Single image HDR in new DPP

[DavidEccleston]

I tried out DPPs HDR function, but not having any bracketed images around, I just used single images. I was fairly impressed with how it could bring out some extra detail and contrast. If I were adding contrast manually, with curves or the contrast slider, the parts that were already shaded would be pushed towards black. The HDR processing gives you detail in shadow, mid, and highlight ranges at once.

Here's a few before and after pairs to give you an idea of the changes it can produce. In many of these it also added some saturation in addition to the detail and contrast. I know it's hard to judge the images in detail from small thumbnails, but perhaps you'll decide to play with HDR yourself. For almost all images I used a 'strength' of 20, and a 'smoothness' of 10. In a few I added a 'fine' of 20.

[Busted Knuckles]

To incompletely quote Paul Simon... "makes you think all the world is a sunny day"

[jrw]

Single shot HDR. Never would have thought of that myself. Thanks for sharing. Looks like something I'll have to play with now that I've seen what it can do.

[Sheiky]

Great edits David, I really like what it did. However, it does seem to turn the highlights a little gray. The skies in particular.
I have played with one-shot HDR myself as well in Photomatix last year. And it's really nice to see the changes in an object with reflections. You should try it out to see for yourself