"HDR" from 8 bit image.

[super gnu]

ive got a 360 panorama shot by a drone for an aerial shot.

however ive been provided with an 8 bit jpeg.

hardly ideal for reflections and lighting.


im planing to try and create a fake HDR by creating multiple versions of the jpeg with different exposures, and masking /painting so i can make sure the sky is brighter than the lights in the city etc (its a dusk shot)

then recombine my edited jpegs into an hdr.

seems like it should work to some extent, but im wondering if
a) anyone has done something like this before, and has tips or
b) there are nice tutorials available?

cheers!

[super gnu]

ok first stumbling block, PS is asking me to specify the exposure/shutter speed etc for each of my images. i obviously dont have this info as i just levelled the images in photoshop.. any free software that will just "do it" without me having to specify camera settings for each image?

i guess i will, as a minimum, need to specify the overall brightness range for the image... any advice?

[Morbid Angel]

What I typically do is not even in photoshop, load your bitmap twice in a composite texture, on the top layer one color correct it with curve to make it super dark then crank the brightness and set that layer to additive. This will effectively make the highlited parts of the image very bright almost like hdr

[Guest]

A bit dated now but there is a section in this tutorial on how to generate a HDR from a JPEG. http://www.workshop.mintviz.com/tuto...hing-part-two/

[super gnu]

thanks for the tips guys.. i actually already did it. basically the same as James' tutorial, and i used a generic 2ev difference in the photoshop hdr tool. only difference being, since it was a dusk shot, i made a mask for the sky, then produced the set of images with curves to adjust the exposure, and making sure that in the least exposed couple of images, i started to bias the brightness towards the sky rather than the city lights.

its worked really well actually. ive got some nice sparkles from the lights in the glass, but the sky is the brightest element, particularly on the horizon.