High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography Photoshop Tutorial
https://www.shutterbuggs.com/ - HDR or “High Dynamic Range” photography is a post-processing technique whereby a photography takes a series of different exposures of one scene and then combines them all to create one photograph. As a result, HDR images contain a greater range of tonal detail, closer to that of the human eye, which unfortunately just can’t be captured in a single photograph.
Now in order to actually capture a perfect series of exposures, you really need to understand contrast ratios. But having said that, you ordinarily need between three to five different exposures, about two stops apart, to create a decent HDR image. So as you can see currently in ado bridge I have five different exposures. There are two stops difference between each. And you can see I’ve got two under and two over from the current highlighted standard exposure that was recommended to me by my camera’s light meter.
Now once you have your three to five images, it’s time to actually get stuck into post-processing and combining them. Now there are several different post-processing HDR software on the market and in this tutorial I’m going to do a quick comparison between Photoshop’s Merge to HDR Pro and Photomatix Pro, which I think is probably the best HDR software on the market at the moment and you’re going to see why in the next couple of minutes.
So if I just quickly go to Photoshop, you’ll actually find HDR Pro located underneath File, Automate, and down the bottom here you’ll see Merge to HDR Pro. So we click on that and that will bring up the Merge to HDR Pro window. Essentially all you need to do is click Browse, locate all of your different exposures, select them all, and then click Open. And once you’ve done that, it’s just a process of going and clicking okay to actually start HDR Pro. So once HDR Pro has finished all its processing, you’ll notice that the merged HDR Pro window will appear. Now I must admit that Photoshop’s HDR Pro doesn’t have a wide range of features or options to help you produce an amazing HDR photo from the get go. And in most instances you will be required to do a lot of additional editing using Photoshop’s Exposure and HDR toning adjustments, which can also be extremely fiddly and time-consuming.
Now if we take a walk through this particular window, the first thing you’ll notice up in the top right-hand corner is where you’ll find all of your adjustments. So you’ll find your Presets, you’ll find Remove Ghosts and then you’ll find your actual mode. Now according to the mode that you set is actually going to change the type of options it made available to you within this window. So in most cases if you wanted you, you’d ordinarily change the mode to 16-bit which is going to give you a wider range of options to edit your image within this particular window, but if you don’t want to you can actually process your image as a 32-bit image and actually use, as I mentioned earlier, the Exposure and HDR Toning adjustments within Photoshop to actually adjust your image in order to get a result that you’re relatively happy with.
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