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HDR

Photography

Sashikanth R Chintla
https://www.facebook.com/sashikanthchintlaphotography

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HDR Photography
Short tutorial on how to create HDR images using tools like Lightroom and Photomatix.

Bridal veil Falls Yosemite National Park

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What is HDR?
HDR means High Dynamic Range. It is used in modern day photography to capture the dynamic range of the scene through multiple exposures and creating a single image. Dynamic Range refers to the difference between the lightest and darkest areas, which cannot be captured perfectly by a single exposure. If you look at the two images to the left, image on the top is single exposure (f4, ISO 100, 46mm, 2sec) you will end up when you take a single well-exposed shot. The image below is a HDR version of the same scene achieved through 5 exposures (F4, ISO 100, 46mm {-2 to +2}, {.5, 1, 2, 4, 8 Sec). Many professionals dont like HDR, its a personal choice. I like it and 90% of my photographs are HDR. When you do HDR there is a very thin line between a good HDR and a bad HDR, if the images are not processed well then the whole purpose of creating HDR is defeated and it gives a un natural look. There are many articles on web explaining the HDR photography and how to create one. Ii will not be repeating the same here. I will be explaining my Workflow for creating a HDR image and the tools I use.

HDR Photography Process


In this article I will be covering the following steps, which are used by me to create the HDR photographs Capturing the image Light room Photomatix for Tone mapping Photoshop for final output.

Image Capturing:
A Little bit about my gear I have a Nikon D700 with 14-24, 24-70, 70-200 F2.8 lenses, Manfrotto tripod. I always shoot my photographs using the tripod (day or Night) I setup my camera on a tripod and compose the scene, turn on Auto bracketing for taking multiple exposures, select the lowest ISO to reduce noise, Spot focus and use a remote cable for taking the shots. I normally do 5 bracketed shots -2 to +2 and when shooting a sunrise or a sunset I set it up for 7-bracketed shots -3 to +3. Few important points to remember when taking your bracketed shots Aperture Priority mode. Shoot in RAW instead of JPEG if possible. Always use tripod.

Middle Exposure

HDR Version

Nashville Downtown 5 Exposure taken -2 to +2 merged in photomatix and cleaned up in Photoshop.


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Some cameras allow 3 bracketed shots only, to take 5 do a set of 3 shots first then dial the exposure to -1 and then take 3 more shots then dial the exposure to +1 and take 3 more shots. You will end up with couple of duplicate exposures, which can be discarded.

In the develop module i choose the images that will be used to create the HDR image and do some basic touch ups on each image before exporting them to Photomatix. I do these touch- up only on few photographs that might require and not on all the photographs. Some of the sliders I normally play with are shown in the right hand side of the image. I dial down the highlights and Whites to reduce the blown out areas and dial up shadows and Blacks to remove the shadows. Increase the clarity slider to improve the clarity and vibrance for the color. There are other advanced sliders as you go down which can be explored as per your creativity. Once the corrections are made I drag the bracketed shots to Photomatix for creating the HDR image

Light Room:
Images are downloaded to my Lightroom 4. I first do a selection on photographs I would like to process and move them into a processing folder. When you shoot the photographs in RAW, there is lot of room to play around in Lightroom that is not possible with a JPEG image.
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Above is the first screen that pops up when I drag the photographs into Photomatix, simple select the Merge for HDR processing and click OK.

Photomatix Process
I use Photomatix pro for my HDR creations (www.hdrsoft.com). Above is the set of 6 Images I will be working through out this tutorial. I have shot 7 images -3 to +3 as this was a sunrise shot, +3 has complete blowout sky hence I will use -3 to +2. What you are seeing above is the 0 exposure with -1 and -2 on left and +1 and +2 to the right. All right we have selected our images to process now lets import them into Photomatix.

I use MAC so I simple select the RAW photographs and drag them into Photomatix. You can also import them by opening photomatix and clicking on load-bracketed photos, select the images you want to process from the folder and click ok. There is no need to convert the RAW to JPEG before importing into photomatix.

Next we get the processing options screen, which allows us to make selections as to how we want our image to be processed. The selections vary from set of photographs to other.

Align Source Images: I select this option only when I have shot my photographs hand held, this option gets rid of the misalignment that can happen when you do hand held shots. Remove Ghosts By selecting this option you can get rid of any ghosting that might have due to long exposures. Sometimes ghosting is good to have in your final images. Ghosting can be removed either by selection automatically which will work on entire frame or with selective De ghosting tool to remove a certain areas of the frame Reduce Noise 99% of the time I am on Tripod with low ISO so noise will not be a problem, in cases where there is noise I dont select the option here to reduce the noise. I have separate noise reduction software, which I use on the final image if required. Reduce Chromatic Aberrations I normally dont select this option on any of my photographs, if you feel your photographs have some chromatic aberrations then you can select Raw Conversion Settings I do not select anything here, will leave the default selection and click on preprocess button.

DEFAULT IMAGE WHEN LOADED INTO PHOTOMATIX

The processing of HDR image: When the image gets loaded into photomatix, sliders used on the last processed photograph will be loaded by default. I click on the default button below to bring the sliders back to default settings. There are lots of sliders to play around and at times it can get confusing too. The best way to check what each slider does is to make wild swings on the slider to right and left and see what effect is happening on the photograph. I will speak about few important sliders I use on 99% of the photographs. I learnt this from the HDR Guru Trey Ratcliff and if you are looking at in-depth course on HDR then I strongly suggest taking his 11+ hours downloadable class (http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-video-tutorial) on HDR Post process technics. The image shown above is with default settings on sliders in Photomatix. Process Tone Mapping Vs. Exposure Fusion, I have used both but my personal preference is towards Tone mapping and the method is Details Enhancer.

Strength: This is the first slider I u se and crank it up all the way to 100%, at times I will dial back to 90, 85%. But by default it will be 100% to start with. White & B lack Point Next i play around with the White and black point, black point is always to the left, bump it up a little bit and adjust the whites to your preference Color Saturation After playing with Black and white adjust the color slider. The effect on the color slider is different if done after adjusting black and white slider. Increase this slider to pop the colors but not over saturate. Always do wild swings instead of small movements to see the effect. Luminosity I set it up anywhere between 0 8 and sometimes to the max. There is no pre set level that can be applied for each photograph. Detail Contrast No pre set level for this slider to just play around and see what suits to your image and select it. Lighting Adjustments This slider changes the light in the photograph, which gives a POP to the image. Its an important slider that can change the final look of the image. Lighting Adjustments These are pretty much the sliders I play around mainly and sometimes touch the temperature slider for warm or cool effect and Micro-Smoothing for the HDR effect. Rest of the sliders I dont play much but feel free to explore.
Note: Every image needs the sliders to be adjusted; there is no default setting that can be applied on to the images. The more you process the better you become at creating the HDR images.

Final Image After playing around with the slider above is the final image I was satisfied with and click on process and save the image. For my final image I exported this to Photoshop and corrected some of the blowout yellow and cranked up the reds a little bit. Hope this was informational check out for my daily postings at https://www.facebook.com/sashikanthchintlaphotography and feel free to contact me for any queries or for some more advanced post processing in Photoshop. I am posting some before and after photographs to see what HDR can do.

SINGLE EXPOSURE

HDR VERSION

Sashikanth R Chintla North Brunswick, NJ

https://www.facebook.com/sashikanthchintlaphotography http://www.chintlaphotography.com

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