How to: HDR (detailed)

Some time ago I uploaded an article about the making of HDR images. Anyway it was not very detailed, and after a few months now I decided to re-upload it, and this time write a little bit more about the whole workflow of my HDR processing, so here it is now! First, let me talk a little about why do we have to HDR our photos? Well, everybody might give you different reasons about it, and I’m not gonna write much about this, but HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. HDR compensates for this loss of detail by taking multiple pictures at different exposure levels and intelligently stitching them together so that we eventually arrive at a picture that is representative in both dark and bright areas. So in this article you can see how I do my HDR shots, using the example on the right!

To see the article about HDR in Bulgarian language: click here!

 

First… the taking of the photograph! As I already mentioned, I usually take 3 exposures in most of the cases I’m doing HDR. You can see down on my example a photograph I took at an Amagasaki Temple in Kobe recently! My 3 exposures for that shot are at -2, 0 amd +2. I always shoot my HDR three exposures on a tripod to avoid any movement or handshake in the photograph, and we want all the shots to be at the same camera position! If I don’t have a tripod at that time, then I might use something around me to stabilize the camera!

Next, the settings! I always, always shoot on M mode! When I do HDR I lock the aperture and the focus, because I don’t want the 3 shots I’m taking to be focused on different position or to be with a different DOF, In the settings on the image below you can see that all the settings are the same for the three images, expect for the shutter speed that varies! One more important thing… I always shoot in RAW!
And now it’s time to talk about the post-process of the taken photographs! I am using mainly three different software applications to edit my photographs: Photomatix, Camera RAW and Adobe Photoshop!

First the photos are processed with Photomattix, right now there is version 4, but I’m still using the 3rd version, because I find it more suitable for some situations! I open the three RAW files in the software and let it process them to make one image for me to work with!

After Photomatix do it’s job with the initial process of the 3 RAW files it will give is a composite file which at first would not be very pleasing for the eye, but don’t panic, this is normal for that stage! Here you just need to click the Tone Mapping button to proceed!

Now already the things should look much better! On this stage we have already access to different settings about the strength of HDR effect, color saturation, luminosity etc., but no matter how tempted I am to play with them, I still do not touch any of them yet! Usually I leave the Light Smoothing on the lowest level, so I don’t have any superbly unreal results! After I’m finished with this I just click the Process button, and wait for the software to give me the final version that’s gonna come out of the Photomatix!

Now we already have the image processed by Photomatix, and here is a relatively nice image, which is not yer our final result. Many people finish the HDR processing at this stage, but we are still not even on the half of our process!

This is one of the most important things, as you see below when we choose the save option, we save in TIFF 16-bit format! If we save the photograph in JPEG, which is only 8-bits, we are going to lose the dynamic range of the photograph we have and it will make it difficult to edit further, and as I already said, we are still halfway in our post-process!

Our next step is already out of the Photomatix, here we go to the second software we are going to use, which is actually a Plug-in for photoshop – Adobe Camera RAW! For me this is the software that will give the image most of what I’m doing. Here I’m playing with the curves, contrast, white balance, highlights & shadows… etc.

After I am finished with editing the photograph in Camera RAW and I have an image I am pleased with, I can already save the photograph n JPEG format and go to the next step of my editing! Usually I would spend a few minutes for an image in the Camera RAW plug-in. Generally I can say that in the actions I talked about until now I am doing the global editing to the photograph, and in the next step I will go to the local corrections!

So this is the final stage where I will do all the local adjustments to the photo I am editing! I might retouch some details in it, delete things I don’t need, fix some moving objects, etc. For this particular shots I haven’t touched much locally!

 

And here is our final image after doing all these steps! For total I would say that I have spent about 15-20 minutes for editing the shot.

As I mentioned in the introduction, I also have the same article also in Bulgarian language on the Creative Lightbrary website, which we do with my friend, click on the logo below to check it out! Also follow our Facebook page connected with the project to subscribe for future updates, and we have prepared already many things to post soon! Here is the link to the page: Creative Lightbrary on Facebook

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