyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 4 Tone mapping When the HDR radiance map is generated the next step is to tone map it so it can be displayed on the computer screen saved in a typical image format or printed Thanks to tone mapping the dynamic range of the photographed scene is preserved and fitted into the capabilities of display media or storage formats The resulting photo is in fact LDR Low Dynamic Range but it contains
21. ders and utilizes them to calculate the true EV Exposure Value If there is no EXIF data embedded in the files the photos are sorted from the darkest to the brightest and the Exposure Values are set up to meet the spacing requirement You can also edit each of the EV independently Note that these values are critical in HDR calculation process especially when you want to receive a realistic result Learn more about the Exposure Value There are a couple of options available only for this algorithm e Selectivity Controls what parts of the input photos and with what weight are taken into consideration during the HDR image creation process The none setting means that the importance of all pixels is equal The balanced setting means smaller weight for under and over exposures weight gets smaller symmetrically towards black and white Cut off over and under exposures disregards just the worst pixels while get best exposed favors brighter pixels where signal to noise ratio 1s higher rather than darker pixels e Ghost removal See below e Saving the HDR image Check this option and choose the directory the file name and format Radiance RGBE or OpenEXR Saving the HDR image is possible only at this step Ghost removal When the photos are well aligned some of the objects within the photographed scene may still not match These objects appear as ghosts in the final HDR image because they are not in the same posi
22. details present in the whole dynamic range of the photographed scene Therefore it is wrong to call the result a HDR or either LDR image It should be called a tone mapped HDR radiance map Tone mapping does not only apply to the processing of HDR images A digital camera applies tone mapping with a global operator in this case a simple curve compression in order to fit the acquired 1 e 12 bit image pixel data into 8 bit per pixel per channel picture format When the HDR image is generated in easyHDR the preview size is automatically adjusted so the previewing process does not take too much time After finding the best tone mapping settings just click the Process all button EasyHDR allows you to save and load tone mapping settings It also has a preset selection feature which allows faster access to most commonly used settings To find out more about settings and presets please go to paragraph 9 4 1 Global vs local operator There are 3 operator functions from which to choose If the Local contrast and Mask check boxes are unchecked only the global operator is being applied By checking the aforementioned options the 2 available local operators can be enabled The global operator works the same for all pixels in the processed image regardless on their position The result for each pixel 1s computed by using only the operator parameters set by the user and the pixel s value This ensures that there will be no brig
23. e setting when used very delicately can help with achieving best color temperature correction When tweaked more strongly it creates unreal effects by shifting the colors 4 9 Vignette Vignette tool can be used either to reduce vignetting caused by camera lens or to create fancy looking vignetting effect There are a couple of parameters that give very wide range of possibilities e Amount positive values mean dark vignetting while negative cause brightening of the edges By setting the negative values the user is able to compensate for dark edges caused by the camera lens e Smoothness the higher the value the smoother is the edge of the vignette e Size distance from the middle point to the edge of the vignette e Roundness controls the shape Value 1 means that the vignette is a rectangle with the aspect ratio of the image with the corners rounded a bit O is an ellipse with aspect ratio of the image and 1 is a circle When you are fixing the vignetting caused by the lens you should set roundness to 1 35 58 D easy HDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com a No vignette applied b Vignette applied Amount 2 Smoothness 1 Size 0 75 Roundness 0 75 5 Layers The normal approach is to process the whole photograph with single user selected tone mapping settings Sometimes however you may want to process some parts differently 1 e get more dramatic sky or make one shadow brighter or eve
24. easyHDR 3 4 User Manual 2006 2014 Bart omiej Okonek 28 06 2014 p amp e asyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com Table of contents Mig TRG OC CEN OW z ese zseuscess sect cons cence EAE cas Ouse vie senders Cassa EEEa NEET 4 Dis USET MCT ACC ani ca ii ACCES A O ORO R GEE 5 gt WV ON IRS DAC zes ROA EEE O O GOA O EA RO EO OEG E O K do 6 22zndaMIADDOCEPAN pas AO AAA OWA E dA 6 22 Additional tone mapping options pane besserer renea eCe EE EE an aS 8 3 HDR radiance map CCNCE AU OM sssectecocscescesccacencocsscesassnncdecsaceeccasenssiencacasecsoesneadetsibeessbeespeneaaeaecessseuas 8 3 1 Taking the photographs ccccececseeeceecececcccceecceeceeceececeeeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesceceeeseeeeeeeeeeeaas 8 2 MUTA CS OU CC NOC TU ad ces cates secon AAAA A A 9 Ad mn Load RAW PIO OS eee ee eer ee eae O ee ee 10 35 HDR CIN SUE Ne AEO zaa akad E beka io e 11 eA Go 81 E 10 A E ne E O R AOC 12 lal CMomanCaDCHANAKCOM COI aa ONAR 13 De i Wea o e E CECCAR ECCE 14 992 HDR imago generan OP MONG vance ad R AO AO A O ada 18 Die jain A TNS ADR ai Oo A Rd dE R A dia 19 Dein DIMALCM IEEE W E WE A ROC A EA 23 3 328 o MASE PLACET o taa OO AA AGO PSE O wi 24 4 1 ODC MAD DINO ic cd E A E 25 4 1 Global vs local operator uuuuuuu aaa aaa wawa aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa wawa a wawa wawa aaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaa awa wiiiia 25 4 2 Global Operator Compression Gamma amp SaturatiOn ccccccccccccceceeeeeeeee
25. eesseeeeeceeeaeees 26 4a PO Dell OC HAGE FOR GUN a a A AE ates oe ese EE 27 4 4 LocaEORTACE NSE eee eee eee een ene OJ Dn E ee A ee EE ae ee nee ene eee 28 4S Local Operator Local OBIAD ae wd O AAA ERO EO i 29 4 0 BGCEESE WIE CHp CONTAS enio dE EO dE dE EA A RO 31 AR C OO 0 ees 8 Roa AE O EYE EYES Wd 33 0 CGIOLAJJUSTMICN Ra RAA AAA AO AR AAA A OO 34 A NIEMCE zenia ae AN W RO A AO ei AA JAA 35 Se LAVET OP EAP 36 Dele MN Welt MEJ E GORZEJ EZ GEJE ER GEJ 37 eP CUM UNA Fea AREA AAA WO AA TAA OO 37 J Lone mappe Se Saa EE E EE 39 2 58 a T amp e asyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com Gs BOSE DTOCESSIIO az R zza cccdcet acs seasecue cise sesveenes wci zywa dc did zad zad SIEGE ZSEE 40 CEOS aa pU MOONE GRA OKA OE EE EE 40 6 2 Unsharp mask Sharpeming ccccccccccccccccccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesesaeeeseeeeeeaeenees 40 6 3 Median filter noise ee UC OM aise case caicsdecalseadca E E acausiendeasloeadasusistaveastcesdede E Eda 41 62 Bilateral filter 00ise LeU CON naa OWE dA PARA dA AA 42 6 5 Sample target balance uu ooo aaa aaa aaa aaa aa aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa aaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa zarz aaazaaaaazaacc 42 6 0 Mias_ Mans FO PUA OG ao O AO ARA P I 43 Ts Color manane mO an AE EO a Oi dA ES 45 S Balch POCO SN zicc zc zi dy R az or set a ai w zi d WGA 45 SA AUORANCSEINNTCANO rece cect ero cer es ht se sts em a lc nce 48 9 Tone mapping settings management Presets ccc
