Feeling HDR these days
October 22nd, 2008 § 1 Comment
Apart from playing around with my new Lightroom 2.0, another thing I’m experimenting with is HDR. I’m just trying to learn and hope to be able to post 1-2 things on flickr.. here are some excellent tutorials that I found for it..
Let me know if you know of something better..
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I noticed a number of the tutorials you linked to neglect to provide an important step once you have the HDR TIFF in Photoshop.
First, duplicate the TIFF and turn it into an 8 bit PSD. Then, take the (-2) exposure and the correct exposure RAW files, bring them into Camera Raw, correct as necessary. Save those files as jpegs. Then drag both of those files into the HDR file. Place the HDR layer at the top, the under exposed layer underneath, and the correct exposure layer on the bottom. Place a mask on the HDR layer, and paint through as necessary in small increments to the under exposed layer. When that’s done, merge the HDR and the under exposed layer. Place a new mask on the HDR layer and paint through as necessary to the correct exposure. Remember to control your opacity setting when you paint on your layer mask. I trry to start with an opacity setting of 20-30% and if necessary, just keep painting.
This technique gives you LOTS more control of how you want the final image to look. Give it a try and if you have any questions, just ask.
Best,
Louis