While some (many) photographers CRINGE when they hear the letters “HDR” used in a sentence with “photography”, I’ve found that if done tastefully and processing isn’t heavy handed to the point that the image looks like some kind of psychedelic mess, using high dynamic range techniques can result in nice, even beautiful images. On that, I’ve had more than a few of my own HDR processed images win PPA merits and other PPA awards such as Best of Show and 1st place in my region. It’s all in how you process the images.
The real problem with doing HDR’s well is the fact that just a few years ago, their were only a few decent programs available, and those were hard to use without getting these unwanted “trippy” looking results or bad image artifacts as a result of the HDR processing and “tonemapping”. Fast forward to 2010 and 2011 when HDR started to get mainstream attention from software companies with new apps like Nik HDR EFEX Pro, Oloneo PhotoEngine and HDRengine and even Adobe added HDR functionality within Photoshop. Not to mention dozens of other, smaller software companies making HDR apps such as my friends at Ohnaware HDRtist among some of the older, established apps like Photomatix Pro from HDRsoft. All of which I have used, most I own and all I highly recommend for different reasons.
I just want to make a single “raw” file with more dynamic range than any one exposure could otherwise do in-camera.
With that said, any HDR program has either limited controls to simplify the process for “new” to “average” photographers to doing HDR images. While the other half have advanced controls, but may be difficult to learn or understand. I’ve been using Photomatix Pro for as long as I can remember and I still don’t understand what every slider and control does to the final image. (Though they’ve come a long way in making it easier to use in recent versions.) But in reality, what I’ve wanted for as long as I’ve used any HDR processing program is the ability to “process” the image just like I would process any camera RAW file format in Lightroom, Aperture or Adobe Camera RAW. After all, I just want to make a single “raw” file with more dynamic range than any one exposure could otherwise do in-camera.
LR4.1 32bit HDR Before & After Processing
Enter Lightroom 4, or more specifically, version 4.1 which is currently (at the time of this article) only available from Adobe Labs website as a “release candidate” as Lightroom 4.1 rc2. This is a fully functional Lightroom (though I believe does still require a valid software license to install and use it) but has several new features added that were not initially included at release. One feature is new advanced color “defringing” controls which I feel is a vast improvement over the old sliders. The other feature is the ability for Lightroom to process 32bit image files. While it may work with 32bit PSD or other HDR specialty formats, I’ve created my base 32bit files in TIFF format from within Photoshop CS5 (using the process shown in the video) and find that it works perfectly good this way.
As much as I enjoy using the array of HDR applications for various “look and feel” that each gives me, I’ve found that I can do everything I could have ever wanted with my 32bit TIFF image from within Lightroom. I can essentially process it just like any other camera RAW file, but with far more dynamic range and even improved detail over any single exposure. On top of that, I don’t get the unwanted halo’s, increased noise (in some cases I had reduced noise) or other odd and unwanted image artifacts that most if not all of the other HDR programs can have. And because I am very adept in Lightroom, I find it completely fits in with the remainder of my image processing workflow without jumping from program to program any more than necessary. In fact, I only needed Lightroom 4.1 and Photoshop CS5 to do any of the work. (I’ve found that versions of Photoshop as early as CS2 have the Merge to HDR function, although earlier versions may not work as well as CS4+ for this purpose.)
In any case, I’ve created a detailed video on how to do this yourself using only Lightroom 4.1 and Photoshop to create the necessary 32bit TIFF files and how to process them in Lightroom and export them back into Photoshop for any further edits you may like to do.
As usual, all of my videos are in HD so for the best quality I recommend watching them full-screen in 720p.
