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Comment on Rawtherapee patch
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jcelaya committed May 18, 2014
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Expand Up @@ -51,12 +51,13 @@ HDRMerge also allows you to treat HDR images as any other raw image, introducing

In the last revision of the DNG SDK, version 1.4, Adobe introduced the possibility of encoding the data as 16-, 24- and 32-bit floating point numbers, instead of the usual 16-bit integers. In this way, the dynamic range that can be represented with such an encoding is vastly increased. Furthermore, the floating point encoding dedicates the same number of levels to each exposure step.

The drawback is that very few programs read this format. Officially, only recent versions of Adobe products read it. I have confirmed Adobe Lightroom v5.4 myself. So, I also provide a patch for the fantastic [Rawtherapee][1] raw development program that allows it to import this format natively. Rawtherapee includes a tone mapping operator that produces great results (realistic ones, at least; if you like alien landscapes, this may be not for you).
The drawback is that very few programs read this format. Officially, only recent versions of Adobe products read it. I have confirmed Adobe Lightroom v5.4 myself. So, I also provided a patch for the fantastic [Rawtherapee][1] raw development program that allows it to import this format natively. This functionality is available from [its repository code][2] and will be publicly released in version 4.1. Rawtherapee includes a tone mapping operator that produces great results (realistic ones, at least; if you like alien landscapes, this may be not for you).

If you want to tone-map an image resulting from HDRMerge with a program like Luminance or Photomatix, a solution would be to develop it first as a 16-bit TIFF image, with Rawtherapee or Lightroom. Then, open it with your tone-mapping program as a single image. 16-bit integers, along with a gamma correction, are usually enough to encode most HDR images with detailed shadows free of noise (after all, the dynamic range is all about [noise][2]). You can also pull the shadows up yourself during raw development.
If you want to tone-map an image resulting from HDRMerge with a program like Luminance or Photomatix, a solution would be to develop it first as a 16-bit TIFF image, with Rawtherapee or Lightroom. Then, open it with your tone-mapping program as a single image. 16-bit integers, along with a gamma correction, are usually enough to encode most HDR images with detailed shadows free of noise (after all, the dynamic range is all about [noise][3]). You can also pull the shadows up yourself during raw development.

[1]: http://rawtherapee.com/
[2]: http://theory.uchicago.edu/~ejm/pix/20d/tests/noise/index.html
[2]: http://code.google.com/p/rawtherapee/
[3]: http://theory.uchicago.edu/~ejm/pix/20d/tests/noise/index.html


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