Digital BW, The Print

Hi Paul,

I'm on the road and haven't had time to read the whole LL article, though I saw and bookmarked it this morning.  A few quick comments though:

- I always like to point out what I think we all object to is not HDR but rather tone mapping.  HDR on its own - merging multiple exposures into a single HDR file - is actually very useful.  With a HDR file in CS4 you can do burn/dodge/etc a bit more easily and with no clipping issues compared to blending two aligned LDR layers.  With many exposures you also get lower shadow noise.  Of course, if the two exposures is working for you then it falls in the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" category.

- I do find careful use of HDR with a local tone mapping operator to be very useful in some high contrast scenes.  I still typically do a bit of dodge and burn, but with proper radius/threshold settings the tone mapper gets me to a far, far, far more workable starting point than any attempt at layer blending.  The types of scenes I'm talking about here are those with sharp irregular transitions between dark and light.  Scenes where a grad-ND would have done the job work just fine as layer blends I think.

- B&W is actually far more forgiving for tone mapping as you don't fall victim to the frequent hyper-saturation problems you often get with color images.  I can't stand that clown-makeup look of so many thoughtlessly done HDR images.

- I have to state again, it is all about how you used the local tone mapper.  With careful experimentation with radius/threshold and using the tone curve as well you can achieve very natural results that have none of the hallmarks of the "bad" HDR we see all over flicker.

- I also agree, I think a lot of HDR and just dynamic range concerns in general are sometimes technique over art.  Frequently I want blocked shadows!  Like you say, often you are dialing up the contrast for the final print anyway.

Here's a link to a B&W image of mine that just couldn't be done without HDR and local tone mapping in my opinion:

http://www.kenandchristine.com/photos/734800020_qJxMr-L.jpg

Ken