26. ent is the dynamic range that it covers It contains all the detail that was acquired on any photo from the set The only problem is that it cannot be simply displayed on a computer screen as the dynamic range of this display media is relatively very low Therefore another step has to be done tone mapping or in other words dynamic range compression The tone mapping can utilize a global or local operator to achieve the compression The global operator can give most realistic results but if the dynamic range is very high it is simply not able to give good looking output as the details and colors get washed out Therefore the local operators are used in addition They allow much higher level of compression because they operate on the local level The details in the image are amplified while the overall dynamic range is shrunk This gives a lot of possibilities You can either make the result look very dramatic or just achieve better realism by smartly using the local contrast boost The modern DSLR cameras are equipped with better and better CMOS or CCD sensors in sense of signal to noise ratio In many cases just a single photo may be good enough for tone mapping It means that it is not always necessary to take an image sequence which may sometimes be difficult because of moving subjects or long exposure time needed Because of that easyHDR allows you to tone map just a single photograph JPEG or for best results RAW 4 58 as D eas yH
27. eparately LDR enhancement A separate instance of easyHDR 3 will run for each of the selected photos LDR Y easyHDR 3 Processing Options HDR Method True HDR M E Alignment E Ghost removal F 360 degree panorama F Noise filtering Tone mapping preset C Program Files easyHDR 3 built in presets dramatic strong ehsx Browse easyHDR built in Browse user presets Output format Convert to sRGB color space V Automatically import tone mapped result Y File Settings Image Format Original x Y Image Sizing Add T Resize to Fit Megapixels Don t Enlarge E Plug in Manager Cancel Export options dialog It s very useful to create own Lightroom presets based on defined export settings You have then very easy access to the most commonly used set ups ERE Fue Edt Litrary Photo Metadata View Window Heip i amp easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com es es ee ee WY a ys 58 58
28. eview while painting The mask is automatically made invisible when mouse cursor hovers over the preset history panel or the tone mapping panel In order to erase the mask switch the paint mode to eraser or when in brush or paint bucket mode hold Ctrl Cmd key pressed 5 3 Tone mapping settings The tone mapping settings visible in the panel on the right hand side are switched accordingly to selected layer item Any change is applied to the selected layer only When a preset is selected it is also applied to the currently selected layer The only exception is vignette For all the layers the vignette settings are assumed the same as for the base image Any change of the tone mapping settings for each layer is stored on the history list The changes concerning layers are marked with L n where n is the layer number When a new layer is created a L n START record is added and it holds the initial settings When a layer is deleted the history entries for it are removed ap ae Example the layer s mask was painted using the intelligent brush to cover just the sky Then the layer s settings were changed to make the sky more dramatic and desaturated 39 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 6 Post processing If you are finished with tone mapping you may do some post processing to the output image before you save it You can use 4 filters Gaussian blur sharpen median and bilateral filter Easy HDR also all
29. exported image format are e You want to process RAW images but you want Lightroom to do RAW conversion instead of leaving it to easyHDR e You want to resize the image before exporting it to easyHDR see point 4 e You want to remove some metadata from the exported images before they are exported see point 5 e You want to change or set in case of RAWs the color space before the photos are loaded by easyHDR e EasyHDR does not support the image format you want to export 4 Image Sizing It s available only if format conversion to TIFF is selected It allows resizing of the images before they are exported to easyHDR 5 Metadata It s available only if format conversion to TIFF is selected It allows removal of some EXIF headers like location information etc before the images are exported to easyHDR 56 58 easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com r export One rae Export To easyHDR 3 z Preset Export One File v Lightroom Presets a YV Export Method 4 Burn Full Sized JPEGs 5 Manually edit the photos with easyHDR 3 Export to DNG For Email Manually process save your work and dose easyHDR 3 in order to return to Adobe Lightroom r Emai For Email Hard Drive Y User Presets Process with easyHDR 3 in background EasyHDR 3 will process save your work dose and return to Adobe Lightroom automatically Process with easyHDR 3 in background each selected photo s
30. f transferring full EXIF data from and to all image formats including RAW photos If your camera stores location information but you want to remove it from the particular photograph you may easily do so by un checking the GPS box It s perfect option if you want to share the photos on the Internet but you don t want to show everybody the exact location where they were taken eg in your backyard When color management is enabled it is possible to convert the color space of the photo to sRGB It is useful if photos in other color space were processed and you want the results to be displayed correctly by programs that do not support color management also when you want to publish them on a web page The DPI value definition is for user s convenience It does not influence the pixel dimensions or amount of detail It is just a value that in addition to pixel dimensions defines the physical dimensions of the photo It is useful to set it to a value that you normally use when preparing for printing because then you can more easily edit the physical dimensions of the photo when post processing in an external application The most commonly used value is 300 it ensures very good print quality invisible pixelization _ Pixel dimension Physical dimension mm _ 25 4 DPI bee Physical dimension mm DPI 51 58 amp easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com In case of DPI resolution 300 the pixel dimensions for a
31. fined directory There is also a possibility to add a single task by directly pointing a HDR image sequence or a single image for LDR enhancement The tasks 2 are displayed in a scroll box Each of them is a separate processing job for easyHDR and has own settings associated 3 Every task has a name that is used as the output file name The input photos names are also displayed along with the thumbnails To change the task name simply click on it The settings are displayed for all selected tasks If at least one of them has different settings a warning message 1s shown The settings of the 211 selected tasks are not the same The above settings are displayed for IMG _0285 _MG_0423 easyHDR_batch Apply settings to all selected tasks You can apply then the currently visible settings to all selected tasks 46 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com If there are various types of tasks selected at once both HDR sequences and single photos always the settings for HDR processing are displayed Of course some of the options are not valid for single photo tasks in this case If tasks consisting of only single photos are selected then appropriate set of parameters is visible as depicted in the picture below black and white X dramatic bright x dramatic dark Settings for single photo tasks There are three possible options for tone mapping settings usage You can select any settings file ehsx from your h
32. ge The weirdest artifacts may appear on a HDR created with True HDR method with Balanced selectivity setting They are caused by invalid pixel luminosities 1 e an area that should be darker on a shorter exposure is in fact brighter which confuses the algorithm Manual alignment EasyHDR has a built in manual alignment tool that can be used to align the photos 1f it s needed The tool uses planar stretching method that is controlled by the user by manual placement of up to 4 pins for image pairs One of the images preselected by the user is called base All other photos to align are aligned to the base The user has to set the pins for each pair of the photos Crop of a tone mapped HDR blended from After manual alignment misaligned photos 14 58 a Cc amp eas yHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com Below is described the procedure that leads to generation of a HDR radiance map from a misaligned sequence of photographs is described e Load a sequence of photos into the program and click Manual alignment button in the HDR generation window e Choose the base photo to which the remaining images shall be aligned The base photo appears in the top left box By default the middle exposed photo is automatically selected e Decide on the method of transformation of course you can do it later as well but please note that the method is common for all photos that are transformed Co
