An Introduction to HDR (High Dynamic Range) PhotographyFor those of you not familiar with HDR Photography, it is quite simply the process of combining multiple bracketed exposures into a single photograph, underexposing for highlight detail and then overexposing for shadows we can capture every last bit of detail from both… Details that just aren’t possible to capture in a single shot. You can explore the galleries of HDR photography HERE and HERE

(*note: This is not a photography tutorial. If you don’t know how to use your camera, take the time to learn. I can’t answer your camera questions. Thanks!)

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of architectural HDR photography and have had friends ask for a introductory lesson on my HDR method. Let me begin by saying that I am by no means an authority on HDR Photography. I am however an accomplished photographer with a solid HDR skill-set. This lesson will be more of an introduction and springboard into the world of HDR than an in-depth examination of the craft. Like in most other areas of art and photography, there is no “right” or “wrong” way, as long as you are happy with your results.

Keep in mind that although you can accomplish this effect using .jpg or .tif files from your digital camera, shooting your camera’s version of RAW (like NEF for Nikon or CRW for Canon) will yield the best results as Photoshop is optimized specifically towards these types of RAW files when compiling High Dynamic Range images.

This lesson will follow my HDR workflow from start to finish and will be using the following programs (or extensions of Photoshop)

Adobe Photoshop CS4 (though CS3 will be fine too) Adobe Bridge (not a must, but helpful and comes with Photoshop) Photomatix Pro (download the trial version RIGHT HERE Adobe Camera Raw (also comes with Photoshop)

Considerations When Photographing For HDRIf we’re going to create an HDR image, we’ll need to start with a set of photos. How these photos are taken will make all the difference in how the final image turns out. Making errors in the photography end of the process will render the rest of this lesson useless, so pay close attention.

When shooting multiple files for HDR take the following under strong advisement (I’ll touch on a few of these in more detail later):

1. USE A TRIPOD! I can’t stress this one enough. If your camera wiggles even a little bit, the quality of the whole image will be effected.

2. USE A TRIPOD! Seriously… I mean it. 3. Along with using a sturdy tripod, I also use a cable release so that there is no chance

my shutter finger is wiggling the camera. 4. DO NOT SHOOT IN AUTO MODE. I use Aperture Priority Mode, but Shutter

Priority or Full Manual will also work. I prefer AP because I can more accurately set my depth of field.

5. Focus the camera then switch to Manual Focus so the camera doesn’t try to re-focus between shots.

6. Bracket 3 to 9 photographs at 1 stop increments. For most conditions I shoot 5 (-2, -1, 0, +1, +2) in that order.

Taking The PicturesOk, so lets assume you’ve setup your tripod, attached the camera, arranged your composition and are ready get started. Here are the steps you need to take before hitting the shutter:

1. As I said earlier, I prefer Aperture Mode because I feel it allows me to most easily set my depth of field. Every photographer has their preference here, so I won’t push mine upon you, but make sure whether you’re shooting Aperture, Shutter or Manual that you’ve got the settings correctly for a standard single exposure shot of the scene. (If you’re shooting in Full Manual mode, be sure you’ve metered for the entire scene so that your bracketing will be correct.)

2. If you’re using Auto Focus, this is the time to press your shutter part way down to get the lens focused. Once you’re in focus, go ahead and switch to Manual Focus so the camera won’t try to focus again during the multi-shot bracketing sequence. You folks using Manual Focus, just do your thing.

3. Make sure you’ve specified your bracket size in your camera’s menu to bracket at either 1 or 2 full stops depending on which it will allow. Photoshop can handle a 2 stop difference in photos for HDR, so if your camera allows for it, go the full 2 stops. Now switch bracketing ON and choose how many images you wish to shoot. I typically shoot a 5 stop range for most scenes unless I’m dealing with extreme highlights and shadows. For the scene I’ll be using for this tutorial I shot 5 photos at 1 stop increments.

4. Now go ahead and shoot your photos. I use my camera’s motor-drive function so I just have to hold down the shutter release and it will take all 5 shots without stopping, but shooting them individually is perfectly fine too.

Great, now that you’ve got your photos, head over to the computer and offload them into a folder (or wherever).

I’ll be using these 5 images, which I’ve shot with the wrong White Balance for illustration purposes. These 5 images are available for download at the end of the lesson if you’d like to use them.

