Creating HDR 17If you can't remember the settings, you can press Guess EV button to guess the EV from the image
response. This may not be fully accurate.
The EV compensation may be automatically extracted from many RAW file formats. If not, you will
need to adjust the EV manually or use Guess EV.
Note: Even if you don't remember the exact EV for your RAW or JPG file, it doesn't matter that much
for the final image. Simply leave the best exposure as 0 EV and then adjust the dark image as -2 EV
and light image as +2 EV. We will later use Tone-Mapping that is flexible enough to correct the image.
HDR Simulator
The right side image shows a result of a HDR Simulation. This option will Quickly merge the loaded 8-
bit images into HDR and then tone-map it using two of the default algorithms.
Thanks to this you can immediately see how the number of images, their tonality and the set Exposure
value will affect the final result.
The HDR Simulator doesn't align the images (this will be task of next step). If the files are seriously
miss-aligned then you will see blurred preview.
Auto-Update - this will update the HDR Simulator preview anytime you make a change in EV or load/
remove image. If not used you will need to press the Recalc button manually.
Eye-Catching/Auto-Adaptive - this tone-map the Simulator using the two common default method. It
is only for this particular preview. Later we will see how we can fully use the options on the final image.
If we need to align images (in most of the cases we do), leave the check-box checked.
Press OK to load the images.
Note: You may also try to experiment with the EV settings and override the real values. Your camera
metering has a special program to expose the scene to produce best viewable picture, not what is the
best exposure. Sometimes a picture with 0EV is actually over exposed and maybe picture with -1EV
produce the most even exposition. You may want to "cheat" and set the evenly exposed image as your
0EV and all the other accordingly. You could also NULL all exposures and then press Guess EV which
will find the median exposure and derive all other exposures from this one. It may work better than the
camera suggested value.
The HDR Simulator will help you to see the approximate result.