33. h various shapes and smoothness but also differing in size 4 The slider next to the brush style combo box allows setting opacity of the brush stroke 37 58 easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com I EE laai ae si MNA kul ies an 3 el A FE s Ux IDE Dar ONIN AENA tera direa PENI k In case of both brush strokes the same brush style was used but they were done at two different image zoom factors The stroke to the left was painted at 10 zoom while the one in the right when the zoom was 30 b ISG Gni See B q i a zaa 11 A WTA LIL A Tha a m M HW 1 BIEL LE ear un Mask painted with the intelligent brush The painting was started in the spot marked with the cursor 38 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com There is a special mode of painting available When the Intelligent option is selected the opacity of the brush depends on pixel values of the HDR image The opacity is higher if the pixels under the brush are more similar to values sampled when mouse button was clicked It means that with long strokes you can cover with mask some similar areas like 1 e sky By default the mask is visible as a green area over the background image with 50 opacity The green color may sometimes be an obstacle so there is a possibility to switch it to red or blue There 1s also an option to show just the mask as a black and white image The mask may finally be also made invisible which allows live pr
34. hlights mean stronger attenuation of the bright areas they get darker Higher values for shadows mean that the darker areas are more strongly intensified get brighter 28 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com In case of both photos gamma 1 00 compression 1 80 a Highlights 0 00 Shadows 0 00 b Highlights 0 40 Shadows 0 40 4 5 Local Operator Local Contrast This operator compresses the global dynamic range of the photograph while enhancing the details at local level It gives a lot of possibilities ranging from just slight improvement of contrasts to give better realism up to achieving very dramatic results The local contrast operator is very sensitive so when used with strong settings it may amplify noise especially if the input images are of low quality i e taken with high ISO with a poor digital camera or saved with high JPEG compression settings In case of processing HDR image sequences please keep in mind that the noise level might be lower if the HDR sequence of images covers the entire dynamic range of the scene so if there are no parts of the scene that are not properly exposed in any of the photos Noise reduction is also achieved by using normal selectivity in case of the True HDR method Even lower noise level should be possible when using the Smart Merge method a No local contrast applied b Local contrast applied By using the local contrast operator we achieve
35. htness inversions in the output photo leaving it as natural as it is possible while fitting the selected scene dynamic range into the display media capabilities No brightness inversions mean that the areas that were brighter than others in the real photographed scene will remain brighter This limitation makes it very difficult to compress the entire dynamic range without washing out colors or loosing local contrast The local operator on the other hand is spatially variable The local parameters are computed for each pixel independently while taking its neighboring pixels into account Therefore the local operator is capable of greater contrast reduction on wide scale at the same time preserving local contrasts details and colors When the effect 1s too strong however the photo may become unnatural It may sometimes be anticipated to achieve a dramatic result but also sometimes an unwanted halo effect can show up The local operator works similarly to local chemical adaptation in the human eye which is one of the factors that make the human vision capable of sensing very wide dynamic range Note that in classical digital photography only the global operators are used 1 e gamma pre processing inside a digital camera 25 58 amp easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com The parameters for the global operator in easyHDR are Compression Gamma Contrast histogram clipping Color adjustment and color sat
36. human eye covers the dynamic range of about 100 000 1 at one time just the top dynamic range of most real world scenes In comparison the dynamic range of typical digital cameras is about 1000 4000 1 and in case of computer displays it 1s even much worse However having the ability to cover a very wide dynamic range the human brain is not able to distinguish small changes in brightness and also human perception 1s logarithmic rather than linear Of course the digital camera and computer display design take advantage of that fact 8 58 er amp eas yHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 logicam starlight moonlight indoor artificial lighting sunlight LZ Human wisior long term jm Human vision at one time nnn Digital cameras A CRT displays The camera chip CCD or CMOS responsivity is more or less linear A 12 bit RAW image is converted to an 8 bit per channel photo using a compression curve stored in the camera in a Look Up Table LUT So the whole dynamic range that the camera can cover is compressed fitted into 8 bit 0 255 values EasyHDR allows you to create a photo that covers a much wider dynamic range than a single image taken with a typical digital camera First of all you have to acquire enough luminosity information from the photographed scene You can do that by taking several photographs at different exposure times so the whole dynamic range is covered The brightest deta
37. ils have to be clearly visible in the shortest exposure and the darkest should be visible in the longest exposure image It 1s recommended to set exposure times such that the Exposure Value EV step between the images is about 1 or 2 EV In most cases 3 images will be sufficient In order to take the image sequence automatically with your digital camera you can use the Auto Exposure Bracketing AEB option ku w For best results the images shouldn t be too misaligned and therefore should be taken with a camera on a tripod However for easyHDR there is no problem if the photos were taken hand held because it has automatic as well as manual alignment tools built m Both are able to compensate even for perspective misalignment 3 2 Image sequence loading In order to load the image sequence just click New and multi select all of the photos from the sequence that you want to be used It is also possible to add more photos to the already loaded sequence or to remove some of them without the need to start again If you load only one photo you will be able to enhance it with the tone mapping operators that are normally used with HDR data This feature is called LDR enhancement and simply allows enhancing single shots most preferably sngle RAW photos EasyHDR will also load photos dragged and dropped on the main program window or photos for which the paths are provided as run time parameters useful for plugging easyHDR as an external ed
38. in the right panel are relevant to that layer When a new layer is created the current tone mapping settings are copied and applied to it There can be up to 9 layers but please note that more of them mean more memory usage and longer processing time Each layer can be individually enabled or disabled see the check box next to the layers name It allows easy comparison of the result with and without the layer applied If you feel it is helpful the layer s name can be changed Just click on the name to edit it More options are available in the item s context menu It is possible to invert the mask clear it or delete the selected layer It is also allowed to export and import the mask in PNG file format so that it can be edited using an external application or stored for later use Mask drawing options Pad ha M Intelligent Rename Brush style T Invert Base image Clear k Mask visibility Green Import Export Remove Layer item context menu Switching between the active layers and the base image is done by just selecting the items 5 2 Painting the mask When any layer item is selected the mask can be painted on it In order to do it ensure that the brush or paint bucket tool is selected then choose the desired brush style and opacity and just paint the mask with a mouse on the image The brush size changes automatically with image zoom factor but in the brush style menu you can find not only brushes wit