Step 1 – Opening The Files In BridgeNow that you’ve got the images safely from the camera to your computer, lets go ahead and open Adobe Bridge and navigate to the folder where we’ve saved the photos. Everyone’s got their own arrangement of panels in Bridge, and this doesn’t really matter for the tutorial but I’m using the Essentials layout for this lesson. The important thing is that you can see all the photos in your photo folder.

(*note: If you’d like to follow along with me at home and wish to use my files, I’ve put all 5 of my RAW files into the download at the end of the lesson.)

Step 2 – Identify Problems And Open In Camera Raw For AdjustmentAs I mentioned previously, I’ve made the intentional mistake of setting the wrong White Balance in my camera and as you can see, all my photos have a strong yellow cast as they were shot under indoor Tungsten light. Not a big deal since we shot in RAW, but this is an issue we definitely want to fix before we go any further to ensure we’re bringing the most well adjusted files to the HDR process. So lets grab all these files at once and edit them as a group in Camera Raw so that the White Balance will be uniform throughout the set.

Select all 5 files in Bridge by clicking on the first one to select it and then holding down the Shift key and clicking on the last image in the sequence. Choose File > Open In Camera Raw from the Main Menu (shortcut Command-R (PC: Ctrl-R)). This will open all 5 files together in the Camera Raw dialog where we’ll be able to make our changes.

When Camera Raw opens, select all the images by either clicking on the first and holding down Shift while you click the last like we did in Bridge, or by simply pressing Command-A (PC: Ctrl-A). Or, I guess you could just click that Select All button at the top of the thumbnails column. ;)

Step 3 – Make The Camera Raw AdjustmentsWith all your images selected in Camera Raw it’s likely that you’re seeing the preview for your first underexposed image, which probably isn’t going to be the best one to look at when we’re making changes since it’s so dark, so to switch to another thumbnail without changing our “Select All”, hold down the ALT key and click on the thumbnail you’d rather use as the preview.

Now we’re all set to make our adjustments. I’m just going to change the White Balance to Tungsten since that’s all this image really needs, but if you wanted, you could change many of the other ACR settings relating to color except the things in the Exposure/Recovery/Fill Light/Blacks/Brightness/Contrast area of course, because we need those to remain intact for our HDR process. When you’re done, just click the DONE button to return to Bridge.

Step4 – Initiate Merge To HDRWhen you click the DONE button in Camera Raw, you will be returned to Bridge and you’ll notice that all the thumbnails automatically update with the changes you just made, and that they are all still selected. We’re now ready to merge these files together and officially begin the HDR process.

From the Main Menu choose Tools > Photoshop > Merge To HDR. This will initiate the HDR Plug-In inside Photoshop and will open Photoshop if it’s not already running. Photoshop will load all the images into a single file, run through it’s process (this may take a minute or two depending on file size and how fast your computer is) and it will then open the Merge To HDR window. Yes, your photo will look like total crap and you’ll wonder if you’ve done something wrong. Settle down, everything is fine. What you’re looking at is a 32bit image that can’t be viewed properly with your monitor.

Leave everything as it is and just click OK so that Photoshop can complete the merging process

(*note: On a side note, the White Point Preview in the Merge to HDR dialog is just that, a preview to show you the tonal range of your 32bit file and how much information you’ve got between black and white. Moving this slider will not effect your HDR image.)

Step 5 – Saving The 32Bit FileWhen you click OK in the Merge To HDR window, Photoshop will finalize the merge and will open the 32bit file it’s created. Don’t worry if this image doesn’t look good either, again, it’s 32bit and your monitor can’t handle it.

Lets save this image as a .TIF file to the same folder where we saved the original RAW files from the camera. Choose File > Save from the Main Menu and navigate to the folder where you saved your original photos. I always name my HDR files after the first photo in the sequence, so I’d name this one DRW_9883.tif since DRW_9883.nef was the name of the first photo in my set. Saving in this manner will make it easier to find your files when you’ve got a lot of photos in your folders. Make sure you choose TIFF from the Format menu and that the Embed Color Profile box is checked and then click Save.

When you click Save, the TIFF Options dialog will appear. Choose 32 Bit, None, Interleaved, and Mac or PC depending on your Operating System, leave everything else unchecked and click OK.

Step 6 – Back To BridgeGo ahead and close the file now that the .TIFF has been saved and switch back to Bridge. You’ll now notice (if you named your file right) that it appears inline with the photos from the set. We’re now ready begin the Tone Mapping process using Photomatix Pro. If you haven’t downloaded the program trial yet and are following along at home, this would be the time to do so.

