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Merging to HDR - High Dynamic Range - part 5 of 1 2 3 4 5

Published 01/02/2011

Lightroom HDR Workflow

Photomatix and HDR Efex Pro give you a Lightroom plug-in that is included when you purchase the Pro versions. The plug-in allows you to select your set of HDR in Lightroom, right click, and export to either of these programs. You still do the tone-mapping in Photomatix or HDR Efex Pro.

Single-shot 'Pseudo HDR'

All the HDR software reviewed here give you an option to create a pseudo HDR out of a single RAW or JPG image. You really need RAW with single-shot HDRs.

The advantages are that you do not have to take multiple shots, and there will be no 'ghosting' to remove of people moving in the image.

However, you do not have the same dynamic range that you would have with multiple exposures. Pseudo HDRs tend to be noisy and you don't get the same detail. But when you have rapidly moving people, animals or vehicles, pseudo HDRs often look far more interesting than just working the image in Photoshop. And they are very quick to process.

HDR and People

You can photograph people with HDR selectively eg people statically posed, or a bride and groom standing still at the altar. Even if they are standing 'still' there is likely to be some slight movement between the frames. This is referred to as 'ghosting.' The colour of the people's faces will be incorrect as well. To correct this I use one of the bracketed set of regular RAW images and Photoshop to mask-in just the people into the HDR image.

It only takes a couple of minutes. I only take a few HDR images with people in them. This captures the occasion in a way I could never achieve otherwise

My HDR Work flow

I download all my HDR sets into a folder. I sort the winning sets in Photoshop/Bridge or Lightroom, and move them to a 'Winners' folder. Different sets must be kept together. Don't mix a set of three with a set of five or seven, it will completely mess up the batch processing.

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1st Published 01/02/2011
last update 09/12/2022 14:56:41

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