In reply to Tomasz Drgas.

Hi Tomasz, Thanks a lot for your comment and you are absolutely right. The problem is that HDR as a term has been misinterpreted as the tone mapped image and changing that perception is impossible. That ship sailed several years ago, unfortunately. I do cover the exact terms in this article Understanding HDR part IV.
–Jacob

It is not a HDR in the sence of having High Dynamic Range. It is 8 or 16 bit file it is Low Dynamic Range in strict sence. (It has not got a High range of luminosity information in it). But in a common sence it is the same effect as having those bracketed exposures photos meged into real HDR and than tone maped.. or maybe even better cos you can be picky about what you want..
But if you want to use it for lightning a sceen in a 3d rendering, than it is NOT a HDR.

In reply to Carlos Rivas / Wrabitt on Flickr.

Thank you so much Carlos – you just made my day 🙂

Have a great day!

–Jacob

Excellent tutorial, you are a genius of photography … you take the time necessary to take photographs with precision, and then use the best of the two programs to give the subtlety of tone that gives us Lightroom and the plasticity of the GIMP. Bravo for sharing your methods with all your followers. I wish you success and keep sharing your skills.
A hug.

In reply to Jigs.

Hi,

Jigs, thanks a lot. No, not that I know of. This really is a weak point for GIMP. It makes the work process less smooth.

–Jacob

Thank you !
Is there any way to export photos from Lightroom to GIMP? any GIMP Plug-in for Lightroom?

In reply to Steve.

Hi Steve,
No I wasn’t aware, I will have to look it up. Actually black is nice 🙂
–Jacob

Great post thanks.

You may be aware but there is now an option in GIMP to make it single window mode.
On my mac this coupled with the new back scheme looks very familiar 😉

In reply to Randy.

Hi Randy,

The last version Elements I used was version 7, which didn’t have the layered masks. I will have a look into a trial of Elements and correct the article. Thanks for that info 🙂 GIMP really has a great way of loading images into GIMP as layers – a feature that Adobe easily could have replicated for Photoshop.

–Jacob

Good info on GIMP Jacob. I’ve often wondered on using it instead of Elements since Elements processes in 8-bit (though will allow loading of 16-bit files). I noticed GIMP now supports 16 and 32 bit files.

One thing I wanted to clarify – all of the layer masking you are doing in this tutorial is available in PS Elements; at least as far back as version 8 (not sure about previous versions).

The only thing that’s kind of a pain is getting all the separate images loaded as layers in a single image file. Once loaded and layered however, the blending/layering/masking is the same.
~Randy