Allinda Photography has been creating high dynamic range (HDR) images since 2008.  This is one example.   Many HDR photos have an other-worldly or surreal look, and some people like that look.  But we only use HDR when the range of tones in a scene is greater than our digital sensor can capture in one exposure.  We try to avoid that other-worldly effect.  So our HDR photos tend to look more natural.  How do we do that?  It’s really very simple – more so than when we first started creating HDR images.

Our current workflow: We normally use a tripod, although we sometimes handhold the camera under good light and with a very steady hand or bracing against a solid object. The camera is set to bracket 5 exposures, which we normally set as one stop apart, with the fastest continuous shot sequence possible, and that results in exposures of -2, -1, 0, +1, and +2 EV.  Sometimes we lock the mirror up if the light level is very low.  We want the highest quality and range of tones; therefore, we shoot raw files, never jpegs.

Creation of Tiff files: Initially we look at the raw files in Adobe Bridge and decide which contain the tones we want in our final image. We use Adobe Photoshop CS5, opening just the files we have selected in Camera Raw. We apply highlight recovery for each shot as needed, apply noise reduction if needed, and for all the shots adjust the black level to “0″, set the curves section to linear, enable lens profile correction, and choose a camera profile.  Then we save the files as tiffs.  This can all be done using Lightroom as well. We prefer Bridge and Camera Raw. That suits our style better.

Alignment: This may sound like an unnecessary degree of technical detail, but it is what  makes the difference between our earlier HDR images and our current ones. The Tiff files are opened in Photoshop CS5 and stacked as layers in one file using the “Load Files into Stack” script in Photoshop. The “StackAlignCrop” script is then run on the layered file.  (This script can be downloaded from the following URL: http://www.outbackphoto.com/CONTENT_2007_01/section_hdr_and_tonemapping_2009/20100917_HDR_OptimizedAlignment/index.html)   Follow the instructions given there to install the script in Photoshop and setup the HDR parameters.  The script aligns the layers. Next the layers are converted back into files using the “Export Layers to Files” script built into Photoshop.   These files are now aligned more accurately than possible using any of the various HDR software products currently available, according to the authors of the Outbackphoto.com article referenced above.

Creating the HDR and Tone-Mapping:  The aligned Tiff files can now be imported into almost any HDR software.  My choice of HDR software is Photomatix 4.  I have tried a few others, but in my opinion none has more capability for creating natural-looking HDR photos than Photomatix.  The corresponding Nik product, HDR Efex Pro, is capable of similar results by choosing a preset and then customizing it. It’s a matter of choice which one you decide on.  The only other HDR software I have tried is HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5, which in my hands seems to provide fewer ways to adjust the effects.  I’m sure there are more possibilities than I know about.  The Tiff files are imported into Photomatix 4, which comes up with a dialog requiring you to label relative exposures of the files.  The files are already aligned, so disable the align feature.   The 32 bit HDR file is then created.   It must be tone-mapped.   That is where the natural look is created, by carefully adjusting the many sliders.  Try to keep the colors from getting over-saturated.  Avoid anything that creates halos, e.g., between the blue sky and the trees or buildings.  Clouds should look like real clouds, not like Halloween, but with nice contrast. I t is only possible to say what was done to achieve specific effects with specific images.  There is no general  advice I can give.   You just have to do it yourself.  Once you find a combination that works for you, save it as a preset.   That will get you in the ballpark, but it may be necessary to make major changes with a different image.

Examples of Actual HDR Images We Have Created:

Left:   Tiff file from the “0″ EV exposure for “Richmond From the Mayo Bridge.   The buildings and sky look pretty good, but the sand bar is rather dark, and there are power lines and poles that take something away from the scene.   There is some perspective distortion.   Right: The tone-mapped Tiff file derived from the -1, 0, and +1 EV exposures.

Below are the settings used in Photomatix 4 to achieve a natural-looking image.

• Strength:  60
• Color Saturation: 52
• Luminosity: 0
• Micro-contrast: 10
• Smoothing: 7.7
• White Point: 0.909%
• Black Point: 0.111%
• Gamma: 1.10
• Temperature: 0 (same as original images)
• Saturation Highlights:            2.8
• Saturation Shadows: 4.5
• Micro-smoothing: 7.5
• Highlight Smoothing:            2.6
• Shadows Smoothing: 0
• Shadows Clipping: 0

The final image after post-processing is shown here.  The steps taken included correcting perspective distortion using the lens correction filter in Photoshop; removing the halo effect in the sky using  color-range selection on a separate layer, then blending; and the tedious job of removing poles and wires using a combination of quick-mask selections and the spot-patch tool with Content-Aware.

Post-Processing:  This is probably the most important part of the creation of a good, natural-looking HDR image, or practically any image.  There are things that need to be done on specific files, such as selecting the trees or buildings and increasing the contrast or saturation, or adjusting the hue of specific colors.  Sometimes it is necessary to remove wires or poles to achieve the look you want to create.  You are the artist, and you have to do whatever it takes to achieve your view of this image. Some of the latest innovations in Photoshop lend themselves to this realization, such as Content-Aware.  This is very useful when creating panoramic composites. Frequently there are blank areas that need to be filled with content from the rest of the image.  Sometimes this results in multiple copies of the same features.  Use of the Patch-Healing Brush with Content-Aware activated can fix this problem.

It is frequently necessary to make a selection of a portion of the image to enhance it.  One example I run into frequently is a line of trees with a blue sky behind it.  To really fix that it is necessary to separate the fine details of the trees from the sky.  Left: the initial tone-mapped file of James River North Shore HDR before post-processing.  A series of selections was made to enhance this image.  James River North Shore Selection (Right) is a combination of two of these selections – of the shoreline trees and houses.

The final image after post-processing is shown here.   Additional selections were used to increase the color intensity of the leaves on the rocks on the near shoreline, as well as enhance the rapids.

There are numerous other examples, which you can imagine by looking over the “Richmond HDR Images”, “Badlands and Black Hills”, “Tetons and Surroundings” and “Yellowstone and Vicinity” galleries in the Bay Photo Store at Allindaphoto.com.

Probably the most intensive example is Hollywood Cemetery in Fall Colors, a panoramic HDR image created by combining three HDR images.  Because the individual sets were not taken with the intention of making a panoramic HDR, the position of the tree line was somewhat different in each HDR image.  The first two images are shown above.  The three images could not be stitched normally due to a program error due to the lack of adequate overlapping of the images.  However, it was possible to stitch the first two images to produce Hollywood Composite1 (Left below).

On the right (above) is the third HDR image that I stitched with Hollywood Composite1  (Left above) to create Hollywood Composite2, shown below.

Again there were missing sections that had to be filled in as before because of a mismatch in the two images and lack of sufficient overlap.  Despite that, there was enough information to join the two images to produce the panorama.  Cropping would have removed too much of the rocks at the bottom.  Normally at least 1/4 overlap between two adjacent images is needed to create the panorama in Photomerge.

This may seem like a lot of trouble, but that’s what fine art photography is all about – the visualization of an image and then the creation of that image by whatever means are necessary.  And the tools available now make that job a lot easier than ever before.