Im sorry, but I need to learn the LWF method...

[instinct]

sure is, but i was referring to steveiouk. I guess you can get a better "non realistic" result with tonemapping then with manually comping two exposures. In less time. If at all i'd say tonemap it in post using lwf+float EXRs.

Regards,
Thorsten

[stevesideas]

Can you explain tone mapping, not really sure what that is.

When i was talking about double exposures, i was really refering to what we see with out eyes as oppose to a camera. A cameras exposure is always one or the other..interior with correct exposure...exterior blown out...whereas our eyes see everything with the correct exposure. Thats really what i was refering to.

[Dynedain]

Right now we are working in a architectural photography methodology. In other words, we're adjusting our VRay Cam exposure to the most important aspect of the scene, but then saving out to full-float EXR. Then in photoshop we layer it up as two (or more) exposures and mix and match to get what we want. It's been very successful and is similar in result to what our photographers do.

Of course it doesn't work as well for animations.

[Shimakaze]

Tone mapping is to basically map one set of colors onto another. It attempts to take a high dynamic range image and compress it into a low dynamic range picture without loosing any information. So it's not that far away from rendering two pictures and masking them together, but it's done with a processing algorithm instead. There are several different ways to do it. several free programs and such. In the versions of Photoshop that supports 32bit pictures you can do it by opening the picture and changing the mode to 8bit.

[stevesideas]

ok thats simple enough...what I was doing anyway

Thanks for all the advice guys...been a great help

[sv]

<delete this - sorry wrong post>