Digital BW, The Print

I tried HDR but my results were as horrible as the majority of what I see on the web.  It's discouraged me from spending much time on it.  One of the few bright lights in the HDR world is the Black & White HDR work by Maciek Duczynski, who has a small gallery on the Photomatix website:

http://www.hdrsoft.com/gallery/gallery.php?id=5&gid=1

Ken




--- On Tue, 12/22/09, pr_roark <paul.roark@...> wrote:

> From: pr_roark <paul.roark@verizon.net>
> Subject: [Digital BW] HDR & B&W
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Tuesday, December 22, 2009, 2:08 AM
> Luminous Landscape currently has an
> article and forum thread on HDR.  I don't want to
> duplicate it here, but I'm curious if people on this forum
> are finding HDR very useful with respect to B&W
> printing.  
> 
> With B&W I've always tended to increase contrast and do
> quite a bit of dodging and burning.  I think this is
> contrary to the usual color printing style and may make a
> difference in whether the automated HDR approaches are
> useful to us.  
> 
> So far, I do not find them very useful.  My
> central/main exposure with an auto-bracketing shoot is
> usually closer to the final contrast I'll want than is a
> stock HDR. 
> 
> As such, what I find is that with CS4 and its ability to
> align layers, I can do a better job than HDR by simply
> putting the main exposure on the top layer and slowly
> "erasing" the burned out areas with the -2 frame below, and
> later erasing the too dark areas in the central exposure
> with the +2 exposure below.  It feels to me just like
> the dodging and burning type of image compression I've
> always done in printing -- with just a little different
> workflow.  
> 
> I think the manual approach can avoid some of the artifacts
> of HDR, and the control it give plays into the aesthetic of
> printing that is central to how I see good B&W printing.
> 
> 
> Paul
> www.PaulRoark.com 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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