What I still miss in BBPro...

[CamBoy]

Is an easy to use multi DRI picture creation.

I use BBPro to do this with the Exposure Compension function in the RAW converting window. I convert 3 different Pictures from the same RAW file with the Exposure Compension settings 0, +2 and -2. After converting the 1. picture (0 Exposure), I have to rename it, so I don't overwrite it with the next version of the same picture with Exposure setting +2. I also do this with the -2 version of the same RAW file.

After all, I had 3 Pictures with different Exposures an filenames. (-2, 0, +2)

With this 3 pictures, I can use DRI / HDR creation to expand the Dynamic Range.

But in BBPro this is a very circuitously process.


Whould it be easy, to integrate such a function, to do this process automaticly?

I mean a simple Checkbox or Button, e.g. "Generate DRI Output" (or else) which will automaticly generate 3 pictures one after another from the same RAW File with different exposures (e.g. -2, 0, +2) and save it to different filenames, so that with the tick in the Checkbox and following conversion there will be 3 pictures generated. (e.g. images with fiilename: IMG_0001_1, IMG_0001_2, IMG_0001_3, each with an other expose setting, e.g. -2, 0, +2)

Maybe there where also a slider, where you can chose the exposure expanse from 0,1 - 2,0.

E.g. you chose the slider to 1,5, the 3 pictures will generate with the exposure expanse -1,5, 0, +1,5.

I think this would improve BBPro to do the DRI generation from one and the same RAW, as quick as you to this circuitously manually 3 times by hand + renaming.

What do you mean? Is there a chance to see something like that improvment in BBPro?

(Thanks and sorry for my bad english... ;))

[CamBoy]

Maybe a sample would help to show the results oft this after DRI creation...

First picture is the original, with Exposure 0 from the RAW.

http://www.pbase.com/camboy/image/98735034/original

Second the picture from 3 different exposures (-2, 0, +2) and DRI creation...

http://www.pbase.com/camboy/image/98735037/original

[DavidB]

'Combined' conversion already takes this approach one step further (albeit with 2 rather than 3 stages of conversion) by combining the separate conversions automatically. This is how it is described in Help.


"Combined" conversion converts the raw file twice using different exposure compensation settings and combines the two to extract more highlight detail from the image.
I don't know how much difference using three images rather than two actually makes, but I find that Combined conversion is effective more often than not, even with images that don't obviously need highlight recovery.

The real problem is that the combined method is only available for Canon RAW file conversion. Perhaps making the method available for other RAW file formats and offering some user control over the number and range of process stages would be an option. But this would depend on what Chris can do with the available conversion libraries.

[Chris Breeze]

I understand what you're saying, but it is a somewhat specialized requirement. Normally when I'm taking HDR images I use exposure bracketing (either using the camera's settings or using DSLR Remote Pro's auto-bracketing) but this only works for static subjects.
I'm sorry but I think this is probably too specialized a requirement to justify the time and additional user interface complexity to add it.