39. is possible to move the central point to an arbitrary location by double clicking on the image When you change the parameters the preview is refreshed automatically You can have a look at the original input while panning the image After selecting the best parameters you can check whether they also work for other photos in the input sequence Then press Apply to process all the input photographs 13 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com Because of the fact that chromatic aberration is a constant defect of the lens it makes sense to save and reuse the correction settings In order to save a preset type its name in the edit field and press button To delete just select the preset from drop down list and press The presets can be also used in the batch processing It should be noted that chromatic aberration for zoom lenses is varying with focal length so a single preset for a zoom lens is definitely not enough 3 3 1 2 Alignment In order to get the best sharp and fine detailed results the photo sequence used to generate the HDR radiance map should be taken with a camera on a tripod Of course it is not always possible Even the fastest cameras with exposure bracketing option enabled still need quite much time to take the full sequence The slightest move of a hand during that process can cause the acquired photos to be misaligned in respect to each other which results in artifacts on a generated HDR ima
40. itor for other image editing or management software 9 58 as D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com EasyHDR loads JPEG photos as well as 8 and 16 bit TIFFs It also features a built in RAW converter using an external program DCRAW that is capable of importing almost all of the RAW photo formats by all digital camera vendors It is also possible to load FITS file format that is most commonly used in astrophotography EasyHDR supports additionally High Dynamic Range formats Radiance RGBE hdr OpenEXR exr and 96 bit TIFF 3 2 1 Loading RAW photos EasyHDR provides a graphical interface to DCRAW m a form of a dialog window displayed when a RAW image is being loaded It allows control over several DCRAW options output color space if Color Management is enabled white balance median and wavelet noise filtering and finally special highlight recovery mode which is especially useful when processing sngle RAW photos Applying white balance correction and filtering noise at RAW decoding step is the best way to achieve greatest possible correction level It s because the operation is done on totally raw data By default the camera stored settings for white balance are used but you can either manually modify the multipliers advanced or pick a sample from preview image The picked color is the targeted neutral point the multipliers are calculated automatically by DCRAW In case of noise filtering it s worth mentioning tha
41. l while painting the mask to select the desired image for patching The preview shows a HDR image that is not tone mapped with any local operator It 1s actually an artificial exposure of a generated HDR radiance map By default it is exposed at 0 EV relative to EV values of the input photos You can change the exposure to better show over or under exposures a b and c Input photos 2 0 and 2 EV differently exposed people moved while the sequence was taken d tone mapped HDR no ghost removal e ghosts removed but in a way to leave the people as in the 0 EV shot see the red mask f the ghosted areas were patched in a way to completely remove the people red mask replaces ghosts with part of a 0 EV photo while the green mask patches the area with 2 EV photo 22 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com The ghost removal tool can be used to repair ghosted areas in your HDR photo but because it is possible to select which photo should be used for patching there is yet another and very interesting possibility It can be used to completely remove 1 e moving people or cars from a photograph It s just a matter of taking photos correctly The ghost can be removed completely only if the affected area is well exposed and without the moving object itself at least in one of the photos in a sequence see the example above 3 3 2 2 Smart Merge This method doesn t generate a real HDR radiance map Instead the i
42. mean of control points Each of them defines a separate Gaussian function for which it is possible to set sigma smoothness parameter If the separate curves are close enough to each other they are glued together so it is possible to draw straight lines In order to add a new control point just click with the left mouse button on the tool To remove a point use the right mouse button One of the more advanced possibilities that the selective saturation gives is leaving just a single color tone and making the rest of the photograph black and white z5 P x i f A A j Saturation has been reduced to zero for all colors apart from red and violet 4 8 Color adjustment The camera not always uses the perfect white balance settings when the photos are taken EasyHDR allows you to fix the color tone at the tone mapping step Two settings fulfill this task Temperature and Tint The first controls the blue orange tone while the second of them allows green magenta balance If there is a spot on the photo that should be neutral you can sample it with the eyedropper tool EasyHDR will set the temperature and tint to fulfill the requirement 34 58 pig D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com Sampled spot a Tone mapped HDR created out of 5 photos that had some bluish tint due to bad white balancing done by the camera b white balance corrected automatically by sampling the marked spot The Hu
43. mpensation for shift requires setting of one pin pair Shift and rotation needs 2 pin pairs Perspective matching 1s achieved by setting all the available 4 pin pairs Photo to align X IMG_2306 JPG EV 2 00 review Average Difference Result Method Shift rotation amp perspective Preview oom base and photo to align Zoom preview Gamma photo to align x Auto contrast 74 100 Photo to be aligned is loaded into the top right box The preview style was selected as difference to better show the misalignment e Open one of the remaining photographs m the top right box This is the photo that will be transformed by the program in order to be aligned to the base image e Set the pins on the two loaded images base and photo to align so they point exactly at the same object details of the photographed scene It is a good practice to initially place the pins close to the chosen scene features while the zoom is set to a small value and later fine tune the placement at higher zoom The pin centering option see picture below is useful while fine tuning the positions The view is automatically centered at the selected pin pair Center at 15 58 a Cc amp eas yHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com The keyboard arrows can be used to fine tune the pin positions Just double click on the chosen pin to enter the keyboard mode While the right Shift key is held the pin jumps several times faster In orde
