Exposure averaging in Darktable?

[kmilos]

@Va3pinner

From what I understand so far, image averaging is different in some way to HDR.

The end result is increased dynamic range (signal-to-noise ratio). This is how Google’s HDR+ works fundamentally - underexpose all the frames to preserve highlights, then stack to get back the shadows.

See also this related discussion:

What software for HDR and image averaging together?

A normal HDR image is made by combining multiple LDR (low dynamic range) images, each one at a different exposure. Fundamentally the images are aligned then the HDR image is made as a kind of weighted average of the images. I want to do this, and do image averaging at the same time. This means that rather than having one image per exposure I have more than one - so say 2 or 4 or even 16 images at each exposure. Image averaging reduces noise. It isn’t widely used, in part because it is bot…