Process Images in Lightroom® & Photoshop
Lesson 6 from: Exposing HDR PhotographyRafael "RC" Concepcion
Process Images in Lightroom® & Photoshop
Lesson 6 from: Exposing HDR PhotographyRafael "RC" Concepcion
Lesson Info
6. Process Images in Lightroom® & Photoshop
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
Process Images in Lightroom® & Photoshop
Let me just go show you this first file. I'm gonna hit the develop module here and expand this out. Notice that here, we have plus five on the right-hand side to about minus five, now minus five's still pretty dark, right. But, here is our tone map file. The first thing that you're gonna see in the tone map file is that it is a DNG, so it's a RAW file, right, not pixelated information, right. Usually they, whenever you use external software, they tend to turn it into pixel-based data, TIFFs, for the most part. Good ones, still TIFFs. This is raw information which means that I have all of my temperature and tint availability here. I also have from plus 10 to minus 10, all sorts of data that I can use to tweak this shot. Now, I'm trying to compensate for what we have. I'm hoping that on the screens at home, you tend to have something that's a little bit better but the data that we're working with now, is a lot more than we would have with one singular file. That, I think, is extremely be...
neficial. If I wanted to use an adjustment brush, I can come back over here and I can pull some of this information out and it could look a lot more realistic. This usually begs the question, in this case, why wouldn't I have just used one file and just dodged and dodged and dodged and dodged? Or why wouldn't I have used that same file and just burned in a portion, use the curves adjustment? For the most part, the problem that I run into when I'm trying to work with stuff like this is, your RAW files will only have about a stop, stop and a quarter of latitude in one direction or another before you start introducing junk into the file. Noise, color noise, artifacting, things like that. So, for me, if I'm going to have something that is going to be brighter or darker, I'd rather have that from actual sources of information, rather than pushing a file extensively. I find sometimes that if I were to push a file from different cameras, different cameras have different latitudes, right. There's some cameras that don't have as much latitude as others. So, for me, I think it's a lot better to shoot more exposures and have the ability to be able to have that entire range inside of one file to work. One of the other things that I think is kind of cool when I'm working with this is this. Let's say for example I'm gonna move to, oh no, hey, before I do that, I'm gonna do something else. I'm gonna go to these pictures right here and I'm gonna grab this and then ah, let's see. I'm gonna show this in Finder, just so that I can see these pictures, right. I have these all saves as DNG files just because I thought it was easier. (keys clicking) And I'm gonna make this one, I'm gonna call this Photoshop example and I'm gonna take those files and I'm gonna move those files on there. Now, once I have those there, if you're using Photoshop chances are you're probably gonna be throwing most of this stuff inside of Bridge so those are the files that you have inside of Bridge. Now, from here, I can select all of those images, I'm gonna right-click and I'm gonna select opening camera RAW. I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna open it in camera RAW so inside of camera RAW, notice that you have the strip on the left, all of the different images that you have open for that preview. I can select all of these and from inside of here, all the way up in the upper left-hand corner, I have the option to be able to merge to HDR. So, it's exactly the same as we did before. You'll see the same previews, you'll see the same windows, you'll see all of the same options but it's just built into camera RAW in this one section. In my opinion, I think it's a little bit more convoluted in terms of steps because you can grab the file, bring them to this, open them together, they're in camera RAW, then you gotta select and then you gotta go click over there. Meh. But I would be remiss if I did not cover that. I'm gonna cancel this though and I'm gonna go back over here and I'm gonna move over to this collection of pictures and I'm gonna make sure that I don't have the DNG selected, the tone mapped one that I have here because I wanna show something else. Actually here, just so we don't mess it up, we really, really don't mess it up, I'll grab these. So, these images selected. I know that I'm not gonna do any changes to the picture. I know that I'm not gonna select any deghosting. I know that I'm not gonna do an auto tone of the image. I just want you to spit out the HDR file, right. So, inside of here, if I do a right-click and I go to photo merge, and I go to HDR, inside of the HDR file I know that I'm gonna get the pop-up window. If I hold on the shift key and you click on the HDR, it does something called headless mode, right. If you click on this, it takes all of that information and it adds it to the back of the tasks. So, it's running in the background. I can go somewhere else, continue to work and start doing processing and working and in the background, that HDR's being processed. Before, what used to happen is if you started an HDR in Photoshop, in Bridge, in Lightroom, you're done, you're locked out, you're not doing anything until it finishes doing the thing that it's doing. By being able to move that stuff into the background, I think it's kinda cool because it allows you to be able to continue working. Good part about this is that you can also do this with panoramics. So, if you have a panorama and you want to be able to put together a panorama, you don't wanna wait, hold down the shift key, right-click, merge to panorama, send this to background, which I think is pretty cool. Now, I'm gonna hit the G key, I'm gonna go back to this one file, and notice, let me see, where is my image? Did it finish? This will happen to me sometimes, where I can't find the file, Lightroom gets a little tricky to find the file so I'll give you guys a quick tip. I couldn't find it in here. Oh, it's right staring right at me, I'm an idiot. Let's say, for example, you can't find it. Sometimes you're looking at files that are being merged, you don't know where they are, what I usually tell people is, go to your all photographs section on the upper left-hand corner, click on that, then down here, set your sort to added order. By setting it to added order, the very last picture inside of the list will be the picture that is re-imported back into Lightroom. Now you can find it. If you need to be able to see where it is in a collection, you could always right-click on it, go to collection and look. Not in any collection. So something happened, which I think is weird. I'm gonna stick you back in here. You should be in there. Get back in there. Now, this file's the HDR file that I used, the merged HDR that I created from here. And from here, I can go and I have all of this range for me to be able to go back in and tone as I see fit. Good? Questions? Okay. And that's the thing. A lot of the times I usually tend not to expect questions 'cause it's just like, there's really not that much to it. There really isn't, right. And I hated that, I hated working on these things sometimes because what used to happen is the entire process felt like you would take a look at this and it was like all smoke and mirrors, right. Like here's some files, let me show you this. Here's a set of pictures, right. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, right. Watch this. Grab all these files, right-click, photo merge, HDR, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, taking longer, eight, nine, okay. Once that's done, all right you're done, hit merge and it finishes all of that stuff, here's the eighth file. There's all of the data that you need. Big, small, and from inside of here, grab one of my highlights, tint this up a little bit, open up some of those shadows, maybe that's a little too much. That's it, you're done, move to the next thing, right. So the trick is not a trick. The trick is just a process. There's nothing interesting or funny or creative about it. All you gotta do is just know the process, know all the different steps, know how to set your camera, know how to work with all of this stuff. Move on, go to the next thing.
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.