Lessons
Class Introduction
04:44 2Bracketing
10:31 3How to Set-up Bracketing
02:54 4Tools to Capture HDR Better
02:09 5Scenes for Good HDR
07:49 6Process Images in Lightroom® & Photoshop
10:52 7Hyper HDR Style with Photomatix
11:39 8Post Processing in Lightroom®
07:56Lesson Info
Post Processing in Lightroom®
So here we have this file. Everybody's okay with the file, everybody's okay with the processing of the file. Here's the second secret to HDR processing. Finish the file. A lot of the times, one of the reasons that HDR kinda got the bad wrap that it got, was because people would do this, and they'd go, "Done, perfect, I'm out," and they just posted it on Flickr. But there was a lot of problems that you had with it, that you could totally fix. Right, so inside of here, I see a couple of already glaring problems that bother me, right? One of the first things that I tell people is, you should make known colors known. Right, what do I mean by known colors known? If I were to tell you, "What color's the trees?" You're looking at a tree, what color is a tree? Green. Green, right. What color is the sky, usually? Blue. Blue, right. What color is... A chrome bumper? Like on a car, or chrome pipes on a Harley. What color are they? Silver. Silver, right. Ish, right? Are they this color...
? No. Is the floor usually this color? No. So what happens is, when you start working with some of these files, they'll start throwing all these different things inside of it. Yes, I love the tonality that comes out of it, yes, I love the shots that are in it, but this bucket has a really weird cast to it. So, what I wanna do is, I wanna be able to take all of this stuff, and I wanna be able to fix it, to make it look a little bit better. I could fix it inside of Lightroom. So inside of here, what I wanna do, is I wanna be able to take this file, and, let's just keep it simple, I'm gonna grab a couple of adjustment brushes, and we'll go from there. And I'm gonna hit the letter D, and inside of here, I'll click on one of my brushes. I'm gonna double-click, right, and we covered this the last time, but I figured I'd wanna be able to show it, 'cause a lot of people don't known. Double-clicking on one of the sliders resets one, double-clicking on the word effect resets all. Now, once we're inside of here, I'm just gonna increase the temperature, not exposure, increase the temperature quite a bit. I have a big brush, and I'm just gonna go. (scribbling) And just do that, all right. It's a little over-juicy, right, so what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna bring that down, and I'm gonna adjust like that. That's one option, right. Option number 2, I can take that same setting, and instead of increasing the temperature, I could decrease the saturation. By decreasing the saturation, watch. Before, after. Before, after. It's one of those things like, once you see it, you can't unsee it. You see those colors and you're like. (moaning) Right? And what happens is, you turn around and, when somebody has something inside of a file, and they have a known color that you know, that doesn't look the way that you think that it do, that's when somebody turns around and goes, "I call bull on the picture." Right? It's like, you have somebody's attention in the file, and they're in that believable world with you. The moment that something kinda doesn't look right, like you see a duck using a typewriter, it's like. (popping) The reality's broken and you're like, "Ah no, this is just a composite." Or, "Ah, this is just a mess." So, you wanna be able to remove all of those different barriers as much as you can. Now, the other thing that I usually do here is, notice that I have some blowout sections right here, so I'm gonna grab a new brush, and inside of the new brush, I'm gonna bring my highlights down quite a bit, and I'm gonna take this brush, and I'm gonna make this brush a lot smaller, and I'm gonna drag right in this one area, and now I've gotten rid of some of that highlighting. Here's the problem, though. There will be sometimes when you are working with a picture where that is not going to be enough. In instances like that, what I tend to do is, well, actually, here, lemme just finish this. I'll come inside of here, I'll increase some of my shadows, I'll go in and I'll put in some contrast. I wanna be able to put in some mid-tone contrast for some clarity, I'm gonna add a little bit of vibrance for some color, I'm gonna do some post-processing to the picture. I treat the tone-mapped file as the new raw file, the new start-point of my process, so it gets all of the other things that I normally do to it. I start right back from scratch. When I get to a spot where this is done, sometimes I need to go back and blend some of the original images back into that file. So let's say, for example, I don't like the way this looks, but I do like the way it looks if I go back to one of my original images, change that, open that. (gasping) Oh, wow, that's an old-school image. Take a look at this. See how this says exposure, recovery, fill light, right? That's old, like Lightroom 2 old. All right, I'm gonna show you a magic trick, watch this. If I come over here, and I'm gonna go all the way down to this thing called calibration. Under calibration. So, if you've ever run into this problem, there's this thing called a process version, and process version is basically Adobe's recipe for how to process a raw file. A long, long, long, long time ago, they came up with a way to be able to process raw files, and they included sliders like recovery, and fill light, and as they've gotten better at processing these raw files, they've added new recipes, or process versions, to it. So, clicking on the dropdown, you'll see that there have been 5 different versions, 5 being the most current, and if you switch that, now you have all of the other sliders. So, somethin' to keep in mind. And, in my opinion, you find that the processing of it is a lot better. So, I like what's happening here, I'm gonna open up these shadows just a little bit. I like my bumper. So, I'm gonna take this bumper, this picture does not look good to me. I'm gonna command-click that other image, I'm gonna right-click, edit in, and I'm gonna open as layers in Photoshop.
Ratings and Reviews
Liz Farrell
It truly doesn't matter if this instructor creates work that looks different from what I like to make. What I got from this course were skills I needed to try something new. (In my case, I watched this before doing some interior photography, knowing I would need to use HDR in Lightroom.) RC teaches you how to set the camera up for bracketing and how HDR software works (in Lightroom, Photoshop, etc.) Apply your own creative aesthetic once you nail down these basics and you'll thank him, too.
Wayne
Just what I was looking for. Basics of what HDR is and the basic steps to do it. I do not care yet about making it realistic or not. I can get into advanced features later, but I am strongly leaning towards non-natural, more impressionistic, looks.