[HDRI] Re: NYT article

[Thomas Lock]

Hi Erik

           You took the words right out of my mouth, i said the same thing
in a Flickr group.

Tom.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "E. Reinhard" <reinhard at compsci.bristol.ac.uk>
To: "High Dynamic Range Imaging" <hdri at radiance-online.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 7:07 AM
Subject: [HDRI] Re: NYT article


>
> Hi Santiago and All,
>
> I've just had a look at this article, and the images are
> quite obviously created with a program called Photomatix.
> This program combines multiple exposures, and also has a
> tone reproduction algorithm built-in.
>
> Unfortunately, most people on Flickr using HDR are using
> this program. My annoyance stems from the fact that the
> tone mapping algorithm produces very unnatural results, and
> is about the poorest algorithm that I know for dynamic range
> reduction. It is very easy to recognize Photomatix output as
> a result --- it looks too compressed with too much local
> contrast.
>
> The apologetic comments at the end of the NYC article about
> the unnatural look of the Photomatix output makes no sense to
> me. There is no good reason to offer such a poor tone mapper
> as the only choice in any program.
>
> As a result, the Flickr community is starting to equate HDR
> with non-photorealistic rendering, which in my view is very
> undesirable. The NYC article is not helping in that respect
> either, as it does not present a balanced view of the state
> of the art in HDR.
>
> High dynamic range imaging is an exciting technology for many,
> as it allows us to take pictures and do image processing that
> we couldn't do before. However, I feel that Photomatix, in
> combination with its apparent, but undeserved popularity on
> Flickr, is doing more harm than good to help establish HDR as
> a useful technology.
>
> Right, that's me finished venting.
>
> Cheers,
> Erik
>
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