About the author and contributors

Your hosts on this journey to new frontiers of Digital Imaging are renowned artists, working professionally in the field for years. They speak your language, and they understand that a hands-on tutorial is a thousand times more valuable to you than scientific formulas.

Christian Bloch is a visual effects artist, who works and lives in Hollywood, California. During the six years of his professional career, he has created effects for the TV shows Star Trek: Enterprise, Smallville, Invasion, Lost, 24, and Studio 60 as well as for several movies and commercials. His work has been rewarded with an Emmy Award as well as a nomination for the Visual Effects Society Award. He has been a pioneer in the practical application of HDRI in postproduction, specifically under the budgetary and time restraints of TV production.

Bloch earned a degree in multimedia technology. Years of research and development went into his diploma thesis about HDRI, which was honored with the achievement award of the University of Applied Sciences Leipzig. Since his thesis was published online in July 2004, it has been downloaded more than 15,000 times, and it has been established as the primary source of information on HDRI in Germany. This book is the successor to Bloch's diploma thesis, rewritten completely from the ground up in English and heavily expanded and updated.

But this book is not just a one-man-show. There are many specialty applications for high dynamic range imaging. To provide you with the best expert knowledge available, Bloch has invited renowned experts to share their practical experiences and their secret workflow tricks.

Dieter Bethke has more than 17 years of experience in digital media production and does artistic photography, showing his prints at several galleries in Germany. When Bethke discovered HDRI, he turned into a diligent promoter in the photography community, and he believes that the future of digital imaging is high dynamic.

He also works as a consultant for digital fine art printing, prepress, color management, and digital photography. Bethke offers his expert knowledge in training seminars to media companies and individuals. He also contributed to the German localization and manual of Photomatix, which has been a remarkable resource for the photographic community.

Bernhard Vogl is one of Vienna's finest panorama photographers. He has a long history of sharing his knowledge with the community through online tutorials, thus he has given countless photographers a jump start in the art and craft of panoramic photography. His particular interest in HDRI is a natural progression toward capturing even more of "The Real Thing". Just as a panorama breaks the framing restrictions of photography, a panoramic HDRI breaks free from exposure restrictions. For Vogl, this is the next step for capturing the moment and preserving it in a digital VR environment.

Uwe Steinmüller is known to the photography scene as the owner and chief editor of DigitalOutbackPhoto.com, one of the largest and most valuable resources on digital fine art photography. Originating from Germany, he moved to California in 1997, where he focused on the digital workflow, raw file processing, and fine art printing. He has written a number of books, two of which won the prestigious German Photography Book Award in 2004 and 2005.

Steinmüller's engagement in HDRI evolves out of the never ending journey after the perfect print, and he is fascinated by the new opportunities to take total control over his digital pictures.

I am proud to present this book as a complete guide to high dynamic range imaging. You can read it from front to back, and I highly recommend you do so. However, many chapters are intended for browsing or for situations in which you are working with HDRI and you must quickly look something up. You may need to make a choice about image formats or you may be stuck doing a specific task and want to peek at a tutorial again. Let this book be your crib sheet. It's full of practical hints and tips, software tests, workshops, and tutorials. There's an old German saying that goes "Knowledge means knowing where it's written." Well, it's all written here. That is all you need to know.