Contributing Authors: Uwe Steinmüller, Dieter Bethke, Bernhard Vogl

Foreword by Greg Ward

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 hip CG artists 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. A new breed of community driven HDR software is included on the companion DVD, so you can hit the ground running. Whether you are a photographer, CG 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: today and tomorrow
• Tone mapping for creating superior prints
• HDR Image processing and compositing
• Shooting and stitching HDR panoramas
• Image based lighting and CG rendering
• World premiere of Picturenaut and Smart IBL
• Creative uses and unconventional applications

Target group:

• Photographers, Designers, CG Artists

Author / Authors:

Christian Bloch is a highly acclaimed Visual Effects Artist who has been working professionally in the field for years. He speaks the language of an artist, and he understands that a hands-on tutorial is a thousand times more valuable to the learning of HDRI than scientific formulas.

A native of Germany, he works and lives in Hollywood, California. His work can be seen in StarTrek: Enterprise, Smallville, Invasion, and a growing number of movies. He has been a pioneer in the practical application of HDRI in post-production, especially on a TV budget. Years of research and development went into his diploma thesis about HDRI, which was honored with an achievement award. Since that thesis was put online in July 2004, it has been downloaded more than 15,000 times, and has been established as the primary German source of information on HDRI. The HDRI Handbook is the successor of Bloch’s diploma thesis, rewritten completely from the ground up in English, and heavily expanded and updated.