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How to Merge HDR (High Dynamic Range) Images

All right, who's ready for HDR? Okay, so let's take a look. I've got the I've got those Siris of photos that we that I was looking at before Pretty common scenario, right? You're out there. You're shooting. You can choose to because we all know our cameras don't see what we see. Our cameras don't have the range that that we see. So what we have to do is make some decisions. Either use filters in the field, but with HDR, what we did is is, you know, high dynamic range, or you're tryingto your bracketing. We're taking a really dark version so that you get all the detail in the sky because the sky would be blown out and then you kind of take a what I call the metered version. This is if I walked up to the photo, put my tripod down hit click. This is what the camera would have metered. And then you take a really bright version and that captures all the shadow detail. And so what we would do is you know, we have photo shop. We have lots of other programs that would merge these photos togeth...

er. So light room has included that before the question get asks and no gets asked. And a lot of people say, How do you How do you bracket one stop half a stop? Two stops. So I'll tell you, my personal workflow is two stops. I'll do you two stops under exposed and then the meter exposure that the camera would would do and then two stops overexposed. So that gives you a good range inside three year magic number for the number of photos to put in. Or can you do five or seven, depending three. So good questions. So three is the magic number for most things. The times where I've changed it might be like architecturally inside if you're doing some architectural shoots where you've got detail outside the window. A lot of times you've got really the dark, shadowy detail that might be behind its extreme contrast ones. Because otherwise you just most of these shots, your camera can almost get it. Yeah, so three is good. But when you have extremely dark shadows and extremely bright highlights, then that's when you want more detail, because that helps toe render the kind of transitionary area. So for most of my outdoor work. Three is the magic number. The only time I ever up it Teoh usually 5 to 7 is if I'm doing something inside. Ah, yeah, Yeah, it'll do. It will do anything to or more so So if you were going to do 5 to 7, would you still up it? Make the difference? That two. OK, yeah. I get to stop because your files today have so much leeway in, and there's at least two stops of range and every file anyway, So there's there's plenty to work with. I'm gonna kick it off and then it takes a minute because these are I think these air 36 megapixel raw photos. So it's going to take a minute to do some rendering, so I'm gonna talk a little bit about it, but I'll show you how to kick it off. It's under the photo menu. Normally, we would jump into photo shop and you'll see and you'll see that the merged HDR feature and photo shop is still there. I'm gonna talk about that in a second, but underneath there is photo merge. Okay, so we've got HDR. It's even got a little keyboard shortcut. So Let's go ahead and I'll kick that process off. It's going to give you a little bit of preview. Is going to talk about some setting. Sarah, talk about those in a second. What I want to preface this with is there's different schools of thought with HDR. All right, there is the school of thought where people hate HDR. If you're one of those people to stop watching right now, just stop watching take a break, come back and come back in three or four minutes. Don't leave a nasty comment. Don't tell people how you're against it. Don't people just stop watching? It's OK. Nobody can. Now I would like to mention know that your eyes are hdr just saying I was always You have the ability to see all of these things. Like right now I'm looking in HDR because camera could not pick up those shadows and the highlights and those all the same time. I just looked at you and minus two stops might get see all year. Did you do three or five? I did a three shot three shot, but so the schools of thought are there is I hate hdr, which you shouldn't have heard me say that if you're part is because you tuned out for the next 35 minutes, then there's people that want HDR, but for the effect not to capture all the tones in the ranges. They want that painterly, gritty detail type of effect. And then there's people that hate that effect, but still Lake Hdr, and they want it. For all the tone, I've fallen back to the shadows in the highlights and all that stuff. So number one thing I would say is, if you're if you're in one of those categories, don't say mean things about the people in the other categories. Not everybody likes saturated toned HDR stuff, but that's OK. You can still like it. What light room is His light room is the shadows highlights pure HDR. That's what light men will do for you. OK, it's not going to give you all the controls to do the painterly, ultra grungy type of a look. It's really I want all the shadows and details. So if you look over here, I've got my little preview window. You make a little bit bigger here. It gives you a preview, which is pretty darn good if