Reader Tutorial: Easy HDR Technique by Cristian IancuListThumbs
Reader Tutorial: Easy HDR Technique by Cristian Iancu
Big shout out to Trey Ratcliff for clearing things up for me with HDR’s--he has a great tutorial and I will always be a fan of his amazing work--to Nicalai, for taking this wonderful picture and, last but not least, to Abduzeedo for making this public.
We start from this original picture, that my good friend Nicalai took on a night in Milano. First, we want to add some cool night tint to this. So, we lower the Temperature a bit, let’s say -32 and play with the other sliders as you see fit.
Original Image
Don’t worry about the settings, you can’t do much wrong. We’ll return to Lightroom later and correct everything that doesn’t look right. Always remember the great J key, that can show you when you are losing details in high- lights and shadows.
Step 1
First of all, we start into Lightroom. I am a big fan of it. The Lightroom 3 beta is free on Adobe, so you might want to download that. It’s a great, great tool that makes your job easier.
Step 2
Now export it into Photoshop. Here, don’t forget to make it 8 bits / Channel, so you can save it as a jpeg. Save this image, with your Lightroom adjustments.
Step 3
Overexpose and underexpose the image by 2 points and save each version with a different name, so now you have 3 images with different exposures [+2,0,-2]
Step 4
Now open Photomatix, hit Generate HDR, browse and select your 3 photos. Specify exposure manually, if Photomatix does not auto-detect it. I use these settings, but you probably shouldn’t worry about this.
Step 5
Click OK and now you will see a crappy image. This is because your monitor cannot display HDR. Don’t worry about it, it’s alright. Hit the Tone Mapping button on the bottom.
Now, for the settings, you should keep Strength at 100%, the Color Saturation at 40-60 [I keep it at 50 for this specific image], just try not to over-saturate the image. You can add saturation at any time later. For the Light Smoothing, it should be 4 or 5, any less will give you a very surrealistic image that is not very cool. Play with Luminosity as you see fit.
Be careful about the histogram you see there, so you have it inside the frame, if it bleeds out, you’re losing light. Shout out to Trey Ratcliff for teaching me that. For the other settings, Tone, Color, Micro and S/H, play with them as your eye sees fit. There should be no right and wrong as you try not to overdo things. I usually play only with the white and black point and leave the rest on default. Hit Process and save the HDR.
Step 6
Now comes the part when you have to work a little, that part where the difference is made between all those fake HDRs generated by plugins and the real thing. Bring all 4 images into Photoshop and align them on top of each other, with the HDR on top. I usually have my -2 layer under my HDR, my +2 and then my 0 in the end. I don’t think this makes a huge difference though.
Step 7
Add a mask on the top layer, using that button below the Layers panel. With a 10-50 black soft brush, start painting on the layer mask, so that the -2 shines through. For this picture, paint the ground and the buildings, so you add a little more depth to the shadows. Also, if those street lights are too strong for your taste, paint on them, too. When done, just merge the 2 layers, CTRL+E, and add a mask to the new layer, that has the +2 layer beneath it. In the same way you did above, bring some highlights in now, Don’t worry about mistaking, since you are painting on a mask and you can always add back by using a white brush. If you don’t like merging the layers, create a duplicate and hide it, before merging it, just so you work non-destructively at any time. I hope this makes sense.
Continue until you flatten the whole image. Now you should use a software like Noiseware Professional or the old fashioned G. Blur, cause HDR’s tend to create tons of noise.
In the end, bring your picture into Lightroom again for final adjustments (maybe some exposure or tint).
Conclusion
If you’re still not satisfied completely, bring it again into Photoshop and do some dodging and burning with a soft low opacity brush. Or create a new layer above, set it to overlay, 30% opacity, and paint with a soft white brush for highlights and black for shadows.
Let your creativity run wild now!
Other Examples
40 Comments
Really cool tuts thank you very much !
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http://hybrid-creation.deviantart.com/
Good tutorial.
Here is an other way to create beautiful HDR pictures with your Mac ... and for free : http://www.ohanaware.com/hdrtist/
Enjoy it ! ;-)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/def13_marseille/sets/
Nice tutorial. Thanks Cristian :]. Soon I will have to learn making HDR effects for my stuff and will surely get back to this tutorial.
i like the shoot with the girl and moving cars =)
Awesome tut... thanks
great tut!
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http://lateant.deviantart.com/
Thank you, people! You are far too kind!
Good tutorial, thanks! Just a small suggestion, maybe it would be easier to create two additional virtual copies of the original image with changed exposure directly in LR than to export the image to PS and importing back in LR. You can then select all three images (original plus two virtual copies - overexposed and underexposed) and start the Photomatix plugin from LR. It's saving time and the result is the same...
Nice tut. Love the outcome.
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http://www.thepeachdesign.com
While still in Lightroom, create 4 virtual copies of the original and set exposure for those images (5 in total) to -2 -1 and +1 and +2. Export these as originals and you have 5 images ready to import in Photoshop without losing dynamic range in the jpg's! :)
nice reader tutorial
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Maybe you could explain what HDR stands for? Not everyone understands the acronym?
HDR stands för High Dynamic Range and are a way to increse the luminances and dynamic range
you can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging
HDR stands for high dynamic range image and is the result of combining same photographies with different exposures.
