Posts Tagged ‘HDR’

HDR made simple

Monday, September 26th, 2011

HDR in Photoshop CS5You may have heard about HDR, but do you really know what it is? Do you know how to use it?

These are some of the questions I’m going to answer here.

To start with, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and it was created to help in dealing with the challenges of capturing the entire range in an image. Especially difficult if you have the light source in your image. What HDR tries to capture is the entire range of brightness, from the lightest to the brightest parts of the image you’re photographing.

In photography, the camera cannot capture the entire range in one shot. You will get either the highlights or the shadows clipped. What you can do though is to capture a number of shots of the same scene at different exposure settings, usually at one or two f-stops distance, i.e. one shot normal, one shot +1 f-stop, one shot -1 f-stop etc.

For best results, it is advisable to capture many shots, at least five. I would usually capture 7 or 9 frames, and I would shoot raw of course (for quality). Remember to capture the normal exposure and then overexpose 1 and 2 f-stops (more if you can), and then underexpose 1 and 2 f-stops. Remember to keep the same aperture and just change the shutter speed as changing the aperture would alter the depth of field.

On some digital SLR cameras, you can use exposure bracketing. Most cameras would only have 1 f-stop spacing, but then you can easily capture 7 or 9 shots.

Then, you import the images into Lightroom or Photoshop to create an HDR image.

But this will come in the next post, so stay tuned. :-)

Surreal images – HDR

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Hdr Pro in Photoshop CS5Hello folks,

I have talked about HDR in the past, so today I just want to share with you an example of an image that I made into an HDR image. It’s just a regular photograph, outdoor photograph to be precise and I thought I would make it into a nice HDR image using Photoshop CS5.

Just to remind some of you who haven’t heard about HDR – it’s high dynamic range imaging and it is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than current standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods.

This image was tweaked using the new fantastic HDR Toning in Photoshop CS5. Great new feature with loads of interesting presets and options to tweak it.

HDR by Marek MularczykI hope you like the effect. Let me know what you think. Enjoy! :-)

HDR Photo Organization

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

Hdr Pro in Photoshop CS5Hello again,

I am pretty sure you have heard about HDR before. Just a quick few words about HDR to start with you with:

What really is HDR – High Dynamic Range? It’s a way to capture all the details in the image you take (including highlights and shadows that are usually clipped).

As in Photoshop CS4 so in Photoshop CS5 you can take a number of bracketed images and merge them together into an incredible composite with all the highlights and shadows. What makes HDR Pro so outstanding, is its superb controls and fantastic results! You can output HDR images as 32-Bit, 16-Bit or 8-Bit images. Just bear in mind that only 32-Bit image can store all the HDR image data.

You may have seen some of my tutorials on HDR. If you haven’t, here are the links for you:

Master HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5

and also:

Master HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5 – Part

Today, I want to talk to you about some photo organization techniques in Lightroom. I have found an interesting tutorial from Matt Kloskowski about HDR organization in Lightroom. Here’s the link for you:.

HDR Photo Organization Tip from Matt Kloskowski.

Snowy Christmas in the Cotswolds (West England)

Thursday, December 30th, 2010

Cotswolds header

Cotswolds is a beautiful region in West England, sometimes called the “Heart of England”. The area has been designated as the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

It is a beautiful area to visit and spend some peaceful time with lots of small towns. Another interesting information about the Cotswolds:

The Cotswolds is an area of England about the size of greater Tokyo.
Popular with both the English themselves and visitors from all over the world,the Cotswolds are well-known for gentle hillsides (‘wolds’), sleepy villages and for being so ‘typically English’.

The Cotswolds lie mostly in the counties of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. So I thought I would share with you a few images I took earlier this week. As it was Christmas time, there were no tourists (except for us ;-) ) so it was peaceful and quite everywhere – except for Boxing Day when all sales start, but on this day we just stayed in one of the small towns (far away from big stores).

The Cotswolds Gallery by Marek Mularczyk

And here’s an HDR shot of one of the beautiful pubs in the Cotswolds with a great atmosphere and great food! This is a composite of 5 shots taken handheld and they blended nicely even though the longest exposure was set to 1sec.! HDR was created with Photoshop CS5 of course. ;-)

HDR shot

Enjoy and see you tomorrow for the last post this year… ;-)

Master HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5 – Part 2

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

HDR in Photoshop CS5Learn how to master HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5 with this easy to follow video tutorial.

I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s post and the video I created for you.

