Extend The Dynamic Range Of Your HDRs. As you already know, the purpose of HDR is to broaden the depth of light, and consequently detail, that our images contain. It is imperative, then, that the exposures we take cover the entire spectrum of light in a given scene. Sometimes, however, we come away from a shoot failing to get enough information in our brackets. If that is the case, there are ways to manually extend our dynamic range in post-processing. The first and most common method is to take your over/under-exposed image (whichever is lacking in the necessary information) and artificially lower or raise the exposure in a program like Lightroom. For example, let’s say we have 3 exposures at -2, 0 & +2. We realise that in our -2 exposure there are some blown-out areas. If we import the image into Lightroom, we can bring the exposure down manually until the blown out area is recovered, let’s say at -4. Then we can export that image. By the time we import our brackets into Photomatix, we will have 4 exposures (-4, -2, 0 & 2), which will cover the full spectrum of light. This only works in RAW, which you absolutely must be shooting in. The second method, and the one I’m going to discuss here, is very similar but will only require 3 images to be processed in Photomatix and can be integrated easily into your Photoshop workflow.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 01:25:15 +0000
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