Part 2 – IntroductionWelcome to Part 2 of the High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photoshop Tutorial. Read Part 1 here. As a reminder, please remember that this is simply MY process, HDR processing is an art form subject to the artists opinion. There is no right or wrong way to produce an image, only to be able to communicate your artistic vision of a scene in a way that makes you happy.

When we left off we’d combined our 5 shots in Photoshop using the Merge To HDR function and had saved our 32bit TIFF file into the folder that we’d put our original photos inside. We’re using Adobe Bridge as our “home base” so to speak, using it to modify and organize our files.

In this lesson I’ll go through my process of Tone Mapping the image with Photomatix Pro, rendering the image down to 16bit and then making final adjustments using the flexibility of Adobe Camera Raw. Now let’s get started!

In the screenshot below you can see that I’ve selected the 32bit TIFF and am ready to continue with the lesson.

Step 8 – Opening The Image In Photomatix ProFrom Bridge we can select the image and choose the program we’d like to use to open it. Command-Click (PC: Right-Click) on the .tiff file in Bridge and choose Open With > Photomatix Pro. This will open our 32bit TIFF file in the Photmatix Pro interface where we’ll do our Tone Mapping. If you don’t have Photomatix Pro, you can download the trial version of the program RIGHT HERE.

Step 9 – Photomatix Pro Initial InterfaceWhen Photomatix Pro finally opens your file (and it might take a minute, so be patient), you’ll see a rendering of your image that again looks like complete rubbish, but don’t worry, this is just Photomatix’s way of rendering the 32bit file so you can see it. By default the HDR Viewer panel should be visible, if you don’t see it, choose View > HDR Viewer from the Main Menu. You’ll notice that the HDR Viewer has a little thumbnail viewer at the top and as you mouse over your image you’ll see a better rendering of the detail in this viewer window (don’t mind how noisy the preview is, it’s just a quick rendering). At this point all we really need to do is hit the Tone Mapping button at the bottom of the HDR Viewer to open the Tone Mapper and get rolling

(*note: Also under the View Menu is the HDR Histogram function which will generate a full-spectrum histogram of your HDR image. This will show you if you’ve clipped any information on the black or white end, if you’ve got clipping then you didn’t shoot a big enough F-Stop range. The more you shoot HDR, the more you’ll get a feeling for how many F-Stops is enough.)

The HDR Viewer – Just Push The Button!

Step 10 – The Detail Enhancer Interface

Once you hit the Tone Mapping button you’ll be whisked off to the Detail Enhancer / Tone Compressor dialogs and you’ll (for the first time) get a good look at just how much information you’ve got to work with in your 32bit HDR file.

I still remember the first time I did this… I nearly fell off my chair when I saw just how much detail was actually living inside this 32bit file..

Notice that even at this unrefined stage of the process just how much detail is visible, especially in the glass tiles in the window that previously looked completely blown out.

Step 11 – The HDR Processing OptionsIf you take a closer look at the Tone Mapping Settings dialog you’ll notice that we have 2 different options available for tone mapping: Details Enhancer and Tone Compressor. Having played around extensively with both I prefer the Details Enhancer because I feel like it does the best job bringing out the details in the entire tonal range. I’d encourage you to spend time with both options and make up your own mind based on your needs.

For this lesson, lets go ahead and collapse the Color Settings and Smoothing Settings areas and focus on the main area and Tone settings

Step 12 – My Basic Tone Mapping ProcessThis portion of the process is obviously highly subjective depending on the image you’re processing and how vivid you want the HDR effect to be. Many HDR Photographers choose to push the settings to the limit creating a vivid and breathtaking effect, but for my architectural work, especially interior shots, I prefer to shoot for a little more “true to the scene” realism with maybe a little more punch in the details. Once you’ve got the basics of the process down, you should definitely play around until you find your HDR style.

Lets start at the top of the dialog and work our way down in sequence making changes as we go and then we’ll take a look at the image again. If you’re playing along at home know that it takes a second or two for the program to render each change, so don’t rush it and get frustrated that the program isn’t responding as fast as you’d like… It’s got lots of data it has to work though.

Strength: My experience has been that cranking this baby up to 100% produces the crispest most vivid results. If you feel like it’s too much, back it off a little. I’d probably say 70% is the lowest I ever go here.

Color Saturation: We’re going to do all the color work in Camera Raw, so just leave this setting in the middle at 50%.

