{"id":2864,"date":"2012-09-05T13:49:20","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T17:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aboutrc.com\/?p=2864"},"modified":"2012-09-05T13:49:20","modified_gmt":"2012-09-05T17:49:20","slug":"32bit-vs-16bit-hdr-lightroom-and-the-hdr-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/?p=2864","title":{"rendered":"32bit vs. 16bit HDR, Lightroom, and the HDR Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(This is probably a good time for me to point out that you are reading this on my website or G+ post.. and that the positions that are expressed here are completely my own and not from anyone else associated with me)<\/em><\/p>\n

Was sitting in the Photoshop World Keynote and was listening to the folks at Adobe talk about the new addition to Lightroom: \u00a0You can now import 32 bit TIFF images into Lightroom and manipulate High Dynamic Range files to get the most out of the images.<\/p>\n

In short, you can take a bracketed series of images and create a big HDR file. \u00a0Instead of doing the tonemapping that you would notmally do (in things like Photomatix, HDR Efex Pro, or Photoshop), you just save the TIFF file in 32 bit and bring it back into Lightroom. \u00a0Now, when you open the file in Lightroom, your exposure slider can go up and down by about 10 stops.. waaaay more than the 5 you had previously. \u00a0This, for some respects sounds like a boon for everyone who works on High Dynamic Range imagery. \u00a0Ever since the feature was announced some time ago, I am asked about this feature and how I incorporate it into my workflow.<\/p>\n

I usually tell people I don’t – and that its cool that I dont.<\/p>\n

As I was watching the presentations on the feature, I was left with this impression that this would be a -new- way for us to work with HDR. \u00a0It kinda had this vibe of “Gone are the days when you had to resort to 16bit to do this.. now you can stay in 32 bit.. isnt that great.”<\/p>\n

That made me go back to the feature and elaborate on why I feel that this is a feature I dont use entirely. \u00a0Moreover, I can share how the position kinda bugged me.<\/p>\n

1. \u00a0There are lots of people that do HDR for an effect. \u00a0Yes, I know -technically- HDR is a High Dynamic Range of a file and that you can use it to create this image of varying exposures in one spot . \u00a0That said, there are tons<\/em><\/strong> of people that dont care about that. \u00a0They want to see the surrealistic, artistic, hyper color (within reason) effect. \u00a0These people know HDR to be this, much like really really light seleniums are sometimes called really cool black and white pictures. \u00a0The word HDR is synonymous with the effect – as much<\/em> as the technology.<\/p>\n

2. \u00a0By putting this new tech in the space of “Gone are the days where you needed to” status, you are pretty much saying “Ok.. all of you that are used to this kind of effect. \u00a0Well, you can now do that, with this<\/em>. ” \u00a0There will be people that will merge the brackets, go into Lightroom, Move the exposure, shadow, highlight, and vibrance sliders and not get that effect. \u00a0They will get a variation of what you see on the left in the picture above. \u00a0They will get an image that will look “Normal”. \u00a0Congratulations.. you’ll now have a bunch of ticked off people going “Hey.. I thought I could do this with this technology. \u00a0I think this is kinda what happened with Photoshop’s HDR feature. \u00a0People went into it with this “I want to do this cool Effect” vibe and then felt frustrated that the dials\u00a0wouldn’t\u00a0get them to where they wanted to go.<\/p>\n

3. \u00a0While making the 32 bit TIFF image is cool – you still need to go to Photoshop to do it. \u00a0That’s like saying “Hey.. you can now drive your Porsche around this really cool track at 140 MPH. \u00a0All you need is a Porsche<\/em>. \u00a0 While I appreciate the technology, the prerequisite for it still feels steep. \u00a0Technically, someone could use Lightroom and Photomatix and be done with it. \u00a0Not only would they get very realistic (a La Photo Fusion) looks, but the HDR Effect that many people do expect to see.. from an artistic POV><\/p>\n

4. \u00a0Working on surrealistic, hyper colored, not quite normal looking images is cool. \u00a0It’s Art. \u00a0It’s totally OK. \u00a0Making super realistic Normal 32 Bit HDR images in Photoshop and Lightroom is wonderful – and it is also<\/em><\/strong> OK. \u00a0You don’t really have to sacrifice one for the other, and one\u00a0isn’t\u00a0really necessary better than another in that space.<\/p>\n

If the whole thing was positioned as “Hey.. did you now now you can now make Hyper Processed HDR images in 16 bit -as well as- incredibly photorealistic images in 32 bit mode, all inside of Lightroom\/Photoshop etc..”\u00a0\u00a0I think at the end of the day, our tools should allow us to go whichever direction we want to. \u00a0In not picking a side, you will make sure that your tool will work for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(This is probably a good time for me to point out that you are reading this on my…","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2864","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blog","7":"category-photography","8":"cs-entry"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2864"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2867,"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864\/revisions\/2867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}