Camera Raw’s HDR command for quick, natural-looking merged exposures
For those new to HDR
imaging, the term
stands for ‘high dynamic
range’. It’s a technique that
lets you combine several
different exposures – taken
in alignment using a tripod –
into a single, detail-rich
frame. In simpler terms, it
helps you pull more detail
out of the really bright and
really dark parts of a scene,
which is something that
might not be possible with
a single frame, especially in
high-contrast scenes.
With so many excellent
dedicated HDR programs out
there, HDR aficionados have
learned never to go near
Photoshop’s own rather poor
Merge to HDR Pro command.
However, Camera Raw now
offers its own, very decent,
HDR function. Here we’ll
take a look at working with
HDR exposures in Camera
Raw, then go on to finetune the look of the scene
in Photoshop, by building
up the trails of light in
our image below by using
Blend modes