Luminosity: This is another adjustment I prefer to make in Camera Raw, so I leave it set at 0.

Light Smoothing: Here’s where you get to determine just what level of crunch and effect the HDR process will have. For realism I usually stick to the two on the right, the further left (towards Light Smoothing) the stronger the effect. For this example I’m going to go with the option right in the center.

Microcontrast: As the name suggests, this increases or decreases the contrast in the detail areas. I usually just leave this at 0 because you’ll have more control in Camera Raw.

White Point: The idea with this slider is to increase the slider until the right side of the histogram touches the edge of the histogram window basically telling the program where you’d like the white tone’s to start

Black Point: Same as white point but on the black (left) side of the histogram. Get it close, but be careful not to clip any tones by going too far.

Gamma: I usually leave this setting alone, but if you feel like your image is a bit on the dark/light side feel free to experiment. Again, you’ll have this latitude in Camera Raw too.

(*note: Notice that if you put your mouse over any of the sliders, you’ll get a tool-tip reminder of what it’s for.)

Keep in mind that we’re really only concerned with the details here, all the fine tuning, color correction and levels adjustments are going to happen in Camera Raw.

Here’s a look at our image thus far.

Step 13 – Processing And Saving The ImageWhen you’ve got the Details Enhancer settings finished, go ahead and hit the Process button. This will process the 32bit image with the Tone Mapping specifications from the Details Enhancer dialog and output a 16bit file. When Photomatix is done processing you’ll be able save the file. Choose File > Save As from the Main Menu, navigate to the folder where you’ve got the rest of your files and click Save. I like the Photomatix file naming sequence adding “_tonemapped” to the name, so I just keep that and save it.

You can now close the file in Photomatix Pro and return to Bridge, where you’ll find your newly tone mapped image waiting for you.

Step 14 – Opening The Image in Adobe Camera RawLets go ahead now and open our new tone mapped image in Adobe Camera Raw. In Bridge Control-Click (PC: Right-Click) on the image and choose Open In Camera Raw from the menu.

Step 15 – Camera Raw AdjustmentsIf you’re a proficient photographer shooting RAW files you should already be intimately familiar with the Camera Raw dialog. If you use Adobe Lightroom instead of Bridge then you should be right at home as these adjustments work exactly the same as they do in Lightroom. The Camera Raw dialog is a full series of tutorials all by itself, so I won’t be going into much

detail here, just know that now that you’ve got a 16bit TIFF file into Camera Raw, it’s going to act exactly the same as your RAW files would and you can adjust to your hearts content.

The one thing I should point out here is that with HDR images you don’t need to mess with the Exposure setting because we’ve already determined the tonal range of the image in Photomatix, so if you need to adjust brightness, use the Brightness Slider.

For this image, I’m going to make a few basic adjustments which I’ll show in the image below. You’ll notice that I’ve used the Recovery slider to bring back a great deal of the subtle nuances of texture in the glass window blocks. I’ve used the blacks slider to deepen the shadows and the Brightness slider to bring the overall brightness of the image up quite a bit. I also find that using a mid-range value in the Clarity adjustment adds a nice differentiation in mid-tone detail.

If you’d like an in-depth tour through the Camera Raw dialog, I highly recommend you buy and read from cover to cover Rob Shepards’s “Camera Raw For Digital Photographers“. In my eyes it’s the definitive work on the subject

Step 16 – Finalize The ImageOnce you’ve finished tweaking the image in Camera Raw and don’t wish to do any further work in Photoshop (like retouching or sharpening) then go ahead and click the Done button to save your Camera Raw changes and you’re done.

If you do wish to continue working on the image in Photoshop, I recommend opening the file as a Smart Object so you can return to Camera Raw and tweak again later directly from your Photoshop file. You can choose how you open the file by holding your mouse over the Open button and using the Option (PC: Alt) or Shift keys to change the open method (Open as Object, Open as Copy, Open Image).

I worked through the file in Camera Raw and was happy with the result so I never opened it in Photoshop (except to output the image as a .jpg for you to see of course). Here’s my final image (click it for a larger view).

ConclusionThanks for following along, I hope you’ve taken something useful away from this lesson. As I’ve said before, this is simply my process and I encourage you to play with all those neat sliders, experiment and discover your own style. Expanding into HDR has opened my eyes (again) to the amazing possibilities of Digital Photography and has given me renewed enthusiasm to explore the world around me with my camera. I hope it does the same for you.