‘It’s HDR, Jim, but not as we know it.’

HDR. Just mentioning it freaks some people out. Few photographic techniques have stirred up such big debates recently as HDR has. I don’t want to go down that road in this blogpost. To me, HDR is a technique like any other. I use it to try to express my vision as a photographer. And like any technique, be it pre- or post-capture, it can be abused. But the same goes for vignetting, shallow depth of field, or… Dutch Angling .

Where do you draw the line? Our cameras have a limited dynamic range, and HDR can help us out with that. If we want to. Just as fill flash can, or using graduated filters at capture. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know I’m a big fan of B&W (I should be, as I teach a whole 1 day Masterclass devoted to the subject). I like rich, deep Black & Whites. To that effect, I occasionally like to use HDR techniques in my B&W images. When the folks over at Nik asked me to test their new HDR Efex Pro, I thought I was going to be in for a treat.

After all, when the makers of Viveza & Silver Efex (my B&W plugin of choice) decide to ‘give HDR a go’, you’d better pay attention. And boy, did they get it right. If I were their marketing department, I’d put a tagline ‘HDR, Redefined’ beneath the product logo. Because basically, that’s what it does: it takes all the good stuff that can be done with HDR and throws in all the other good stuff we’re used to from Nik: an intuitive user interface (or at least as intuitive as can be in the world of HDR), control points and, lest we forget, great image quality. HDR Efex Pro offers lots of presets (with a live preview) if you want a fast result, different HDR rendering engines and also lots of control through various sliders.

And, of course, Nik’s patented Control Points are there, too: they allow you to locally control brightness, contrast, structure (i.e. texture) and even the strength of the HDR method used. Yes, you got that right: locally! There is also a single image mode, which I used for the image that accompanies this blogpost. Using control points allowed me to selectively brighten the monastery in the top left corner, thereby creating a better balance between the two religious landmarks that form the ‘skyline’ of Leh, in North-Indian Ladakh. HDR-lovers: you’d better start saving or writing a letter to the HDR Santa !