Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Digital Photography (A Lark Photography Book) Summary and Reviews

Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Digital Photography (A Lark Photography Book)
by Ferrell McCollough

Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Digital Photography (A Lark Photography Book)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Ferrell McCollough
Brand: Adorama
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-05-06
ISBN: 1600591965
Number of pages: 176
Publisher: Lark Books

Book Reviews of Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Digital Photography (A Lark Photography Book)

Book Review: Not quite Complete
Summary: 3 Stars

This book gives a good, in depth explanation of the techniques involved in the creation of HDR images.
It's written in easy to follow terms with lots of really clear analogies, making it easier to understand the technical stuff.

However, the author completely misses out the last part of the equation, which is how to prepare your fab new pictures for the web and especially for print. There is no mention of the necessary CMYK conversion process that has to be involved in most printing.

Neither was there any mention of the camera, lense, aperture and shutter speed that most dedicated photographers like to be aware of when examining a photograph technically.

And finally, the author also fails to mention that, using any version of Photoshop with layers, these images can be created in a very simple way. Just layer the various exposures at varying opacities - 100%, 60%, 30%, etc and then apply a contrast curve to the result. So you don't need to rely on the software packages that are covered in the book. Although they're cheap enough, the resulting artifacts and oversaturation can easily overwhelm your image.

Is this book worth the money? You can learn all the ins and outs of HDR online for free, you can look at a zillion HDR images online for free, but if you really want to show people what you're talking about - the printed page does the trick. Which is why it's so annoying that printing is missed out completely.

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