The HDRI Handbook: High Dynamic Range Imaging for Photographers and CG Artists - Softcover

Bloch, Christian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933952059 ISBN 13: 9781933952055

Publisher: Rocky Nook, 2007

Synopsis

The HDRI Handbook reveals the secrets behind High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI). This cutting-edge imaging technology is a method to digitally capture and edit all light in a scene. It represents a quantum leap in imaging technology, as revolutionary as the leap from Black & White to Color imaging. If you are serious about photography, you will find that HDRI is the final step that places digital ahead of analog. The old problem of over- and underexposure in analog photography, which was never fully solved, is elegantly bypassed here. A huge variety of subjects can now be photographed for the first time ever.

HDRI emerged from the movie industry, and was once Hollywood's best kept secret. It is now a mature technology available to everyone. The only problem was that it was poorly documented until now. The HDRI Handbook is the manual that was missing.

Many questions remain open even for the computer graphics gurus that have been using HDRI for years. This is where The HDRI Handbook comes in. Included here is everything you need to build a comprehensive knowledge base that will enable you to become really creative with HDRI. This book is packed with practical hints and tips, software evaluations, workshops, and hands-on tutorials. Whether you are a photographer, 3D artist, compositor, or cinematographer, this book is sure to enlighten you.

Topics include:

• Understanding the foundation of HDRI
• Tools for a High Dynamic Range Workflow
• How to capture HDR images: now and tomorrow
• Tone mapping for creating superior prints
• Image processing and compositing
• All 4 ways to shoot panoramic HDRIs
• Image based lighting and CG rendering
• World premiere of the Smart Dynamic Range toolkit
• Creative uses and unconventional applications

About this title

About the Author

Christian Bloch is a visual effects artist by trade and a photographer by passion. He lives and works in Hollywood, California. During the 11 years of his professional career he has created effects for the television shows Star Trek Enterprise, Firefly, Lost, 24, NCIS, and Chuck, as well as several theatrical movies. His work has been rewarded with an Emmy Award as well as a nomination for the Visual Effects Society Award.

Bloch also holds an engineer's degree in multimedia technology. Years of research went into his diploma thesis about HDRI, which was honored in 2003 with the achievement award of the University of Applied Sciences Leipzig. The HDRI Handbook was the successor to Bloch's diploma thesis, rewritten from the ground up and heavily expanded, and now available in six languages. Bloch has rewritten the book once more to produce The HDRI Handbook 2.0, incorporating so many updates that it has doubled in volume.

Many hints and tips in this book originated from Uwe Steinmueller, Dieter Bethke, and Bernhard Vogel. As respected digital photography experts they contributed tutorials to the first edition, and their personal roads to HDRI left heavy footprints all over this book. The HDRI Handbook 2.0 also features up-close interviews with seven exceptional photographers, each one spearheading a different frontier of HDR imaging:

• Shooting star Trey Ratcliff from stuckincustoms.com
• Jazz producer and portraitist Luke Kaven from New York
• Real estate photographer Michael James from Florida
• Flickr phenomenon Anthony Gelot, a.k.a. AntoXIII, from Paris
• Professor Kirt Witte from the Savannah College of Art and Design
• Gigapixel pioneers Greg Downing and Eric Hanson from XRez
• Visionary researcher Paul Debevec, founding father of HDRI

Edition details

• Publisher: Rocky Nook
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1933952059
• ISBN 13: 9781933952055
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 344