Camera raw and HDR, in the Driver’s Seat

The won­ders of mod­ern tech­nol­ogy are an artist’s dreams come true. Here’s the orig­i­nal cam­era raw file as shot, straight out of the camera:

SAME FILE, after being processed as HDR and tonemapped with Pho­toma­trix, then tweaked and toned in Pho­to­shop and Topaz Detail:

Can you say WOW?! ALL that detail and color was actu­ally THERE in that orig­i­nal image, cap­tured by the mir­a­cle of cam­era raw tech­nol­ogy. But you could not see it until the image was processed through soft­ware pro­grams and cre­ative tech­niques that spe­cial­ize in find­ing and pulling out the details of all that unseen data.

Pic­tures are sort of like peo­ple I guess. To be seen in the full­ness of all their inher­ent glory, they often require much “pro­cess­ing” and “tweak­ing.” That takes both the power and tech­nol­ogy of spe­cial­ized soft­ware pro­grams (the cir­cum­stances of LIFE), com­bined with the artis­tic eye and touch of the cre­ator, who has a ‘feel’ for just how to tweak all the many and var­ied con­trol set­tings (GOD) to get the best pos­si­ble results. The beauty, the color, the intrin­sic details were all there all the time. It just could not be PERCEIVED by oth­ers with­out some highly skilled PROCESSING. The artist knew it was there, and knew how to bring it out.

OUR Cre­ator knows and sees the good things in each of us…things that oth­ers may not yet see…things that we OURSELVES may not be able to yet see. And He knows exactly what cir­cum­stances are required and exactly how to tweak all the many and var­ied set­tings of those cir­cum­stances, to bring out that WOW fac­tor in each of us. So let go, and let God have His way with you. He’s an expert in high dynamic range processing.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you sub­scribe to my RSS feed!