you consider the photos that we were working with gives you a preview. Ah, Couple check boxes that are in here are auto align, which, if you're on a tripod, normally don't have to worry about this. But if you're not on a tripod, your hand holding, you'll want it to do some alignment for you. And then auto tone will still apply some motto tone corrections for you. The big one is gonna be de ghosting de ghosting comes into play of their something moving across your photo. Okay, so if there if there's a ghost and you're in a spooky place, it will take the ghosts away. Um, let's picture. I'm taking a picture at a lake and there's a boat going across the lake and on bracketing, So each shot I take their that boat's gonna be in a different place. If you don't do any de ghosting, you're going to see a blur with the ghosting. It'll look to go in and remove it so you'll get different various degrees of that. You'll see some of it with water with water. Actually like to leave it off because I like how it kind of smooth the water out. If you start to go, the higher you go, it's gonna pick an exposure to pick the water from. But I actually like the ghosted water cause it's almost like a simulated long exposure. And when you're done here, I gotta do is just click merge. And in 7 to 10 minutes it will emerge. No, it will merge all of your images together. The idea and the difference between this and photo shop is in the photo shops merge to HDR. When we went photo down here to edit in and we did that hdr pro, you could do what they call tone mapping, which is you could get the detail. You could tweak the shadows and highlights and different things like that by the way it's done just so. I just want people to know it's done. Yeah, that's he didn't take seven it. That wasn't something. And so what it does is it leaves you. If you look down here, it leaves you with a DMG file. And that's an important point, because in the old school, when you had to go to Photoshop, you came back with a tip. Now you have a raw file that's merged. I remember the that is off the walk uphill both ways in the snow in July. But the difference is is when you were doing the HDR pro and photo shop you got all those tone mapping controls would split. You get the gritty and a little bit of that painterly effect where what you're getting here is you're getting a crazy, crazy toned photo. So if I go to the left, I get 10 stops of control. I go to the right, I get 10 stops of control so I can make this photo all black and all white, which I could have not done with any of those other options there. But what you're going to get is you're going to get a lot of shadow control. You're gonna get a lot of highly control. Um, basically, it gives you a file with all that information all packed into one image, and then at this point, you would go through and edit that file in the develop module. If you want to make it the painterly look, that's what plug ins or for you know, you can crank up the clarity on it. That'll help. If you want to go with a painterly look, you condone, get a plug in and jump in there Knew something like mad just to be clear, this new is this a brand new file on the cattle? You know, if the export it, it automatically puts it in there and you're working with a brand new file. You'll see. It's kind of added 1/4 image down here, right in the catalog. I don't have to export, don't have to do anything. Acts just like a regular image inside a light room so I can do all the same light room things I could never, never leave light room. I don't have to go out of like room to do it now, which means I actually will do an HDR occasionally at a wedding now, because I'll be like, OK, this is a really extreme, you know. It's a night shot and there's a moon, and then there's, you know, lights coming. I want a really beautiful shot of the exterior of the place. I will do it now because I don't have to leave light room and for me, with the number of images I'm churning through. I cannot afford to do long processes for one photo. It just can't afford to do it. And so with this, I can literally say Okay, this will be an HDR. The last couple months I've been doing aged ers because it doesn't doesn't cost during a city Armenia. I'm on hdr maniac. No, I'm not. But, you know, I would like to, but I think you know, for a wedding photographer I think you could make some interesting effects like a few, because you can handhold, right? And it'll dio hdrs handheld. It is turning on his fast and I just go like that and then I in the church with all that detail, things like, I mean, that could be kind of cool question. Where does it drop that? DMG, uh, drops that DMG in the same folder that your original files are. And then you then stack it. Yeah. Yeah. And then stack those babies up so you'll only see the top DMG. So let get about the rest. Select all photo stacking and group into a stack, and then if you're ever need to, you can go into that stack, and you can actually tell it, Teoh, what photo you want to raise to the top. And before you ever export to your client, make sure you collapse all stacks. So it's in that stacking menu. Just go in and say collapse all stacks so that you don't end up sending them all of your HDR components. You just send him the one.