- Joined
- 27 Jan 2008
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I am a member of a Photographic club but the problem is all the advanced members use expensive software so are unable to help beginners using the free stuff.
Although most things can be done with free software it is the how which has caused the problem.
The first thing you hear in any club is "I always shoot in RAW" and the question then is why. So we get the beginner to shoot in RAW to get the full 12 bits of information but then how does he squeeze that into 8 bits?
The main point is to reduce high lights and to increase the dark areas before it is converted and with expensive software we have graduated filters and adjustment brushes but these are not included with free programs like RawTherapee so we need to use layers and masks.
However although Gimp is similar to Photoshop in many ways it's not the same and I found it hard to find how to do things. So step one is this combining selecting best of both.
Gimp will not handle RAW images so first bit is in the camera, and we produce two Jpeg images one +2 EV and one -2 EV then these are loaded into Gimp, but not “Open” but “Open as Layers” this will then give us two layers. With lighter layer on the top add a layer mask selecting “Greyscale copy of layer” and tick “Invert mask” this will merge the two images together grabbing the whole range of the two exposures. As with all true HDR (rather than tone mapping) the picture will become rather wishy washy and likely one will want to adjust the Opacity to get the effect wanted.
It was so easy once I found out how but internet search found nothing it was a lot of experiments before I found it.
Still not out of the woods wants to save as xcf or png file but I want to save as Jpeg any ideas?
Although most things can be done with free software it is the how which has caused the problem.
The first thing you hear in any club is "I always shoot in RAW" and the question then is why. So we get the beginner to shoot in RAW to get the full 12 bits of information but then how does he squeeze that into 8 bits?
The main point is to reduce high lights and to increase the dark areas before it is converted and with expensive software we have graduated filters and adjustment brushes but these are not included with free programs like RawTherapee so we need to use layers and masks.
However although Gimp is similar to Photoshop in many ways it's not the same and I found it hard to find how to do things. So step one is this combining selecting best of both.
Gimp will not handle RAW images so first bit is in the camera, and we produce two Jpeg images one +2 EV and one -2 EV then these are loaded into Gimp, but not “Open” but “Open as Layers” this will then give us two layers. With lighter layer on the top add a layer mask selecting “Greyscale copy of layer” and tick “Invert mask” this will merge the two images together grabbing the whole range of the two exposures. As with all true HDR (rather than tone mapping) the picture will become rather wishy washy and likely one will want to adjust the Opacity to get the effect wanted.
It was so easy once I found out how but internet search found nothing it was a lot of experiments before I found it.
Still not out of the woods wants to save as xcf or png file but I want to save as Jpeg any ideas?
