I’ve been playing around with Qtpfsgui, the freeware HDR generator. I’ve tried Photomatix but didn’t care for it, plus it costs money. I’m all about free and open source. Through my experimentation, I’ve discovered an important revelation: 16-bit TIFF files are far, far better source images than 8-bit JPG. I was using 8-bit JPG files for my source at first, and was extremely disappointed in the results. Now that I’ve moved to TIFF, I find things to be a whole lot better. Images after the jump.
Here is an HDR image of downtown Minneapolis, using Mantiuk tonemapping. I like the way it turned out:
Here is a Mantiuk tonemap of the Mississippi River from the Franklin Avenue Bridge:
Here is the same scene, using the Fattal algorithm. Fattal is definitely less realistic than other HDR tonemapping algorithms, but it can create interesting results:
Now that I’ve discovered the best way to make them, I’ll probably keep creating HDR images. More can be seen here.