44. n to change color of something while not altering the rest In order to do so you can process the photo several times with different tone mapping settings and later blend those results with Photoshop or GIMP masking the regions manually EasyHDR brings layers feature to give exactly this functionality but with something more live preview and possibility to set tone mapping settings individually for each layer at any step of processing When a new project is started the layers are always disabled and the program allows processing the whole image with just one set of tone mapping settings In order to enable the layers easyHDR must be already in the tone mapping mode Go to the main menu Layers Enable layers or press the Layers button in the tool box yers Color settings Program options Base image Layers enabled You can easily turn off the layers mode by selecting Layers Disable layers or pressing the tool box icon again The layers themselves are not removed and the settings are not lost they are just not applied to the final result nor the preview 36 58 pig amp easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 5 1 Managing layers Initially there are no layers Just the Base image item is selectable To create one click the Add button The selection is immediately switched to that new layer item which means that you can already paint the mask on the image and that all the tone mapping settings visible
45. nput photographs are merged together by taking the best exposed details with higher weight The over and under exposed areas are rejected Ghost removal is not available here because the photos are not calibrated as it is done for the True HDR method The user can control the strength of Smart Merge s selectivity In most cases the low values 0 2 are just perfect In case of some photo sequences stronger effect may give some further dynamic range compression but sometimes it may cause unnatural look The result of the merge may look very natural when only slight local contrast enhancement is used Of course stronger tone mapping may also be applied in order to get more dramatic look g SLI ka ae y a ia ki ni wok 3 r F iy Hra as RE x IE GEN NE 27 Ta aor E a b and c Differently exposed photos photo sequence loaded to easy HDR d Result after Smart Merge strength 1 e Result after Smart Merge strength 5 both results processed with default tone mapping settings 23 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 3 3 2 3 Image Stacking Stacking is a method of blending photos by simply taking the average of the input images The luminance value for each pixel is a sum of the true signal and of course the noise If the photographed scene is static the signal acquired for each pixel is constant for each photo taken at the same exposure settings while the noise is random The average of the noise aims for a
46. ntinuous shooting mode but not AEB or those taken fast one after another are not merged together into single tasks HO Auto create tasks F Photos canon 2013 06 27 hee cae Emi nen OE a dd ordinal number as prefix Automatic task creation options Another method assumes a fixed amount of photos m each HDR sequence in the source folder There is also a simple mode useful when you want to process single photos only LDR enhancement Each task consists then out of a single photo 49 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 9 Tone mapping settings management presets EasyHDR allows you to save the tone mapping settings to files and to import those settings later The most commonly used settings can be put into a special pool of presets When the program is installed a couple of built in presets are already there 1 e dramatic bright or natural By grabbing and moving the edge of the panel you are able to resize the thumbnails Additionally when the panel gets wider the view changes and the presets are displayed in more columns up to 4 In order to add a new user preset based on the currently selected tone mapping settings you can use the plus button in the top right corner of the panel You can rename user presets by simply clicking on the names ne To replace a preset with current settings or delete it just click right mouse button on the thumbnail to open a pop up menu with options The
47. ode X Live anti aliasing X Live tone mapping Live tone mapping while zooming and panning Temporarily resample during live tone mapping Disabled full resolution Reset all settings Cancel Program Options window Appearance By default easyHDR has a dark gray skin You can change it here to light gray one Another option allows scaling of all program fonts buttons and windows Normally the program takes the system s DPI setting to rescale itself but with the option here you can override the system s value Me ee he ay was is PT w GEE GEGREG G aa ae pin a aas berma mi stu NS p Dark and bright gray ski Scratch pad memory You can choose here which hard drive or directory should be used by easyHDR to store temporary data The option is set to system temporary directory by default This setting should be modified only if you have little free space on the hard drive where the operating system is installed The necessary free space for the program to work properly depends on how big images you want to load into the program and how many of them are in sequences you blend into HDR The data is dumped to the disk only if it cannot be stored in memory It s good to have at least 1 GB of free space Performance EasyHDR is capable of using several CPU cores if they are available By doing parallel processing the 53 58 p amp e asyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr c
48. om performance of the program is greatly improved It is possible to select the maximal number of cores used by the program in normal or in the batch mode separately Note that when the maximal number of cores to be used is the same as available number of cores easyHDR will claim 100 of CPU time during some operations That means that other processes running on your system will work much slower during that period of time There are also other performance settings When live anti aliasing is enabled the photos are anti aliased while zooming and panning otherwise a rough image is displayed and after some timeout an anti aliased view appears The live tone mapping mode means that the tone mapping preview is generated at the same time as the settings change otherwise a timeout must pass before the view is refreshed Live tone mapping while zooming and panning does not require any further explanation There is also a special option that allows live tone mapping of a re sampled image preview instead of full resolution one The full resolution image is calculated after a short timeout passes This feature may be really useful on very slow computers or when the screen resolution is very high then the preview area that needs to be reprocessed live is large and requires more processing time Saving result Here it is possible to define the default suffixes added to the output photos in both normal and batch mode You can also choose whe
49. oo strongly could also preserve the feel of realism In order to achieve that please try increasing the Shadows value as well as Blackness which controls the threshold of shadow deepness a Blackness 0 30 b Blackness 0 60 There is also an additional parameter Micro It controls strength of the smallest detail enhancement By using it it is possible to make the photo a bit sharper By using the Mask operator in combination with the Local contrast it is possible to further boost brightness in the shadows and to attenuate the brightest parts of the image while not bringing up noise so much as it could be happening with the local contrast alone 30 58 ma Ga amp eas yHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 4 6 Black amp white clip contrast The human eye is not able to see the whole dynamic range of every scene so if you want to achieve a natural effect it is sometimes good to clip some shadows to black and some bright areas to white By loosing some information in those areas you get better a looking more natural image with better contrast By default 0 1 of the darkest pixels are cut to black and the 0 2 of the brightest are clipped to white This makes the result look much more natural and not washed out while sacrificing only a small fraction of the dynamic range To set the clipping points just move the markers over the histogram or manually set the desired cut off pixel pe
