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Introduction to HDR Photography

right. Okay, so we're gonna do today is work through the whole process. Eso again. We're gonna come to start with some conceptual stuff on going to spend a lot time working through the technical aspects of the procedure on what we're going to have to do is talk about how to create images like this. Now, if you've already bought the course, you'll be able to download a file on what you'll find is the file is called hdr Deatherage dot HDR knows that's not the original raw files. It's the intermediate 32 bit file that you create from your role files, which you've been named tone that. So if you if you purchase the course, you were able to work through that file, which is the one not that one back to keep the There we go. I'm the one that was used to create this image. So you guys were looking at that. If you're following along online, you've purchased the course. You able to work through this image as well? Okay, so what do we need to know? Fresh tr? I'm Let's start by asking you guys, wh...

at's your experience with, actually are I know It's kind of mixed that I have very little. I've only tried it with the photo shop. There's I don't photo shop. HDR tried it one time with a few images and it turned out terribly and I knew I was gonna come to the score, so I said, All right, I'm gonna wait and learn it properly. Yeah, I have the same experience, so yeah, yeah, yeah. Same. I started through photo shop and I tried trials of photo medics, and I just I think I didn't know what I was doing with it, So yeah, I've had some some experience with it. Primary in the area of landscape. But again, some of it's come out that cartoonish Solans one they want to get better find out. Yeah. So what kind of your arriving much more for the kind of photo? Realistic was absolutely. Yeah. How would you say this image fitted into that kind of frame of a very HDR like to photo realistic for me? That that that that does appear photo realistic? That's kind of what you're aiming at this kind of this kind of thing here is that for the rest of it? Actually, I shoot a fair amount of HDR. I used both HDR FX pro and Votomatics, and I can't say I'm terribly happy with the results I generates, so but I have a huge backlog of images to process are hoping you will change my life. I think things two things kind of one is photo as well as you'll see as we go through kind of all the sliders. In fact, Matics protects a while to work out what they do on Some of them seem to do one thing that they're actually doing something else. So you kind of just moving these things round, juggling them on. If you're not entirely clear about what they all do, it's very difficult to get to know the results of your life. The other thing is when Aziz, you'll see when we look at some of my images, the ones coming out for automatics don't look like this. You kind of need to do some additional stuff Photoshopped as well. But it's using techniques we've been doing over the last couple of days, so it's typically things like changing the contrast, changing the color, using masks to spy work on specific bits of the image. I'm someone. Actually, I'm just end up probably over complicated, but I kind of like it's kind of relaxing for me toe sitting, sitting, playing folks, shots. I kind of like a messenger and stuff. A case of going Look at this image in particular, um, we're gonna do is kind of cover three, three topics. So kind of you all the way steamers are going to go through, you know? What are they on? Why we need them. How did you shoot them? So we'll go through that as well on then. We're gonna do a little shoot. Hopefully, the weather is gonna be a little bit clear. It's not a fantastic day for HDR today. We haven't got, you know, bright sunshine and really deep shadows. It's dull a bit down. If the rain holds off for granting me in the alley again, shoot out there if not walks into known here. I'm so everyone online. If we end up stuck in the studio, we're gonna need some help. Kind of thinking of what? Can we shoot in here? Good. Freshly out on. Then we'll look at Harry. Process them so it's going to include a brief look at kind of manual editing of actually are images. In fact, they're not, actually, I mean, if you do that kind of stacking up different layers using masks and folks shop may take a brief look at how to create HDR images and photo shop. But generally speaking, most people's experiences it's not very it's not very flexible on it doesn't tend to produce good results. Sometimes you get something is worth bothering with, but we're gonna concentrate on FOTA Matics probe on Over the last few years, there's quite a lot of HDR programs now. Votomatics pros won the first, and I still think it's one of the best for a variety of reasons. So rather than try and cover a whole range of different programs and not really get to grips with, any of them were gonna kind of constructive automatics pro. And make sure you get to the end of today, knowing exactly what you need to do on exactly how to use this program. That kind of makes sense. Yeah, good. So people charming in many questions Yet this one, This is what lighting conditions make for good HDR results. Well, it's a good question. I'm when When we go through, you'll see that some lighting conditions necessitates actually are so kind of you'll see when we look at this picture, describe to me what this would look like if it wasn't hdr. You stood there. This is my mistress. It's a solution. Monument in Bulgaria, she's nearing ruin. There's a monument celebrate communism in Bulgaria when communism