First off, HDR techniques are usually performed with digital camera pictures, these pictures come with an "exif" file that helps the software to see how the picture was taken. We don't have this "exif" file with forza screenshots of course, that is why we're going to get one important information from one software and use it in another.
HDR can be pretty tricky, it's time consuming and you have a 50/50 chance that the screenshot turns out fugly. So give it some time, and it'll open a whole new world of possibilities in forza screenshots (new angles/positions etc...)
let's get started
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Hi everyone, well, I was getting started in RL pictures when I found out about HDR technique. HDR stands for "High Dynamic Range", allowing to take pictures with a very wide dynamic.
Now to make it understandable to everyone let's think about an example.
now you can try this at home. Stay in the middle of a room, facing the window with a camera.
if you want to take the house's interior, the window will most likely be over exposed, but if you want to take the picture of what's outside the window, the interior will be under exposed.
an example with some scene in some forest (got it off the internet)
on the first one you have a cool exposure on the closer details, but the sky is overexposed, on the second one, you can see the sky and clouds allright, but all that you could see before is now underexposed.
HDR technique will allow to have a variable exposure on your pictures, allowing to clearly see closest details as well as the whole scene.
these screenshots come from the HDR tutorial --->
herenow, in forza it's not as specacular as it can be with real life pictures, but it can give your pictures a nice, clear and clean look.
Let's see what we're going to need here.
1st, you'll need
photomatix, at least in free/demo version. Photomatix is pretty cool yet tricky for HDR shots, go to the bottom of this post for photomatix HDR techniques, otherwise, photoshop is easier with the following tutorial, but overall, I think photomatix gets the best looking results IF you get very clean shots to start with. There's a saying around, it's from the music world, but it also works for any kind of art: it says "Caca in -> Caca out" (wich means "B$ in > B$ out)
2nd, you'll need photoshop CS2 or higher (if I remember well, not sure if CS1 had HDR options)
3rd, you'll need at least 3 identical Forza screenshots, the only value that should be different from one screen to another will be the exposure value, so you need at least 1 underexposed (or exposed for far buildings, sky etc...) 1 well exposed (for your car), 1 overexposed (for darkest details), I usually use 4 or 5 screenshots.
1st open photomatix, then go to the menu HDR/Generate
then select all your identical screenshots, click OK until you get there:
now write down the EV Values for each screenshot, you can now close photomatix and open photoshop.
the photoshop HDR menu is found under file/automate/merge to HDR
again, load your screenshots and click "OK"
on the next window, you'll have to re-enter the EV values for each screenshots, the values you wrote down while opening the screens with photomatix, remember ?
do that for every screenshot then click "OK"
Next screen you're going to see the 1st version of your HDR screenshot, don't panic if it doesn't look cool, actually it's not supposed to look cool here, just make sure you don't have graphical glitches or weird colors, if you do, you can de-select one or several pics from the left panel, see maybe there's one or two that can generate small glitches here and there.
on the right hand, you have a graphic with a cursor, I usually move the cursor to the right so the image looks darker.
when you're done here, click "OK" of course
don't worry if your pic doesn't look as expected here, it's a 32bits picture, but we want to convert it as an 8bits pic so we can show it off on the internet right ? so go to the image/mode/8bits command.
in the next dialogue box, go for "local adaptation"
and open the curve on the bottom of that box (click the arrow)
now it's far from a perfect science, so you'll have to "play" with the cursors and curve until you get a cool picture, it can take some time, I know there are some screens I couldn't get right (worth to try it out with photomatix then, after the previous steps there, you just have to go to "hdr/tone mapping" to get the HDR tool in there), it takes time of course and experimentation in order to get something cool looking, probably a little luck as well.
you can still keep modifying the picture in photoshop after you finish the HDR processing
the "shadows/highlights" tool can be quite suprising sometimes.
anyway, once you're finished, save the pic and "voilà" !
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PART II - PHOTOMATIX Technique
Hi again, I first couldn't manage to get nice HDR's with photomatix, then I started to work on HDR in real life, using photomatix.
well, actually it's possible to use photomatix to do HDR and the results are really cool looking but it's VERY important that you take nice looking shots wich smaller EV difference (usually photomatix says my EV are -1, 0 and 1)
I usually start by the shot with the most exposure, get to the point right before you start seeing halos around objects, then save your shot.
then select an average exposure value, save your shot
then the lowest exposure value (if there's not enough difference with the 2nd shot, then lower the lighting a little bit, works for me), save the shot.
then, again, in photomatix, do the same as previously, and click "ok"
so you'll end up with a bad looking image, don't panic !
go the the HDR menu, then select "tone mapping", play with the parameters until you get a nice looking result, save your picture and if you can, photoshop corrections won't hurt.
but photoshopping a photomatix HDR can be tricky sometimes.
original tuner ---- garage setagaya ---