50. ows manipulation of color tones and cropping After filtering is applied it is possible to undo in all cases excluding cropping If you want to reset all applied post processing you can simply go back to tone mapping step and reprocess the whole image 6 1 Gaussian blur smoothing You can use Gaussian blur filter to introduce some neat smoothing effect to your photo The higher the Sigma value the more blurred is the result Use the Opacity setting to mix the blurred result with the input a Input photo SMPix b Sigma 6 0 opacity 100 c Sigma 6 0 opacity 50 6 2 Unsharp mask sharpening The sharpening tool is a must in every image editing software EasyHDR allows sharpening at the tone mapping level but also in the post processing step You can change three parameters Sigma extent Amount strength of the effect Threshold cutoff level 40 58 as lt B easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com are PEPE ME aa 4 so je A aos 0 22 i a iy a Input photo b Sigma 1 0 amount 100 threshold 0 00 c Sigma 3 0 amount 100 threshold 0 05 6 3 Median filter noise reduction If you want to remove salt amp pepper noise like hot pixels and you don t have a dark frame this filter will be just what you need It scans the masked neighborhood of each pixel and exchanges the luminance of the pixel with the computed median most probable value
51. processing and saving the result manually Once you save the processed image just exit easyHDR The image is automatically imported to the Lightroom catalog e Process with easyHDR 3 in background the selected photo or a sequence of photos to be merged to HDR 1s loaded into easyHDR automatically processed using the provided settings saved and finally is imported into the Lightroom catalog EasyHDR program window is visible during the process but cannot be used by the user e Process with easyHDR 3 in background each selected photo separately each of the photos selected in Lightroom is loaded into easyHDR separately one by one No HDR image is generated each photo 1s processed as LDR All generated results are imported into Lightroom catalog 2 EasyHDR 3 Processing Options here you are supposed to define the settings for easyHDR like image alignment ghost removal noise filtering tone mapping preset and the output file format 3 File Settings This is a standard Lightroom panel It allows defining the exported image format the format of the image that is loaded by easyHDR not the format of the result If you choose Original the exported photos are not altered before they are loaded into easyHDR otherwise they are re formatted using the provided settings Only TIFF format is allowed here because it makes no sense to loose quality while converting to JPEG The common cases when you want to change the
52. r the photograph The best case is when they are located near the corners Placing them too close to each other or setting 3 or 4 of them in one line will result in big alignment errors and therefore should be avoided A score value 0 to 100 is calculated by the program to help you set the pins correctly 16 58 D easy HDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com Bad spread of the pins Pins are Bad spread of the pins Pins are too Good spread of the pins almost in one line close to each other Score 61 100 Score 14 100 Score 13 100 In a HDR image sequence it might be hard to find the same details in both pictures base and photo to align due to the difference in brightness If the detail is not overexposed but rather underexposed in the darker of the photos you may manually alter gamma setting for the particular image in order to brighten or darken it Auto contrast option may also be useful It automatically enhances contrast not gamma in the darker of the photos to match it to the brighter one Automatic cropping option can be used to cut off the parts of the images that are invalid in one or more of the aligned photos Such invalid parts have bad influence on the tone mapping process when local operator is used Automatic alignment The automatic alignment feature is a convenient way to align photos without any user intervention It always tries to compensate for shift rotation scale and perspective
53. r to exit the keyboard mode press Enter Space Esc or double click on the image away from a pin Please note that the image is correctly transformed only after all the required pin pairs are properly placed You can disregard what is shown in the preview box until the last pin is set and then use the preview while fine tuning e Repeat the operation described in the previous two points on every photo that shall be aligned to the base Note that it is possible to set different pin positions for each image pair e Click on the Apply button The photos will be aligned and in the next step you will finally be able to generate the HDR radiance map IMG_2305 JPG EV 0 00 Photo to align IMG_2306 JPG EV 2 00 SET e Difference Result Base photo rotation amp perspective 68 100 Four pins point at exactly the same picture features The pins are set with sub pixel accuracy The manual alignment tool can be also used in a semi manual way Right after the window appears it is possible to use the Auto all button to allow easyHDR place the pins automatically The user can check whether the automatic algorithm succeeded and 1f it s necessary correct the pin positions before applying the alignment The Auto button on the other hand causes automatic pin placement for just the currently selected image pair When compensating for more than just the shift please note that the pins should be well spread ove
54. r transform function that is calculated basing on the input and output profiles is used to properly display the image colors in the program s preview window The color space of the output photo is not changed and is the same as it is in case of the inputs The color space definition is just rewritten to the output photo so other color management aware software can display it properly Raw photos by definition do not have any color space When they are loaded the image data is decoded into a user defined RGB color space EasyHDR can work only with RGB color spaces Other like for example CMYK are not possible to use Note that all input photos that are used to create one HDR image have to be in the same color space otherwise easyHDR will deny to load them For best quality process only 16 bit color managed TIFFs 8 Batch processing If you want to process many image sequences especially if the photos are very big you ll appreciate the advantages of batch processing The idea is to create a list of many tasks to be done by easyHDR and then let the program do the whole job without user interaction Below you can see the batch processing window click File Batch processing 45 58 B easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com The main batch processing configuration window The first step is to create a list of tasks 1 To do so use Auto create tasks option to make tasks automatically out of files from within a de
55. rcentage for black and white separately There is also a possibility to set the clipping points by sampling the image with eyedropper tools In order to use the eyedroppers click on the appropriate icon and then select the desired point on the image Using left mouse button selects the point from the currently viewed result image while using the right mouse button chooses the point from the input HDR image Histogram black amp white point z 03242 e A HH z Mark overexposed and underexposed areas If the padlock icon is locked the clipping is done automatically to the preset percentage values when other tone mapping parameters are changed When it is in the unlocked position the markers always stay in the same place but you can still move them manually 31 58 ma D eas yHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com rmi m FIAT tata eres he lata a J ri ufa w 00000 00000 s S 3 0020 Example of the histogram clipping The entire available dynamic range is preserved in the photo a while in case of photo b the 4 7 of darkest pixels are clipped to black and 1 8 of the brightest pixels are clipped to white This means that there is a loss in dynamic range but at the same time the photo has higher contrast You can mark the overexposed red and underexposed blue areas to see how much detail is not available was not recorded on any photo from the HDR sequence or is lost due to clipping
