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The HDR Look filter in ON1 Effects delivers tonal and detail controls often applied to HDR photos. The filter is not the same as merging bracketed exposures in an application like ON1 HDR or ON1 Photo RAW. What it does offer is a way to add an HDR style to a single exposure. The type of detail and texture HDR Look delivers is different than other the ON1 filters like Dynamic Contrast. So it is worth knowing about.

Compression And The HDR Look

A traditional HDR blend combines the shadow, midtone, and highlight details from a series of bracketed exposures into a single image. A bracketed set of three images is typical. An underexposed photo to maintain highlight detail, a normal exposure, and an overexposed frame to reveal shadow detail. From a histogram point of view, the underexposed photo is crowded toward the shadows on the left, the normal exposure is largely the midtones, and the overexposed frame has spikes on the right in the highlights. You can think of the HDR merge process as overlaying all of those histograms into a single histogram. From the perspective of the normal exposure, the extra shadow and highlight data is pulled in from the over and under exposed images. The tones across the three brackets are compressed into the visual range of a single image.

In the HDR Look filter, the Compression slider simulates this behavior, manipulating the histogram. As the Compression slider is increased, the left and right edges of the histogram are contracted and move toward the midtones. The histogram is “compressed.” The resulting look delivers a similar appearance to a classic HDR merge. Shadow areas are opened up and highlight areas are reigned in. The overall photo may take on a slight matte look as well.

Controlling Detail, Tone, And Style

A main characteristic of HDR styled photos is a high amount of detail, bordering on a hyper-realistic amount of texture. The two controls that deliver that are Detail and Clarity. Detail is the tamer of the two sliders, and accentuates local texture. Detail can actually be taken in the negative direction, although the results are quite unpleasing (at least to me) and not typical of an HDR styled photo. Clarity is more aggressive, boosting local contrast and exaggerating tonal edges. Usually a moderate amount of Clarity is sufficient.

The remaining sliders in the HDR Look tool I classify as convenience sliders. They are:

• Highlights: Brighten or darken the highlights in the photo.

• Shadows: Brighten or darken the shadows in the photo.

• Vibrance: Increase or decrease color richness in the photo.

• Glow: Add a dark glow to the photo. Shadow areas tend to be more affected.

• Grunge: Increase texture and grit.

While ON1 Effects has other tools and filters that provide these functions, when only a small tweak is needed, their being in HDR Look speeds up workflow. You don’t have to reach for another tool.

Highlights and shadows may need to be tweaked if the Compression slider in insufficient to get the look you want. Compression affects both ends of the histogram, the brights and the darks at the same time. The individual Highlights and Shadows sliders give you independent control over these tonal regions.

Vibrance increases or decreases color richness, Glow adds a diffused softness to darker areas of the photo, and Grunge adds a desaturated feel to a scene while also boosting detail. For these sliders, I will often turn to different tools in ON1 for more control. The Color Adjustment tool offers more control over independent colors channels. Likewise, the specialized Glow and Grunge filters have many more options than a single slider can offer.

The HDR Look Filter Is Not An Actual HDR Merge

The HDR Look filter is just that – a look. It is not the same as blending bracketed photos. Where a proper HDR merge delivers more shadow and highlight data for post-processing, the HDR Look filter will not magically recover clipped highlights or shadows from a single exposure. Recall the Compression slider … even though it pulls in the deep shadows and bright highlights toward the center of the histogram, it cannot and does not fill in gaps in lost shadows or highlights.

The photo of the prison cell below was captured on an older Nikon camera that had good, but not great, dynamic range. The blown out highlights of the sun pouring in through the skylight are obvious. They are also not recoverable with the Compression slider. Even with maximum compression, a spike of highlights remain at the right edge of the histogram. HDR Look is a filter that works on the data in the given frame. An actual HDR merge of bracketed photos with a product like ON1 HDR or ON1 Photo RAW would provide options to recover more highlight data.

As camera technology has improved and the dynamic range of sensors has increased, the need of HDR as a merging technique has become less of a technical requirement. A single frame can often capture all the tonal data, even in a highly dynamic scene. The look and feel of an HDR processed image continues to be a good aesthetic for certain photos. With a single exposure that has good tonal breadth, the HDR Look delivers solid results.