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Techniques HDR photography Process High Dynamic Range (HDR) Images Using Photoshop CS3 Extended
Techniques HDR photography Process High Dynamic Range (HDR) Images Using Photoshop CS3 Extended
Process High Dynamic Range (HDR) Images Using Photoshop CS3 Extended |
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| Written by Zoe Marlowe |
| Friday, 19 December 2008 01:33 |
 There are many High Dynamic Range (HDR) software packages available for purchase all over the Internet these days! With all the choices, it might be difficult for some to decide exactly which package to buy. However, if you are already a Photoshop user, you can actually process your HDR images beautifully using this terrific software that you already have. You could process HDR in Photoshop as far back as version 7, which was an early nineties iteration. For the tutorial I have prepared for this article, I have used Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended, which is also part of the Master Collection of Adobe products, and I am extremely happy and satisfied with the results I obtained. Enjoy the easy tutorial, and hopefully you will be as impressed as I am with the beautiful HDR images that appear!
First of all, it is necessary to go out and shoot three bracketed exposures with your digital camera (my Sony F717 has a special mode for shooting three bracketed exposures just by flipping a switch in the menu). This is best done using a tripod to steady your camera. I have found from experience that if you try and hand hold your camera, your images will not align properly once you upload them and begin the HDR processing. It’s not to say you can’t hand hold the camera, I just suggest that you don’t if you want perfect images. Try some outdoor landscape and building shots, and if you can’t get outside, find a well-lighted area of your home and shoot some still life’s. Once you have shot several sets of three bracketed exposures, upload your images to your computer, open Photoshop, and let us begin the Photoshop HDR tutorial:Step 1 With Photoshop CS3 open, open three bracketed exposures of the same subject. Once you do this, you will be able to combine these images and make an HDR image from the average of all three. Your screen should look similar to the image below.  Step 2 Once your three images are open, choose File>Automate>Merge to HDR from the upper toolbar on your Photoshop program screen. See example:  Step 3 Once you’ve chosen these selections, a small box will pop open and ask you what you want to process. If you click the “add open files” button as shown below, it will use these three images as we want. Notice the box that is automatically checked at the bottom of the dialog which basically aligns your three bracketed images—this is why you should use a tripod, in order to make your images align pretty much perfectly.  Step 4 Click OK and the process begins!  Step 5 After a second or two (or longer depending on the speed of your processor), a new screen will open and show you a combined image of all three of your bracketed shots. It won’t look that exciting at the moment, more is to come, but what you need to study is how well the three images aligned. This is the point where you decide if the three images are aligned well enough for you to continue. If they are perfect, you won’t notice much other than a regular looking photo, but if they are not aligned well, you will see some ghost images of the other bracketed shots. That won’t work, so you might have to start over with three better-aligned images. If all is well with this combined shot, click OK.  Step 6 Once you’ve hit OK, the image will show up on your normal Photoshop work area. At this point I recommend closing the other three bracketed shots, as you won’t be needing them anymore, and, your work area will be less cluttered. It should look like this example below with just the newly combined HDR image only.  Step 7 Now is the time to start the processing. In order to get the tone map to appear, you need to click on Image>Mode>16 Bits/Channel from the upper toolbar. See example:  Step 8 Once you change to 16 Bits/Channel, an HDR Conversion box will open up. From the Method drop down menu, choose Local Adaptation. At this point the box with the tone mapping and curve histogram will drop down for you to study and manipulate. If the histogram doesn’t automatically open up below, just click the arrow next to Toning Curves and Histogram and it will open.  Step 9 You will notice that the Radius and Threshold sliders on my example below are set to 16 px, and 0.50, respectively. These are the settings that I prefer for this particular image. You can change these, make sure the Preview box is checked so you can see what results you are achieving on the image. You will also notice in my example that I have made some slight modifications on the tone mapping histogram. This is achieved by clicking on different points on the line and dragging slightly in one direction or another. Experiment and see what you come up with! When you have finished with your fine adjustments here, click the OK button.  Step 10 Now you have a processed HDR image. It may not be as bright or vibrant as you’d like it to be, that is no problem. You are in Photoshop, so it’s time to make a few adjustments like you normally would. At this point, your HDR image will look rather 3D, but probably a bit ‘dilute’ for your taste, as it did mine. It is time to go to your Layers Palette and drag the background image to the Make New Layer icon at the bottom of the palette (next to the trash bin). You now have a copy of your HDR image. At the top of the Layers Palette, click on the drop down (or up) menu, and select Multiply from the blending modes. See example:  Step 11 Suddenly, your image should look quite a lot better, but we are not finished yet! This is close, but we need a couple more fine adjustments to get this looking really 3D and vibrant with color and tone.  Step 12 Click CTRL+U in order to get the Hue/Saturation dialog box to open. You can also access this by clicking Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation from the upper menu toolbar. Once the dialog opens up, increase the saturation slider to the right to boost your color if you like. Then click OK. See my example:  Step 13 Now we can add a little depth and contrast to this by clicking CTRL+L, or by clicking Image>Adjustments>Levels on the upper menu. Pull the leftmost slider toward the center, and when the depth and contrast look how you’d like, click OK. See example:  Step 14 Now click Layer>Flatten image from the upper menu, and we are nearly done!  Step 15 In order to be able to save your newly created HDR image as a .jpg or other format, you need to click Image>Mode>8 Bits/Channel. Once you do this, you are good to go! Save your HDR image as a .jpg or whatever, and there you have it! See example:  And here is the final beautiful HDR image processed quickly and easily using Photoshop CS3 Extended:
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 25 January 2010 17:44 ) |
