Hi Folks,
I'm a big believer in bracketing (AEB and others) and although I've made and used HDR files for 8 years now, I really prefer the "natural look" of exposures blended with a new, open-source technology called "Enfuse." Rather than bore with the details, it is a blender that uses image "fusion" to pick the best exposed or focused pixels among a stack of brackets, but it also considers neighboring pixels while discounting noise.
So, what can it do?
- Exposure blending; without halos or "unnatural" contrast or grunge.
- Noise reduction; by combining multiple high-ISO shots of the same exposure
- Focus blending; by taking the best focused areas from multiple shallow DOF shots
Although it exists as open-source code, many friendly UIs exist (for free or for cheap) to make the process as easy as possible for anyone. Many of these UIs also provide automatic alignment for hand-held brackets!
* The best UI, without doubt, is the
MacOS-only Bracketeer. ($30, fast, easy, big preview, auto-alignment)
* Next best is
TuFuse Pro for Windows. (Beta, so free for now - lots of options, including focus-blending and auto-alignment)
* Also available is
EnfuseGUI for Windows. (Freeware, minimal UI, can auto-align)
If you're on Linux, you can probably build and package it youself. ;-)
Here are some examples from the March 15th Toronto Pentaxians meetup of the exposure blending (doorway) and noise reduction (my lens). All auto-aligned and Enfused using Bracketeer on an iMac.
Three AEB exposures, handheld (auto-aligned), at 10mm.
Enfused into a single image with realistic (IMHO) detail in the floor, walls, and outside the door. No halos or weird noise here!
(**Note that auto-alignment of
handheld fisheye images is extremely difficult, so there is some softness in this example at the edges.)
Noise reduction by Enfusing two identically exposed ISO 3200 handheld shots without any NR done in-camera or in processing (shown side-by-side in Photoshop):
Let me know if you have any questions, but download the apps above and try them out!
-Mark
Last edited by Peter Zack; 06-01-2009 at 09:01 AM.
Reason: note about auto-align w/ fisheyes