As for creating virtual copies, it's true, but I save the Lightroom tutorial for later, as most people are much more used to photoshop than LR.
As far as I know, if you edit a copy with LR adjustments in Photoshop, you will not lose dynamic range if you are using the ProPhoto profile [LR options].
Butno not forget to convert the profile in the end, or it will screw up the colors like I did with the one on my blog :))
For some reason, Behance can read the correct colors in ProPhoto profile, as opposed to Photobucket, which can not.
This is how it looks without converting to sRGB:
http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww218/kdoggdracul/IMG_272911_0_-2HDR_...
If you have any more questions, I'd be glad to help.
Thank you!
You can do an HDR fake [or adjust images to your liking] very easy with no Photomatix, just by using virtual copies in LR.
[You create virtual copies of an image by pressing CTRL+']
Take this image, for instance, create a virtual copy of it, overexpose it, create another virtual copy of the original, underexpose it and do CTRL + E and export them AS LAYERS.
Then mask images and do the same you'd do in this tutorial.
This is VERY VERY useful in any image, when you wanna adjust parts of it. Let's say you take the picture of a beach sunset and you like the contrast in the sky, but you'd want the sea to be lighter. Increase exposure on the virtual copy and mask the layer in photoshop brushing out everything but the water.
I love LR Virtual Copies myself, but we will talk about this very soon, in a very comprehensive Lightroom guide I plan to write.
Until then, enjoy the PDF version of this tutorial, here: http://www.mediafire.com/?vytgntm2hlm
Thank you!
As interesting the effect on these pictures is, it's not HDR. It's just tone-mapping.
HDR requires more dynamic range, ie, at least two different exposures, and preferably three or more.
If you're using one exposure, it's not HDR.
See here: http://blog.23x.net/7/beginners-guide-to-hdr.html
Awesome tutorials !
Quality Web Design
you better try this one.
http://www.rollip.com/
online and free stuff. don't even need to donwload somethin'.
some is wack but some is good.
this pistures are very nice, but where have you downloaded all this programs and plug-ins?
This is a super-beginner HDR tutorial, I have not learned anything new or important. Anyway, it could be useful for those who just start with this technique...
This is a great tutorial for single shot HDR's! Very similar to (even a bit better than) the one I did for my tutorial on http://www.HowToTakeHDRPhotos.com. I particularly like that you showed your workflow between Lightroom and Photoshop, and that HDR is more of an art creation then simply taking a picture.
AWESOME!
i try it!
@senph42 With all due respect, Sir, tutorials are meant for people who try to learn stuff. Once you know how to do it, I cannot bring anything new to you, for there is no better way to do this than masking.
If you think this is "super-beginner", it would be super cool to share some "advanced" stuff, I'd love to know more about this.
Thanks!
[@abduzeedo, please allow my other 2 comments, both are pretty important regarding Lightroom]
@Jared Earle, shooting with auto-bracket or taking a photo that you over and underexpose equals pretty much the same stuff. Trust me.
It doesn't matter how you take the pictures, photography isn't all about pushing the button, anyone can do that, this tutorial is about the post-process of the pictures you took.
So if you auto-bracketed pictures, skip directly to the Photomatix sequence. In the end, it's still all about masks inside PS.
Seems simple enough!
Looks like I've got some HDR'ing to do!
the result is super-awesome! the photo itself is very beautiful. great work! big up & thanks KDG.
very interesting ! thx KDG
awesome tutorial! thanks :)
Wow. They look really good actually. Cheap and easy HDR.
AWESOME! thanks for sharing!
Wicked technique, so much better than what I was doing before. Lovin' the last one.
Great tutorial! Really really helpful!
But to get best results with photomatix, we don't need convert our photos to HDR (32-bit) with photoshop?
Thanks
@drekw2 I am not sure about this, but I guess Photomatix does this by itself, since, at first, when you press Generate HDR it shows you a crappy image that I personally think it's 32-bit and it downsamples to 8 when you press Tone Mapping.
Again, I am just assuming this, based on what I know from the Merge to HDR command in PS, meaning a crappy 32-bits image at first.
Thanks, everyone! Glad you like it!
Still, this is not HDR! It is a tonemapped image. There is a lot of fuss about this, I know. HDR is a technique to get more dynamic range into your pictures, the results shown here are tonemapped images resulting from those HDR-images you can't show on a computer screen. Picky, I know.
BTW: using two or more shots to create HDR's (see, I'm making the same mistake...) DOES make a difference. Correct exposure is important, and you can't always get that with one picture!
Is more simple to do a "pseudo HDR".
- Convert de the original image to 32bits/channel in Photoshop.
- Save as OpenEXR format.
- Open it in Photomatix Pro and select Tone Mapping.
That is not HDR. So ridiculous.
Great tut, even though Trey gave some input I really like the way you put it together. Nice and easy not complicated but effective.
Thanks.
wow i like it .. its a great work....
cool technique... I like it :)
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lots of photoshop resources at my site
http://infinitystyle.com
Actually this is really a bad way of using HDR. The examples given look terrible to be honest - This probably looks good to some 12 year old boy but from good HDR pictures you should not be able to see such differences in the color. It should all look well if mixed up together.
See this work for example
http://charliemacbell.deviantart.com/art/Arthuan-121635671
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