Was It Done With a Lens, or a Brush?

Was It Done With a Lens, or a Brush? – NY Times

Like many amateur photographers, Joe Dejesus posts his photos online and compares them to the work of others on the photo-sharing site Flickr. At some point last year, a number of landscape photos caught his eye with their vibrant tones and colors.

Their secret was a software technology known as H.D.R., for high dynamic range photography. And Mr. Dejesus quickly became one of its practitioners.

While Adobe did not invent the idea of H.D.R., it popularized it by making it a feature in Photoshop CS2, the $650 professional version of its program introduced last year. (H.D.R. is not part of Photoshop Elements, the considerably less expensive consumer version of the program.)