56. ression 2 20 d Gamma 0 80 Compression 2 20 4 3 Global Operator Tone curve Tone curve adjust is a powerful but simple in use tool that is implemented in almost every image editing software It offers much more flexibility than the gamma setting described above The user manually shapes using special knee points the curve that 1s used to compress the dynamic range of the photo The points can be created by simply clicking in the curve area with the left mouse button Knee point removal is done by pressing the right mouse button while the cursor hovers over the selected point Tone curve 27 58 WE amp e asyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com The curve tool that is implemented in easyHDR operates on HDR rather than LDR Low Dynamic Range image data as it is done in typical photo editing software Because of that operations can have different much better effects 1 e brightening shadows does not necessarily mean boosting noise level of course there must be enough shadow information in the HDR composite The curve tool does not make any changes to the output image when it is in the reset position straight line It gives enough flexibility when there are 2 or 3 knee points EasyHDR allows editing curve either for pixel luminance or for each red green and blue channels separately There is a set of several ready to use presets that can be the starting points to further curve shaping to access them just press
57. s causes tiny degradation of image details It s because of anti aliasing pin i filtering applied For best quality you should preview rotation carefully lt Vertical flip and apply it just once tt Crop and free rotate Rotate 90 CW right 4 Rotate 180 x 44 58 a Cc amp e asyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 7 Color management EasyHDR can properly work with color managed photos and monitor profiles The Color Management is disabled by default when the program is installed but can be enabled by checking the option in the main menu Color Settings Color Management Colorsetiings Program options Help w sRGB Adobe RGB w Color management a m jez is Photo color space P w As embedded in input photo Apple RGE Color Match LJ From file Q Monitor color profile b sRGB Intent b Adobe RGE Wide Gamut Fro Fhoto Color Management options in the main menu as well as the status bar The photograph s color space is extracted automatically from the JPEG or TIFF input once the image file is loaded In case of RAWs RadianceRGBE and OpenEXR the color space is user defined at loading If the color space definition is not embedded it is always possible to manually select the space from a list SRGB AdobeRGB WideGamut or ProPhoto The monitor color profile can be selected from one of standard profiles SRGB AdobeRGB AppleRGB or ColorMatch or loaded from a ICC or ICM file The colo
58. shown as a mask in different color D Manual ghost remova HDR before deghosting Hide automatically Moving people r IMG_4535_aligned jpg AF IMG_4534_aligned jpg Clouds Parallax Manual ghost removal tool in the Mask edit mode The mask has already been painted red for 0 EV photo currently selected mask type and cyan for the other 1 58 EV photo Longer exposure cyan is taken for the shadowed area while the shorter exposure red is for the highlights 20 58 i amp easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com The mask painting tool is either a brush of various sizes or a flood fill tool The user can explicitly select which input photo to use for the particular mask that is being painted It is also possible to leave the decision to the program and use the Automatic mask type default Mask type Eraser is of course for clearing already painted masks Eraser is also enabled when painting with Ctrl key pressed The flood fill tool can be used to change the particular mask s target image or to completely erase the selected individual masked area It cannot flood fill a not masked part of the photo As it was already mentioned before the masked area is no longer a real HDR It s just a well calibrated patch of a single input photo It means that the best results can be achieved when the ghosts are relatively small and when the image that is selected for patching is well exposed in the masked are
59. t median filter is useful for removing hot pixels while the wavelet filter smooths random noise The Recover highlights option allows getting more detail in the overexposed areas but at the same time it may cause some color shift there Therefore it s advised to use it rather only in case of enhancing single RAW photos when some more detail is really needed If further color correction is necessary or you want to remove some more noise easyHDR allows these at later steps as well advanced color adjustment is possible at the tone mapping level while more noise filtering can be done at pre processing step Load RAW image IMG_0022 CR2 RAW image loading DCRAW options 10 58 ma amp easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 3 3 HDR generation After loading the photo sequence a HDR generation window with processing options appears automatically If the EXIF data of the photos is correct and the calculated EVs Exposure Values for the photos are good you are just a click away from generating a HDR image Otherwise you can go back by closing the dialog and edit the EV values manually or select one of the auto EV options in the bottom of the Generate HDR tab The EVs are vital for correct HDR generation They are most important for ghost removal but auto alignment also requires them to be more or less correct If you are going to process just one photo LDR enhancement you don t have to worry about EV at all
60. the star button 4 4 Local Operator Mask The Mask operator works similarly to a gray filter mounted in front of CCD or CMOS device during the exposure The light coming from the photographed scene is focused on the surface of the imaging sensor but the filter attenuates it in certain regions more than in the other The idea is similar to using a gradient gray filter mounted in front of the camera lens In case of HDR image processing the High Dynamic Range radiance map that is recovered from a sequence of photos is the estimated irradiation of the surface of the imaging sensor during the exposure EasyHDR calculates the complex gray filter mask based on the input HDR image and applies the attenuation The brighter large scale areas are attenuated stronger than the shadows Since the mask does not affect the small scale luminance variations the local contrasts details are preserved they are not flattened a 4 ot a 4 j p lt a Br p Fa i VA A linear gradient gray filter may be enough in case of the simple scene as shown here The two photos on the left are real single shots of the same scene taken with different exposure times On the right side there is a simulated view as if the photo was taken with a gradient gray filter The strength of the mask operator is controlled with the Highlights and Shadows parameters selectively for the bright and dark parts of the image Higher values for hig
61. ther the output folder shall be the same as the folder of the source photos or shall it be as the last that was used for saving Another option lets you decide whether you want the exposure time values be removed from EXIF in case of HDR images Normally the exposure time makes no sense in case of a HDR but you can have the value taken from the 0 EV photo when the removal option is turned off Other result saving parameters are stored automatically when the program is closed 1 e the last used file format JPEG quality or TIFF compression Miscellaneous Some other options are available here e Reset color adjustment settings for new project When enabled the Color Adjustment settings temperature and tint are reset for new projects e Automatically show file open dialog when starting new project It is enabled by default Disabling it is useful when you want to load photos mostly by dropping them on the workspace instead of using the New or Add buttons e Apply LDR enhancement automatically when only one photo is loaded When this option is enabled the program doesn t show the LDR enhancement dialog when a single photo is loaded instead it immediately goes to tone mapping The last used settings are assumed noise filtering on off and its parameters e Require Ctrl Cmd key pressed to zoom with mouse wheel By default this option is turned off In this case zooming the image can be done with mouse wheel When it s on mouse
