The truth about HDR
High-dynamic range photography is great. More resolution, be it in vertical, horizontal or colour depth allows a more accurate representation of the original image. Sensors with more bits per sample or bracketed exposures combined in post processing can create these images.
Compressing that dynamic range back down using a process called tone mapping to allow it to be saved in a JPEG or displayed on a computer screen is not a high dynamic range image! You’re back at eight bits per channel. It looks like a video game screenshot, bright, glossy and devoid of tone. It’s junk food for your eyes and is unsettling and unpleasant to look at. Does this sound a little bit familiar? Dynamic range compression in audio recordings is a useful technique, but completely overused and almost universally reviled by anyone who knows an ounce about it. This has become so out of control that it is now known as the “loudness war”.
Stop treating HDR images as anything other than a joke and let them go the way of the photoshop lens flare.
