I've recently been trying something called tone-mapping. It's a feature of an image processing program called Photomatix. Usually it's done as part of the process of making a high dynamic range (HDR) image from an exposure bracketed series of images of the same scene. But the tone-mapping can be done on a single image too. I've posted in this tabblo some of the results of my experimenting.

I hope this tabblo has given you some idea of what tone mapping can do. I've not yet tried the surreal effects that tone mapping can generate. Here I used it to make interesting images a little more vibrant.

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Here's a B&W version processed through the image editor. Nothing of note maybe other than the "X" that comes out in the upper left with the color handling in the conversion.

The first image, above and to the right, is of one of the meat processing buildings that hasn't been turned into a hotel, restaurant, club or trendy shop (Apple just opened a huge store nearby) in the "meat-packing" district of the West Village. The original un-processed version of the image is on the right. It's pretty much a loss. Reasonable content but the light was both too flat and too wide in range to get good coverage on all of the frame. But look at the tone-mapped image at the top. It's got good visual appeal. A keeper. In a nutshell, that's tone-mapping. Taking a flat, uninteresting image with possibilities and bringing out those possibilities.

The tone mapping program has a bunch of different adjustments that can be made on an image. Usually they're made with slider controls. I won't go into the specifics. For the most part I just take a slider and move it to the opposite end to see what it does. If the effect is too strong then I cut back till I can see what a more subtle result would be. Experiment and see what works best for you. For the calf wall paintings it seemed to go almost surreal in the upper left corner, giving a somewhat phosphorescent effect, while giving the rest of the image lots of saturation and "snap." The problem of the dark to light range seemed to be solved automatically, though I did some added adjustments afterwards. (Seems I made the kneeling calf a little too muddy.)

Another image. A wooden zebra on the sidewalk as a draw for an art museum for children. Not a bad image. Has some draw with its quirky quality. Still, it's a bit flat. Maybe if there was a kid in the picture looking back at the turned head of the zebra. Can't help that, though maybe that'll be a further image editing adventure. What about trying tone mapping?

I think this version has much more "punch." It's not just the heightened saturation and warmer tone. It's as if late afternoon directional sunlight was added to brighten the scene.

Here's a night shot of an old West Greenwich Village building in the process of slow repair. It's lit by the very amber sodium vapor street lights. When looking at the individual pixel colors I found that red was clipped - maxed out. That means that red information was lost since the camera could not get an accurate reading but instead hit its limit. That's probably why I have so much trouble trying to get more realistic colors from these images. But that's pretty much what the scene looked like, though the colors are probably more saturated than what I saw. This image is processed as best I could get it.

This is the tone mapped output. Notice that the grayish tone of the wall is visible. Maybe I could have gotten that with some color balancing effort in an image editor, but it just seemed to appear with the tone mapping program.

This is the mid toned image of the series of three. The other two are darker and lighter.

I posted this image in a tabblo I made the other day. It's tone mapped.

This is what the image looked like unprocessed out of the camera. I liked the dynamic structure of the image but its tones were too flat. That's why I tried tone mapping on it. The results were better. But in the full sized image I saw noise - colored dots that looked like grain. This had an effect on the apparent fine detail sharpness. I decided to see if I could get a similar result with the standard image editing tools.

Not bad. In many ways I prefer this one. Even the aspects of the tone mapped one that I like better I could match. I was working from memory rather than checking continually for differences. The added benefit is that there's no noise generated and the sharpness is retained. It did take about 3 hours to do this one where the tone mapped version took about 20-30 minutes.