Often when I'm using HDRI images, I want to get nice modulated lighting but I don't want to tint everything in the scene with the colors of the image. A while back someone in one of these forums said it perfectly: just because the sky is blue doesn't mean we all look like Smurfs. The Carrara content CD comes with somem greyscale HDRI images, but every free image I find online is in color. Is there a simple way to obtain or make greyscale HDRI images? If I need a separate utility I would prefer something that works on a Mac, although I do have Virtual PC. Ideally, though, I wish I could just click a checkbox in Carrara to tell it to ignore the colors in the HDRI image. A plugin perhaps?

This is simple enough using HDRShop and an image editor like Photoshop - there's an option for editing the hdr file and you can then desaturate it as much or as little as you want - but HDRShop is for PC only.

On mac you can use Photosphere. Nice app also to create hdr images. http://www.anyhere.com/

Attached Link: www.anyhere.com/

Are you sure? I understood one can only browse HDR images with Photosphere. But I saw a command-line app that can build them at anyhere.com, I will check that out.

Attached Link: http://cinepaint.sourceforge.net/docs/index.html

There is Cinepaint but on Windows it will only load .hdr files, not save them (!). There's a Mac version which is more recent so perhaps it is worth a look. There may be a plugin that will load and save .hdr. The program has a lot of good features.

Hoofdcommissaris, i've created several custom hdr maps with Photosphere. This is an example rendered with a map created from photos of my kitchen... -TOXE

Nice view out of the window. :-)

Thanks Mark, i'll put some free maps on my site in the next month. Gauloises & Violas. -TOXE

TOXE, Now I am searching around in Photosphere, I see a menu item 'Make HDR'. Do you use that after selecting multiple exposure photographs? Or is the resulting file actually a LDR (or NDR, for that matter, Normal Dynamic Range) based on one photograph? Googling seems to bring up that particular possibility (selecting multiple exposures), so I have a HDR making piece of software in my HD for a year now, without knowing! Thanks for this info. Now I REALLY have to buy a new digital camera. (and start experimenting making HDR files from multiple Carrara 4 renders). I really need more time in every day!

Hi Ruud, really glad that you can create now your own maps! It's really beautiful to illuminate your scene with the light of your home:-) Yes i have dragandropeed some photographs taken in the same room rotating the camera and i have selected make HDR. The results with this simple method is enough basic but it works fine in carrara. For sure is better to use the command-line hdr (you need to download it separately) but i haven't still tried it. Let me know if you found a better solution:-) -TOXE

TOXE, that would be great thanks! Cappucinos! :-) Mark

So how can I use Photosphere to convert an existing HDR image to greyscale? I assume I have to export it somehow and convert it in Photoshop, but can someone tell me the "best" way to do it? Is it possible to keep the high dynamic range of the image throughout the conversion or do I have to sacrifice the range?