El Dave Photography

For those that don't know, here's what Wikipedia has to say about Brainiac:
Brainiac is a fictional character that appears in the comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appears in Action Comics #242 (July 1958), and was created by Otto Binder. Brainaic is one of Superman's most important enemies ever since the villain's first appearance, responsible for shrinking Kandor, the capital city of Superman's home planet Krypton which the hero has vowed to restore. Due to complex storylines involving time travel, cloning, and revisions of DC's continuity, several variations of Brainiac have appeared. Though at his core Brainiac is formless, most incarnations depict him as a bald (save for a set of diodes protruding from his skull), green-skinned extraterrestrial android from the planet Colu. Brainiac's name derives from the -IAC naming trend among early electronic computers, after ENIAC: ILLIAC, JOHNNIAC, MANIAC, SILLIAC, etc. In both the television series Smallville and the book The Last Days of Krypton, BRAINIAC is said to stand for "BRAIN InterActive Construct."

I keep trying to find a better/easier way to create an HDR image without actually having to shoot extra photos with multiple exposures because I'm horrible at maintaining lighting and not moving the camera and/or the subject. So the secret to how I'm doing this HDR effect is a little Photoshop tool called High Pass.

Open your image and make any necessary tweaks (color or contrast balance), then duplicate your Layer and run the High Pass filter. The dialog box will pop up with a sliding bar that allows you to control the level of fine detailing, where the lower the number, the higher the detailing. For Brainiac I set it at 30 and hit OK. From there you'll need to set your High Pass layer to Overlay. See how the details popped right out?

Now duplicate that layer a few times and see what happens.

Easy, no?

I AM IRON EXIF!

Camera:	Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Exposure:	10 sec (10)
Aperture:	f/9
Focal Length:	50 mm
ISO Speed:	200
Exposure Bias:	1/3 EV
Flash:	Flash did not fire

Orientation:	Horizontal (normal)
X-Resolution:	72 dpi
Y-Resolution:	72 dpi
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows
Date and Time:	2008:05:15 21:48:32
YCbCr Positioning:	Co-Sited
Exposure Program:	Aperture priority
Date and Time (Original):	2008:05:15 21:26:55
Date and Time (Digitized):	2008:05:15 21:26:55
Shutter Speed:	-217705/65536
Metering Mode:	Pattern
Color Space:	sRGB
Focal Plane X-Resolution:	3210.946 dpi
Focal Plane Y-Resolution:	3230.241 dpi
Compression:	JPEG
Image Width:	1880 pixels
Image Height:	2816 pixels

Be good,
-Dave

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