HDR stands for “High Dynamic Range”, and is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures (the range of values between light and dark areas) than normal digital imaging techniques.

HDR was originally developed for use with purely computer-generated images. Later, methods were developed to produce a high dynamic range image from a set of photographs taken with a range of exposures. HDR is now popularly used to refer to the process of tone mapping together with bracketed exposures of normal digital images, giving the end result a high, often exaggerated dynamic range.

“Tone mapping is a technique used in image processing and computer graphics to map a set of colours to another; often to approximate the appearance of high dynamic range images in media with a more limited dynamic range.”

More info about HDR imaging at Wikipedia.

Examples

HDR images can be quite stunning as you can see by the examples below.

• 35 fantastic HRD images showcased by Smashing Magazine.
• 20 beautiful HRD images showcased by Abduzeedo.com
• HDR Creme has a great HDR images gallery where users can view, share and rate.
• Flikr.com “best of HDR photos” pool.

Tutorials

Adobe Photoshop CS2 & CS3 include the “merge to HDR” feature, that allows the photographer to combine a series of bracketed exposures into a single image which encompasses the tonal detail of the entire series.

• Cambridgeincolour.com has written a detailed example on how to create HDR images from your photos, and can be viewed here.
• Revver.com has a nice video tutorial on how to create HDR images with Photoshop CS3.
• HDR tutorial roundup put together by Tutorialblog.org
• How to create ‘High Dynamic Range’ images using Photomatix by Vanilla Days.
• Click here for a long list of HDR videos from Youtube.com
• If you need free photos to experiment with, visit our stock photo gallery.

HDR Software

Photomatix
Increase the dynamic range of your photographs with this stand-alone program.