Exposure Fusion: What is it? How does it Compare to HDR? How Do I Do It?

[Reyed Mia (Apprentice, DIU)]

Exposure Fusion: What is it? How does it Compare to HDR? How Do I Do It?

Less is more', or so the saying goes. But in this case, I guess its true; less effort and less time equals more productivity and and better results, what more could one ask for? So from where I'm standing, Exposure Fusion looks to have everything going for it, and then some.

What is Exposure Fusion?

Lets set things straight from the start, Exposure Fusion is not a kind of HDR.

Exposure Fusion is a fairly new concept that is the process of creating a low dynamic range (LDR) image from a series of bracketed exposures.

In short, EF takes the best bits from each image in the sequence and seamlessly combines them to create a final 'Fused' image. Or more technically, the fusing process assigns weights to the pixels of each image in the sequence according to luminosity, saturation and contrast, then depending on these weights includes or excludes them from the final image. And because Exposure Fusion relies on these qualities, no exif data is required, and indeed, if you wanted to, you could include an image with flash to bring darker areas to life.

Exposure Fusion Advantages over HDR

Using this process actually has a few advantages over HDR.

For one, no intermediate HDR image needs to be created, and therefore no tone mapping step is required either, making Exposure Fusion a far more efficient and quicker process. Not only that, but due to the algorithm used in Exposure Fusion, halos around objects that would otherwise ruin a nice HDR image have been completely eliminated, resulting in a more natural looking final image.

Exposure Fusion Software

At this stage Exposure Fusion is still in its infancy, so there's only a handful of programs to choose from.

Enfuse is the primary tool for Exposure Fusion at the moment, and although it is a command line utility, there are ''droplets'' (batch files) available that you can drag and drop a series of images onto to create a fused image.

Ingemar Bergmark has produced a GUI for it, not surprisingly called EnfuseGui, which can be a little easier if you aren't too keen on command lines. If you've got Lightroom then one of the more convenient ways is to use the plugin.

https://digital-photography-school.com/exposure-fusion-what-is-it-how-does-it-compare-to-hdr-how-do-i-do-it/