HDR Photography. What it does and how to do it.

November 20, 2008

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Digital Photography

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HDR Photography. What it does and how to do it.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography, is a process in which the photographer is able to achieve a perfect exposure through out an image no matter how contrasty the situation.

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HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography, is a process in which the photographer is able to achieve a perfect exposure through out an image no matter how contrasty the situation. In other words the final product is a previously unachievable, amount of detail in both your shadows and highlights. It used to be that the photographer was limited to one shot in which they either had to expose for their shadows, highlights or do an average exposure between the two. Now with Photoshop you can merge your exposures to get one perfect exposure.
In order to do HDR photography you must have a tripod. The reason for this is HDR photography requires you to shoot a range of exposures for a single scene. In shooting this range of exposures the photographer runs into similar problems of a single long exposure, that being camera movement or movement in the scene. For this reason I suggest HDR photography to be used more for landscapes or any still life. If there is movement that occurs during the duration of your shooting it often looks like typical blur in any long exposure. Unfortunately because this is a digital process sometimes the computer does weird things and it can look less like blur and more like solid unnatural pixilated colors. This is one such example…

Now that I have given you the warnings of HDR photography it is time to explain how exactly to create an HDR image. I will take you through the step by step process but in the end it will take practice to become most flexible in terms of what HDR can offer to you as a photographer.

1.Pick a scene (preferably a still life) and shoot it using a tripod. You should find the best average exposure and then shoot 5-6 stops in either direction. The more shots you take in either direction the more detail you will get. 5-6 frames will generally do it and will leave you with a more manageable file size. The example below is more like 11-12 stops in either direction.

2.Once you have shot the full range download your images. I prefer to open my images in Adobe Bridge and conduct the HDR merge there but if you don’t have Bridge you can do it directly in Photoshop.
a.IN BRIDGE – Select all the frames you want to include in the photo merge then with the photos selected go to Tools >Photoshop >Merge to HDR…

b.IN PHOTOSHOP – Go to File >Automate >Merge to HDR… If you have only the images you want to use in a one folder you can then select Folder next to where it says Use. If they are mixed in with other unwanted images leave it on File. Go to Browse select either the folder or files you want. Then click ok.

3.Once you did either steps a. or b. in part 2. Photoshop will go through the process of opening your files and then merging them. Once done you will be faced with a window prompting you to select your white point. Where you set this is up to you but I tend to keep it as close to where the graph falls off on the right as possible. Once you have made your decision click ok.

4.At this point you are basically done. The only thing I do is change my image from a 32bit file to a 16 or 8 bit file this will allow you to work on it in Photoshop just like you would any other image. To do this in Photoshop go to Image >Mode >8bits/Channel.

5.Congratulations you now have a workable HDR image… what you do to it from here is up to you but remember that there is a high range of information in both your shadows and highlights so don’t be shy to push the photo to it’s limits.

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