62. tion in all of the photos in a HDR sequence In the ghosted area the input data for HDR image calculation is improper and therefore has to be somehow fixed otherwise ugly artifacts appear on the final image the Moving people 19 58 ma amp easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com Most common ghost sources are e moving people cars etc leaves or branches moving in the wind fast moving clouds smoke ripples and waves on water bad photo alignment misalignment that cannot be removed by aligning the photos 1 e due to parallax Normally it should be avoided to take HDR sequences of scenes where ghosts might appear but it would severely limit usability of HDR techniques Ghost removal tool in easyHDR allows to create HDR photos even if some of the image area is ghosted There is a manual as well as automatic ghost removal possibility Automatic anti ghosting may work well in some simple cases when the ghosts are small and weak However some areas might be incorrectly detected as ghosted while some real ghosts may remain undetected Manual anti ghosting tool gives full control over ghost removal The user is supposed to paint a mask that marks the ghosted areas Those marked parts of the photo are not HDR anymore and only one input photo from the sequence is used to fill patch the hole It is possible to select which input image is to be used in the particular marked area Selection of each target image is
63. uration hue white balance and selective saturation Tone curve L R G and B channels for the Local Contrast Strength Highlights Shadows Blackness Range Micro and for the Mask local operator Highlights Shadows 4 2 Global Operator Compression Gamma amp Saturation Gamma curve adjust is a function available in most image editing software It brightens or darkens the photo but at the same time it does not cause any image data to be lost by clipping the pixel values to black or white It applies a non linear gamma curve transformation that compresses the whole dynamic range of the processed photo When the value is higher than 1 00 the pixel luminance in shadows is amplified more than in the bright areas therefore the compression is achieved Setting the values below 1 00 makes the photo darker and also the contrast gets stronger The Compression function applies a similar non linear transformation as gamma adjust However as opposed to the gamma function it preserves and even increases the color saturation See the example below Both parameters should be used together in order to get best results In example if the photo gets too bright after the Compression is increased it can be darkened with the gamma setting 26 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com a Photo tone mapped with default settings Gamma 1 00 Compression 1 00 b Gamma 1 80 c Comp
64. ut it can be a different user specified location e Result file format JPEG or TIFF e Option to skip the already completed tasks see the note above in this paragraph When everything is ready you can finally start the batch job It s possible to run all the tasks or just those selected There is also an option to shutdown the system on completion When you use it please make sure that all of your open documents are saved or better that all other applications are closed This will prevent data loss 8 1 Automatic task list creation The power of batch processing is handling tens or hundreds of tasks It wouldn t make much sense if tasks had to be created manually one by one EasyHDR is able to create the task list automatically 48 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com It is possible to add tasks built out of files from within a single directory The current list is appended not cleared first so this feature can be used several times for different inputs By default a fully automatic method of HDR image sequence detection is in effect In this mode the EXIF headers of all the image files found in the defined directory are examined by easyHDR The photos that were taken within a very short period of time are assumed to be in a single HDR sequence If you always take your HDR sequences using AEB mode in your camera you should also select AEB sequences only option It raises the accuracy because photos taken in co
65. wheel is used to scroll the image up down and left right zooming requires Ctrl Windows or Cmd Mac OS key to be held 54 58 pm amp e asyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 12 Adobe Lightroom plug in The plug in allows exporting photos from Adobe Lightroom version 3 and higher to easyHDR After processing the results are automatically imported into the Lightroom Catalog 12 1 Installation and setup Install easyHDR 3 demo if you want to try or the full version if you are a registered user During installation on Windows please make sure that Lightroom plug in option is selected It is by default if Lightroom is detected in the system When easyHDR is installed on Mac OS the plug in is installed automatically if Lightroom is already installed The plug in files are installed in C Users name AppData Roaming Adobe Lightroom Modules on Windows or in Users name Library Application Support Adobe Lightroom Modules or Library Application Support Adobe Lightroom Modules on OS X It automatically becomes available to Lightroom you may just need to enable it in the Plug in manager E Lightroom Plug in Manager z Lightroom Plug in Manager a YV Status e Path C easyHDR3 Irplugin Canon Tether Plugin m Show in Explorer easyHDR a A i le installed and running Web Site http www easyhdr com e Version 3 3 Status This plug in is enabled g Flicks Enable Disable
66. y The preset tab allows not only simple selection of built in presets but also defining and using user presets Preset selection is done by left mouse clicking on a thumbnail You can edit the name of user presets by fen ay just clicking on it Right click on a user preset to get more options delete ocal contrast Highlights 0 54 replace and move to group More information about presets can be found further in this document History Preset dramatic bright ocal contrast Strength 0 20 History tab gives undo redo functionality All the tone mapping settings changes are stored here with a short descriptive text You can easily revert the parameter changes while still having the ability to change your mind Undo and redo is also accessible with Ctr Z and Ctrl Y shortcuts The whole panel can be resized by grabbing the edge and moving it with the mouse In effect it allows not only resizing the preset thumbnails but also changing the way they are displayed when the panel is wider more columns appear up to 4 3 HDR radiance map generation 3 1 Taking the photographs The dynamic range or the luminosity range is the ratio between the brightest and the darkest part of the photographed scene The human vision can accommodate in long term the dynamic range of 104 1 from starlight to bright objects in full sunlight The light accommodation is achieved mostly by chemical means the iris 1s simply not as flexible The
67. y Histogram black amp white point r 3 0070 X Mark overexposed and underexposed areas Click on the histogram to toggle the mode right mouse button switches between RGB and Luminance mode while the left mouse button selects linear or logarithmic Y axis 32 58 amp easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com 4 7 Color saturation EasyHDR allows advanced control over color saturation There is not only global saturation setting but there are also two selective tools e saturation selective by brightness e saturation selective by hue Micro Highlights Shadows Sharpness gt Color saturation Color adjustment White balance sample Temperature Tint Hue gt Vignette R 037 G 051 B 069 Dimensions 3448x2296 The small circles mark the currently pointed pixel on the brightness and the hue axes The status bar shows the pixel value under the cursor The horizontal axes have the meaning of brightness and hue respectively When the curve is in the middle of the gradient field as depicted above the saturation is not altered Moving the curve up means boosting saturation for the selected types of pixels while lowering the curve means selective decrease of saturation gt a Saturation settings at reset position b Increased saturation for the blue color 33 58 D easyHDR 3 4 http www easyhdr com The user has control over the shape of the curve by the

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