By spiffypix/Melanie (6,883) 
on December 29, 2008 12:43:43 PM CST
Seems like people either love my HDR or hate it.
I happen to love it. :)
I've gotten some requests regarding how I do my HDR. Here's a quick run-down of how I do it. If you go through this and I seem to be missing something, please let me know. 
This is basically what I do:
I shoot with a Canon Rebel XTi. I use the bracketing feature and I usually shoot three RAW photos, each 2 stops apart. I use Adobe Bridge, Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Photomatix by HDRSoft. You may be able to do it with other programs, but I think that Photomatix is a definite here. YOu can download the full-use version for free but your photo gets watermarked. Here's the procedure:
-Select 3 RAW exposures in Adobe Bridge.
-Then click Tools-->Photoshop-->merge to HDR
-Let Photoshop do its work
-When it's done, click OK
-Then save merged image as a Radiance file (.hdr)
-Open Photomatix Pro program
- Open your Radiance (.hdr) file in Photomatix
-Then go to HDR--->Tone Mapping
-You want the 'details enhancer' option
-I crank Strength, color Saturation and Luminocity to 100% on this first pass through the program, give or take.
-Click on the Light Smoothing buttons to see what looks best (for me, usually middle or second button from the right)
-You want a little bit of white point (how much pure white is in your photo) and a little bit of black point (pure black), but not too much. You can always adjust contrast and lights/darks later on
-Under the Micro Tab, lower Micro-smoothing to zero
-Under the Micro Tab, increase Micro-contrast to about 90%
-Hit Apply, but make sure you click 16-bit first (very important!)
-Save file as tiff
-close that file.
-Now, if you want, you can re-open that same tiff file and follow the same procedure to run the image through the tone-mapping again. This time, you'll have to lower the color saturation slider considerably. you can mess around with the other sliders to see if that gives you the desired effect.
{EDIT: I don't run the photos through Photomatix twice very often nowadays, but you can certainly experiment with this process.}
-Once again, save as a 16-bit tiff.
You can run it through Photomatix as many times as you want (just make sure you always save it as a 16-bit .tif). The more you run it through, the grungier it looks.
Now you want to open the photo in Adobe Camera Raw and adjust the following:
-luminance to 60%
-color saturation to about 40%
-fill light to 40% (give or take)
-blacks up to desired darkness
-The most important slider for me in ACR is the CLARITY slider. Crank it to 100%.
Go to the curves tab in CAMERA RAW and lower the shadows & darks sliders just a little below the middle point.
-you can adjust other sliders as desired. Click SAVE at the bottom left and save your new adjusted version under a modified file name (as a tiff). Then hit CANCEL. You want to preserve your original Photomatix tiff file, in case you want to start over again. Now open your modified tiff in Photoshop.
Now you can do your final adjustments in Photoshop. Contrast, Brightness, Saturation, etc. I use a lot of brightness, curves and hue/sat layers to get the look that I want. Levels is also important, as it adds great depth to an otherwise flat image.
That's about it in a nutshell. I'm no expert! There are people here on photosig that do it a LOT LOT LOT better than I can.
Check out Mike Savad's HDR. I think he has written some tutorials on how to do it. Good luck!
Melanie
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From ronnie2009/Ronnie (7,566)
on December 31, 2008 6:22:20 AM CST
Hi,
Thanks for your time br posting this.I'm going to use your steps today and see what happens.All too often some want to throw out hints but not enuf to get people up and going..thanks again...
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From markusrecht/Markus (0)
on January 24, 2009 1:02:50 AM CST
This is looking awesome. I like these grunge looks.
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From stevez/Steve (821)
on January 25, 2009 10:48:01 AM CST
What a great tutorial, I've learned so much from this and my HDR images are so much better than before using your workflow. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Melanie!
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From namkn/Nam (110)
on February 11, 2009 2:42:37 PM CST
I'm using Photoshop CS4. WHen i try to open the 16-bit tiff, i can't seem to get it to open in the Adobe Camera RAW window. Did i skipped a step somewhere?
Thank you
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From spiffypix/Melanie (6,883)
on June 11, 2009 12:40:51 PM CDT
Sorry for the late response, Nam. You need to change your preferences in Bridge to open 16bit tiff files w/Camera RAW. Otherwise it will only open raw images.
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From steveburling/Steve (241)
on April 8, 2009 12:24:51 AM CDT
Thankyou very much....an excellent easy to follow article and my best hdr work so far has been from using this technique
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From catalium/Ray-dawn (0)
on April 28, 2009 10:09:01 AM CDT
I've read your article and practised once,really fine.
Thank you for sharing!
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From bdevitt1/Brendan (634)
on July 18, 2009 7:52:20 AM CDT
Hi Melanie,
love your HDR. I am just curious, why do you merge the bracketed images in PS first. You can do all the processing in Photomatix. Do you find that it works better this way? I have never tried it your way.
Regard, Brendan
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From jeffdawson/Jeff (183)
on March 11, 2010 11:10:18 PM CST
Can anyone please tell me, can you just use the one raw image opened and processed 3 times with different exposure and tonal qualities. Then merge those in the same way to get HDR?
cheers, jeff
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From spiffypix/Melanie (6,883)
on March 28, 2010 7:21:18 AM CDT
Hi Jeff -
You can, but for some reason when I've done it this way, I've gotten a lot more noise in the image. But yes, it can be done. The photo below was done with one exposure, in the fashion you mentioned.
Single HDR Hope that helps... Melanie
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