Happy New Year, hope you've all taken your trees down,
I've been out in the cold winter weather trying to take sequences of the same thing with different exposures i.e., using the camera's AEB function.
However I am not aware that any free software with the camera is able to do HDR and therefore I am asking here to see if anyone here has found any free software that doesn't put a great big watermark in your image.
The new Photoshop elements 6 is about $60 here at Costco. Neither free or from my limited understanding true HDR but you can easily combine several photos to get a similar result.
There is an HDR facility in CS2 although I have not used it. You need images with significant exposures variation for it to work.
Another less sophisticated way is to do two conversions of a Raw or use multiple exposures as you say for static subjects (change the shutter speed not the aperture)
Open two images in Photoshop and drag one on top of the other using the move tool with the shift key held down to keep them in alignment.
Add a mask to the layer created and use a soft brush to blend as required.
PM me if this does not make sense to you
I have not done this with multiple exposures but I imagine you could build up the final result in stages
CS3 has Merge to HDR in the Automated menu. It does a pretty good job. I have been using FDR Tools and find it easy to use and the quality of the TIF file is very good. The HDR TIF (export format selectable) can be opened in CS3 and I use it to tweak the results.
I am a novice but shot these two the other day and am pleased with the result. Used AEB setting on the 40D with a -1, 0, +1 adjustment and three exposures.
