HDR Tutorial Part 2 –

7/29/2019 HDR Tutorial Part 2

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HDR TUTORIAL NAVIGATIONYou are on page 2 of 3. You may go back to page 1 or jump to page 3.

STEP 2: GET SOME EQUIPMENT ON THE SLY SO YOUR SPOUSE DOESNOT ASK TOO MANY QUESTIONSTo create an HDR image, you need is a camera that can either:

Shoot in Auto-bracketing mode or Auto-exposure mode

or, shoot in RAW (You can also create an HDR image out of a single RAW photo)

I talk about myHDR Camera equipment stuff here on the site, which is much more organized than thefollowing Hawthornesque ramble. That equipment page lists out all kinds of nice recommendations if you are

just getting started, or even looking for a little upgrade action.

Although you can make a decent HDR from a single RAW file, I recommend using a camera that hasautobracketing. Autobracketing is the ability for your camera to take at least 3 pictures right after one another,each at different exposures. Sometimes its called Exposure Bracketing. If you are hunting around the menuson your camera now, just look for the words Autobracketing and perhaps some numbers like -2, 0, +2. If youhave a DSLR camera, then you probably already have this ability.

What equipment do I have? People always ask me this, assuming, Wow you must have a nice camera! Well, Ido have nice cameras (Nikon D3X and D3S as backup), but many of my best pictures were taken earlier with alesser Nikons. Im also not what I would consider a hardcore hardware guy I use equipment to bend nature tomy will, and I can do the same sort of work with just about any equipment. Ive now got much higher-endequipment because I can now see the subtleties somehow I can justify spending a lot of money for minorimprovements in the shots. I justify many sketchy things in my life, but so do you, so why not add camera

equipment to the heap of latent guilt?

I started with a Nikon D70. I then went on to the D2X before getting the D3X that now fills my life like a sweetsong. In addition, I use four lenses. Again for details on the lenses, visit the HDR Camera section.

As for tripods, I have a giant one with a silky smooth rotating fat head. I used to have a tiny tripod, but it wastoo shaky. You gotta have a solid tripod. What? You dont want to carry around a tripod? Comon if you aregoing out to shoot beautiful pictures, you better get serious. Also, if you have it over your shoulder or carry it inan aggressive way, it makes an effective weapon. As you can see, I go all over the world, often into sketchy areas,and a big tripod is often an effective deterrent. I carry it so much, I am very good at flipping it around and

whipping it around my body like ninja nunchaku.

The Before Shot The After Shot

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R Tutorial Part 2 High Dynamic Range Photography http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-tutorial-part-2/

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The Details at 100%. One surprising thing about HDR is its consistent ability to provide nice details at the pixel-by-pixel scale.

STEP 3 LOOK AT THE WORLD IN HDRIt is key to choose good HDR candidates. What I look for are extreme levels in light in a given scene.

SEEING THE WORLD AFRESH

Consider those situations where there is extreme light and extreme dark, and how you are able to see it whenyou are there in real life, but you just know if you take a photo of it that it wont come out right. Also, younormally would not dare to take a photo looking directly into the sun, right? Well with HDR you can It willopen up a new world to you and the more HDR photography you shoot and process, the more you will learn toappreciate light and the world we live in.

In the last several years, I have taken note of how I see the world versus the way others see the world. Its one of

those age-old questions: Is green to me the same as green to you? Maybe you just use the word green, but you


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of your life.

Of course, this means 20% of people do not see the world like us. In fact, they absolutely despise HDRphotography. Occasionally, you will get some old-school people that think post-processing is the work of thedevil. But, most often, I am convinced they simply dont see the world like this. They see the world exactly howthe camera spits out normal images. Thats okay there is no convincing them Hey, we cant make everyonehappy, can we?

A GOOD EXAMPLE OF EXTREME LIGHT LEVELS

Lets work on a photo I did of the Space Shuttle during its final night on the launch pad. Well go through thisguy step by step.

Now, this is a pretty good example of having to re-train your brain about light levels. Remember, when you arethere, on the scene, your brain can handle it as your eye darts around the scene. Keep this in mind as you arearound your house, in your neighborhood, driving around your city you really are taking for granted how

your brain is able to filter the light levels that your camera cannot.

STEP 4 TAKE YOUR AUTOBRACKETED PICTURES AND PREPARE FORTHE HDRSet up your camera in Aperture Priority mode. This is important because you dont want the multiple photos tohave different areas of blur.

Turn on Autobracketing. If you have 3 pics in the autobracket, set it up at -2, 0, +2. On my Nikon D3x, I usuallytake 5 pics at -2, -1, 0, 1, +2. Id prefer just to take 3 pics at -2, 0, and +2, but this camera only steps by 1. I think

you will find this +2 to -2 range satisfactory for 95% of situations. An exception, for example, would be shooting

the interior of a house that is extremely dark and there are windows where the outside is extremely bright.

Other best practices:

For 95% of situations, going from +2 to -2 is enough light range.

Shoot in RAW, if you can. JPG is okay, but RAW gives your more flexibilitylaterin the processing. RAWphotos contain a lot more light information than a JPEG. Please note that when processing in Photomatixlater, the RAWs are no better than JPEGs.

Use a tripod, unless you have the steady arms of a late-model Terminator robot.