fell, the ball gowns abandon in the building. It's just kind of being looted, and it's just rotting away. So kind of on the top of a mountain on a bright day early in the year. Maybe see those little white lines coming down there. Icicles. It's a cold, bright day. What did it look like? What you'll see in a while. But describe to me what scene would look like if you were stood that the the roof would be black and you would just be able to see outside. But looks like everything that's in the shadows would just be black. Or you could shoot it So that, um, the inside of the monument was correctly exposed. Yeah, looking through the windows, everything kind of very high, dynamic range. So very deep shadows, right right through to very bright highlights, and we'll look at the sequence of images goes through on the twins. The question on there are no ideal lighting conditions on one of the examples are probably show later on. On was shot in a man on a walkway into a canyon. I'm kind of the light was very flats in the side of the mounting. I was stood on the side of the canyon, was kind of not so much backlit, very dark. You could get the whole shot, a single exposure, but to bring in the details foreground. HDR work well. There's kind of no ideal lighting circumstances on this kind of some scenes that you require HDL on some scenes where you can use HDR even that maybe you wouldn't necessarily need it. Matheson Jake would like to know how many images should we take and how to make a great HDR, a guy that's absolutely something going to cover because that's that's kind of there's no answer to that question. Whether is, there's no number. Answer to that question is not three, not five. It's not, too. It depends will cover that very shortly. I think a lot of the questions coming in, or probably once that we're going to cover. But I did have somebody ask if which of these images back behind you are. All right. Okay, this one here is now. Unfortunately, don't have these files with me because we kind of put these prints together after I got here. So that's an actually are kind of shoot into the sun. If you track this one down on the website detail in the skies a little bit better than that one, Um, this one directly behind me, if I get out the way is it's kind of a very light HDR. I'm just to bring up some of the detail in the foreground. So it's not quite striking effect on obviously this one here, it would be working through today to kind of just those three. This one I could get away with not doing hdr. That war was essential because I'm kind of shooting into the sun on that one is. You'll see there's just actually no way at all to get shot. Okay? Like some. Right. If you've got more questions, just Jim and Ken, you've got nothing better to do today, so just threat, right? So if we go back, Teoh right while we go back to our float shots kind of were down at the bottom here. Although this time we don't have a raw file as the material. We have a series of raw files, but what kind of come back to that? But again, when we start talking about shooting HDR, you'll see that your creative skills on your imagination on your aesthetic intention are important again. Now, mostly this time because what you're gonna end up with something that's very different from what's in front of you. So what you need to be able to do with HDR is kind of imagine how it's gonna look when you process it. It's it's kind of this whole sort circular process again on, But we'll talk about reminding to talk about composition later because kind of the idea of HDR is you end up with this kind of massive amount of detail all through the frame. It's a kind of you're not going to be focusing on one bit because the whole process of HDR brings out detail. It's a kind of hear the composition is thinking that these lead lines coming down from the corners. What detail is in the corner? Eso when we go and we'll cover that on that on that shot, did you use any flash? It already feel. Let it all out? No. You can use flash in conjunction with HDR, but it ends up looking a bit Ordinance very careful. Kind of that. You could have let that scene. It's not huge, but it wouldn't have been easy. Um, and I'm no lights and experts. I wouldn't want to try it, but I'm sure that scene could be done. Others would be a little more difficult to kind of when you shootings on a big scale. The bigger the scale. Get something more like we need, the easier it is to do it. So let's start with what are HDR images on? Why do we need? So there's the scene that we started with for this shot, so kind of, you know, it's No. There's just no way you can do anything with this. In fact, a shock. You know, kind of this. There is some detail kind of down this dark stereo here, but to bring that up to any extent, all you end up with really is just kind of a load of noise. We've lost the highlight detail as well. You can see if we compare if we just flick back, Teoh, you can see all the detail and sky that through the window. You see the clams, you can see the blue. You can see the detail in the distance over the hills There. This is very little detail in the highlights. Very little detail in shadows. Kind of What is the history like here? Right. I'm gonna pick on you today. You do not, you see? Oh, you know, every time I mention Instagram's, I'm gonna ask you to make sure you're up to speed. What does it look like? Yeah, what would the hissed a gram for this image look like? Well, I guess it would be you'd have a spike over on the highlight side and spike down on the black side. Yeah, not much. Midtown. Yeah. Yeah, kind of a big clump. It left big clump of the