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Part Four – Tone-mapping (Black & White)

Black & White preset has the same editing options as we have seen with Smooth, Grunge and Painterly. Obviously settings that deal with colour saturation in are set at 0 – well, it would not be a black & white image if they weren’t! In case you missed them here they are:

Strength

Enhances contrast and detail

Colour Saturation

Controls the saturation of the RGB colour channels, the higher the value the more intense the colours

Luminosity

Controls the compression of the tonal range, a higher value boosts shadow detail and brightens image

Detail Contrast

Controls the amount of contrast applied to details, the higher the value the sharper the details look but will also have the effect of darkening the image

Smooth Highlights

Reduces contrast enhancements in the highlights, useful for preserving a uniform blue sky or reducing halos around objects

White Point

A higher value increases the global contrast, a lower value reduces highlights clipping

Black Point

A higher value increases the global contrast, a lower value reduces shadows clipping

Gamma

Controls the mid-tone of the image, brightening or darkening the entire image

Temperature

A positive value enhances the yellow- orange and gives a warmer feel, a negative value enhances blues and gives a colder feel

Micro Smoothing

Smooths out enhancements in small details, useful for reducing noise in sky

Saturation Highlights

Adjusts the colour saturation of the highlights, can be useful in creating effects in Black & White HDR editing

Saturation Shadows

Adjusts the colour saturation of the shadows, can be useful in creating effects in Black & White HDR editing

Shadows Smoothness

Reduces contrast enhancements in the shadows

Shadows Clipping

Useful in reducing noise in dark areas of the image

Anyway let’s have a look at some images the default settings produce in Photomatix Pro

Black & White

Black & White (edited)

Essentially what I tried to do with this image is soften it. I increased Highlight Smoothness, lessened the Strength and Detail Contrast and made a few other minor adjustments. To be honest I like both images but what I wanted to show is that, even without colour, images can be changed to quite a degree.

Black & White (2)

Black & White edited

So how was this achieved? Quite simple actually – all you do is add “Saturation Highlights” to bring back a little colour to the sky and then to achieve the yellow colour, you increase the “Temperature”

Black & White (3)

Black & White (3) edited

With this image we are going to do something similar to the previous one except this time increase the Saturation Shadows, to bring colour back to the island.

OK, that is it for my HDR walkthrough with the Nokia N8 and Photomatix Pro. I hope you enjoyed it, if not I hope it helped. If it did neither then, sorry but I am still learning myself

Click here for Part One

Click here for Part Two

Click here for Part Three