If you dont use a tripod, its not a big problem, because Photomatix can align the images for you.

Below, you can see the five images from the Space Shuttle.

The five images. These were shot with 5 different exposures from -2 to +2.

STEP 5 USING PHOTOMATIX PRONow it is time to fire up Photomatix and get crunk in the HDR house. Okay that was stupid. I never would saycrunk in real life so dont think I am that sort of person.

Photomatix will take your photos and convert them into an HDR image. You can then tonemap the image andsave it as a JPEG. Ill take you through this process.

You can run Photomatix in a few ways:

To generate an single HDR from some autobraketed shots (most common for beginners and the bulk of thistutorial)


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. , . ,the margin of error of the following screenshots.

Note: You will see that I have 5 JPGs here. I used Lightroom to convert the 5 RAWS to 5 JPG. You can usePhotomatix to open up the RAW photos as well, but Photomatix itself will do the conversion on its own. Afterspeaking with the engineers at Photomatix, they tell me it is a little better to do the conversion on your own.

After clicking "Load Bracket Photos", choose "Browse" to go find your photos.

Choose the photos and then click "Load".

Choose the images you like then click OK. You will then see a second dialog that is below. Here is anexplanation of what is going on:

Notes:

If you feel like you had some camera shake, choose Align Source Images

If there was movement or ghosting, chose Reduce ghosting artifacts

This will take you to another screen where you can then select the area of the photo that has the ghosting.After that, you can select which component photo to use instead of the ghost.

If you shot at a high ISO or anticipate a lot of noise, chose Reduce noise

If you have the sort of lens or situation that gives you annoying chromatic aberrations (those nasty purpleand green outlines you see at 100% sometimes), then choose this option to help minimize those.

There are not many wrong choices you can make on this dialog, so dont panic.


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Preprocessing options allow you to make a few choices that affect the overall processing of the imag es.

No worries, there are no bad choices to m ake here!

ClickPreprocess and now your computer will churn like a farm of computers generating a single framefrom a Pixar movie. Note that if you checked any of the boxes above, this processing steps even longer.

Every picture is different. There is no right way to set these sliders. There is certainly a wrong way to doit, though. I am sure you have seen lots of crappy HDR images. Below, I paste an example of how you canreally make your image look too funkadelic. Funkadelic is cool if that is what you want or you have a lot ofdruggie friends that like laser light shows and your mind-bending HDRs, but most people dont like them.

Actually, please dont look at my old work. Its a little over-the-top too I cringe when I think about it. Justlook at the newer stuff. Thank you kindly.

Actually, I keep my older stuff up there to illustrate how much progress you can make in such a short time.I hope this is as inspirational for you as it is embarrassing to me.

Friends don't let friends do HDR on drugs.

Above, you can see the options I selected. Its way overdone. The key setting is in that LightingAdjustments section. Just be careful. Please! For the sake of humanity.

Below, you can see the default settings. Note that if you are afraid of all the sliders, you can just pick thepre-made thumbnails on the right, and youll be in business. The rest of the tutorial describes how I use thecontrols.


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These are the default settings that appear in Photomatix. Since every photo is different, I advise getting to know and "p laying" with the sliders.

Now, its time to start making the adjustments that are good for this image in particular. Remember, none ofthese settings are cast in stone:

Strength Keep it at 100%. If it comes out too strong, you can always dial it back later in Photoshop,should you want to go into the Advanced steps.

Color Saturation Keep it reasonable. Dont over-saturate your photo. Again, each photo is different.There is a difference between color that pops and color that bleeds too electric. Remember, HDR is aboutlight, not about over-saturation!

Luminosity This is used for the painterly effect, let us say. The further to the right, the less contrastwill be in the photo. If you find yourself with Halo problems in daylight shots, moving this to the far rightwill help.

Detail Contrast A mysterious slider that helps the details and fluctuations in colors on the very smallscale. Like the others, play with this until it looks and feels right. Generally, the more to the right, the moregrungy and black-contrasty it becomes.

Lighting Adjustments This is an important slider that effects the HDRness of the shot. The more to

the left, the more psychedelic.White Point & Black Point Be sure to pop the Black Point off the left side, where it rests by default.

Bringing a bit of black into the image will help the other colors resonate. Adjust the White Point so that thebright parts of the image are not blown out.

All the other sliders? They are interesting, but I honestly dont use them much. I wont waste your valuabletime by going into extreme descriptions of oft-ignored controls.


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I have used arrows here to point to the sliders I use the most often.

Once you have set everything up with the sliders, clickProcess and save the result.

YOU ARE DONE!You can make a case that you are all finished now! Just getting to this point can make a tremendousdifference in your photos.

Now, personally, there are more steps that I go through. These are a series of advanced steps sort of amasters touch that borders on the obsessive. I will also describe these on Page 3 Advanced Steps, but knowthey are not necessary.

The next steps describe how to clean up more of the photo, reduce noise, and sharpen details.

CONTINUE TO PAGE 3 ADVANCED STEPSWant to see all the steps I go through? Keep on movin along for Page 3.

A LITTLE ADDo you mind if I tell you about the 11+ hour video tutorial? If you want to watch me do this stuff, time and timeagain, this may be a great option for you below is a little preview option. See more on the HDR Video Tutorialpage!


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