right. We've got this very wide tonal range. We should just simply can't capture in a single shop. Absolutely. Okay, so yeah, I'm gonna make sure you're up to speed. Okay, So I'm gonna define actually our images because kind of when we talk about hdr images, you look at something like this and Ugo, it's an HDR image. It isn't actually our image. Let me explain why On HDR High Dynamic Range Image is a 32 bit file constructed from series of raw files that capture the entire dynamic range of the original C. You can then subsequently tone madness HDR file to produce an image that contains a full range of tones in both the brightest and darkest areas. So in other words, when we talk about HDR images, technically these Aaron Intermediate step well, look at this intermediate state when we get to it on again. If you purchased the course, the file you will download is this intermediate step. What's the problem with HDR images? So the HDR bit image? What do they look like when you open one up? Have you paused when you work in the Fota Matics at this intermediate stage? Before you hit the tone mapping button? What's on your screen? I don't mean I think you get straight into the time that I just keep on Billy Brian. OK, Any of you paused when I opened it? It opens in their presets, I think. And it looks over there. Looks cartoonish right now. You're not looking. Yeah, you haven't paused. You're looking at the initial time method settings. Right. Okay. What? What? We talked about a bit in 16 images. Andi. So what's a certitude image? What does that mean? Decides 32 bit if eight bit is one thing 16 bit. Something else. What is that to refuse? Twice as much data is that in the it must be more than that. Because eight is 256 levels on 60 minutes, 65 families and levels. Can I ask everybody online? Homely bits there are referred to, if 16 bit, 65,000 levels. What is 32 picks? I meant to look it up. Forgot, But there must be a huge answer to this. It's a kind of why do we need to tone? Why do we need to create these images and then tone? What's the issue here? Let me Let me stop. Let me open up in Actually our image. I kind of show you what I mean. This is This is the example. Let's open this up for automatics today. There we go. That's the 32 bit file, right? What can you see? Very little. Why? Going out? Okay. I'm going to bring up the basically all of us, right when we get to this stage, I'm kind of jumping ahead now because we haven't gone through the whole Kreitner everything else. But it's kind of it's kind of relevant to the stage to talk about instead. Too much fun if you're in for automatics, pro, and you open up any HDR images. So this is the intermediate step. You can bring up what's called the HDR viewer. Yeah, so it kind of view menu share. HDR viewer turned the officers Turn it back on again. If I hover over the image, What's appearing underneath the males, The detail, the detail? Yeah. So if you go over this this blown out stuff here, you can see the detail. Clowns could go down here. You kind of see the detail. Why is it we can't see the detail in this image? It's on the screen. This is a 32 bit filed. Why can we not see the detail could chime in from people online. So first of all, people have told us that it's about 4.3 million bits. You got that the 32 bit and, um, but people are saying that our monitors cannot show that much tonal range. Absolutely. That's the answer. So if you imagine night but fires 256 levels, I'm 16 bit. Filing for chops 65 times and a 32 bit HDR file is potentially. I meant 4,000,000,004 320.3 billion levels of information, So 256. 65,000 4.3 billion you can buy HDR moment is so we would be able to look at this. It wouldn't look good. It would kind of look very bright in here. It's a very dark on the inside, but we would be able to see this detail. The last time I checked, HDR monitors were at $50,000 each. Well, because what they have to do is show kind of this tonal range. So if you imagine a history graham on again, I'm getting ahead of itself. Is 10 shots here to capture the full dynamic range that imagine there's a history damn for one shot, but only 8 to 10. It's this much bigger than it extends out the ends. So you could massive amounts of data that you're capturing in the actually are far. So that's why you can't see actually our farm, because the monitor isn't sufficient, Capable of displaying 4.3 billion levels of data. Yeah, it kind of makes sense. So kind of this stage, most people skip through it. There's a button you need to click early on, which I'll show you, but you kind of go straight to tone mapping. So you pretty raw files in and then kind of the default setting pops up for automatics probe. But the reason I'm stopping is because this is kind of an essential bit of the process. So this is the HDR file, not That's right. So what is tone mapping then? If we can't see the details here, what are we doing when we create these files? So what's that? Is that 32 bit? No. No. So what would that be if I take it back down to folks shop? I mean, we don't 60 maybe don't eat. Yeah, so we kind of need to compress this data dam. So we've got all this data here. We can kind of look at it, but we need a way to bring this dates back in again. And that's kind of the tone mapping process, but right, we'll come back to that to make a sense so far. Yeah. Okay, well, we'll leave. The Ivans will come back to that. So that's an actually our image, this bit file and you can save those as you go through the process. Typically, people don't because they don't click the button to do this, but is useful sometimes to saving for reasons I'll explain a little while.