Today Part 2 in which I am expanding on the previous video. What do you do if  you want to edit your HDR image? How do you change the brightness of the image? Do you use regular adjustments? Or maybe there is something special that can be used with HDR? Yes, there is… ;-)

Watch the video and find out how to adjust brightness in your HDR image… Also, learn how to take just one (!) image and turn it into a very interesting HDR effect! I’m pretty sure you’ll love it!

And finally, learn how to take a series of images, merge them to HDR and also remove ghosting from the images – it may appear if you don’t use a tripod or if the wind is blowing… ;-)

So here’s the video:

Master HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Hdr Pro in Photoshop CS5Learn how to master HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5 with this easy to follow video tutorial.

HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5 has been completely redesigned and soooo improved, you wouldn’t believe it ;-)

What really is HDR – High Dynamic Range? It’s a way to capture all the details in the image you take (including highlights and shadows that are usually clipped).

As in Photoshop CS4 so in Photoshop CS5 you can take a number of bracketed images and merge them together into an incredible composite with all the highlights and shadows. What makes HDR Pro so outstanding, is its superb controls and fantastic results! You can output HDR images as 32-Bit, 16-Bit or 8-Bit images. Just bear in mind that only 32-Bit image can store all the HDR image data.

Here’s a video I prepared for you guiding you through the creation of some really interesting effects with HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5.

Enjoy! :-)

Dark HDR Image in Photoshop

Friday, October 29th, 2010

Have you ever come across this problem:

“When I open my HDR Image in Photoshop, it is very dark. What’s the best way to fix this?”

This is a very interesting question. If the HDR image you open in Photoshop is very dark it is because the dynamic range of the HDR image exceeds the display capabilities of a computer screen. The image may also look washed out for the same reason.

However, Photoshop allows us to adjust the preview so that the computer screen may display the image correctly. The preview settings are stored in HDR image file and they are applied any time the image is opened in Photoshop. They do not affect the file itself.

To adjust the image, you can use 32-Bit Preview Options that can be found under View -> 32-Bit Preview Options. It contains two methods:

  1. Exposure and Gamma method – you can manually adjust the Exposure and Gamma, the Exposure being the equivalent of Brightness adjustment, and Gamma being Contrast adjustment.
  2. Highlight Compression – it compresses the Highlight values in the HDR image to get it withing luminance values range of the 8-Bit and 16-Bit images.

And that’s how it’s done! :-)

New HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

HDR in Photoshop CS5

Good morning everyone! What a beautiful day! :-)

Yesterday I was playing a bit with the new HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5 and thought I could share it with you.

Here’s what I did. I shot five frames of a landscape in the Peak District (beautiful place, by the way).

I bracketed the exposure to get most out of the image (highlights in the sky and shadows in the foreground).

It would be very hard to get it all right in one shot as you can see below. This would be a “normaly” exposed image:

Hdr - original imageThis is the original image, without any adjustments.

Then, I opened Merge to HDR Pro dialog box by going to File -> Automate -> Merge to HDR Pro:

HDR Pro When the dialog box opens, click on Browse to select the images to merge and press Ok:

Hdr dialog boxNow the Merge to HDR Pro dialog opens, it may take quite a while if you use high resolution images (it took about a minute when I used raw images). This brings you a big window with a number of sliders. Look at the screenshot to see the settings I used as they worked fine in my case.

Hdr ProHere are the settings I used (it’s hard to see it on the screenshot):

  • Radius – 500px (maximum)
  • Strength – 4 (maximum)
  • Gamma – 0.39
  • Exposure – 0.20
  • Detail – 110%
  • Shadow – 0%
  • Highlight – -100%
  • Colour: Vibrance 63%, Saturation 57%.

And here is the final result:

HDR FinalI hope you enjoyed it. :-)

HDR Toning in Photoshop CS5 Video

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Hello everyone. As promised I am enclosing the video about HDR Toning. I hope you enjoy watching it and let me know if you have any comments.

Tomorrow I am going to talk about a new great feature in Photoshop CS5 – Mini Bridge.

Till tomorrow.  :-)

HDR Toning in Photoshop CS5

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

HDR Toning is a fantastic new feature in Adobe Photoshop CS5! You should definitely try it out and you will love it!

HDR Toning adjustment is primarily designed for 32-bit HDR images, but it can also be applied  to 16-bit as well as 8-bit images. If applied to 8-bit images, it creates an HDR-like effect. This is the example I am going to show you today. An 8-bit image converted to an HDR-like effect in a very easy way.

HDR Toning command allows you to apply the full range of HDR contrast and exposure settings an individual image.

Here are the before and after and tomorrow I will post a video showing how I achieved this effect.

Have a wonderful day and see you tomorrow  :-)

Before

HDR Toning before

After

HDR Toning after