Emmett Lollis+Photoshop CS5 HDR Processing
About high dynamic range photography
Previous Photoshop versions weren't known for their strengths with HDR processing. Photographers were forced to switch to 3rd party tools such as Photomatix to achieve acceptable results. All that has changed with Adobe Photoshop CS5's HDR Pro features. Now, with a little knowledge you can create stunning High Dynamic Range images right from Photoshop. In this tutorial I will walk you through the creation of an HDR image from start to finish.
HDR Photography Overview
An HDR image is comprised of several photographs taken at different exposures. The photos are then combined to create an image that has a wider range of tones which is closer, or even beyond the normal range which the human eye perceives. The steps involved with taking a series of HDR images for processing with Photoshop CS5 are beyond the scope of this tutorial. If you're not yet familiar with how to take HDR photographs, please check out my tutorial on HDR photography.
Creating the merged HDR image
The process involved with creating an HDR image in Photoshop varies somewhat. I will show you my standard workflow which should give you a head start in processing you're own HDR photos. For this example I'll be using a photo of the very talented actress/model Dina von Sinn. She was absolutely great to work with during the photo shoot.
Begin by opening Adobe Bridge and browsing to the folder where you keep the source photographs. Select each photo that you will be merging and go to tools->photoshop->Merge to HDR Pro.
Tools->Photoshop->Merge to HDR Pro
You will be presented with the following dialog screen.
Zoomed in view of the HDR controls
At the bottom of the screen you have the freedom to de-select and of the HDR images that you don't think will make a good fit. For everything to work properly in Photoshop you need to keep at least 3 exposures selected. If you wanted, you could choose 16 bit or 8 bit to bring up the full set of HDR controls at this point, but for now we will be using the 32 bit option. The 32 bit dialog presents us with two controls. The white point preview slider and the remove ghosts check box. You can go ahead and adjust the white point slider until you get a decent balance on the mid-tones. Don't worry about the highlights and shadows too much at this point, we will get to them later on. I almost always use the remove ghosts check box since most of my HDR shots are handheld. This tool does an excellent job of removing unwanted artifacts which you get from slight movements.
At this point go ahead and press OK to create the 32 bit HDR image. It may not look much like it did in the preview but that's okay because all the color values are in the file, the monitor is just not capable of displaying them properly. In 32 bit mode you have limited access to adjustments. Levels, exposure, hue/saturation, photo filter and channel mixer are there for you to use to make some overall adjustments if needed. You can also add layers, layer masks and paint in 32 bit mode, but for the purposes of this tutorial we don't have to bother with that.
Now we get to do the fun stuff! We need to drop the image down to a smaller bit sample in order to have something practice to work with. Go to image->mode->8 bits/channel.
This will bring up the HDR toning dialog below.
HDR Toning Options
Each HDR photo will generally have it's own best settings. The "local adaptation" method gives us the most control over our HDR image so we will use that. To start us out on the right track, Photoshop has included several presets which we can use to get a good list of settings to work with. The presets are: Default, flat, monochromatic, more saturated, photorealistic and surrealistic along with high contrast and low contrast versions. Look at the following images to see how each setting affects the HDR photo we are building.
For this particular image the photorealistic high contrast and the normal surrealistic versions look the best in my opinion.
HDR toning in depth
When you're first starting out with the HDR toning options you might feel a bit overwhelmed with the number of sliders and adjustments you can do. Here is a detailed explanation of each of the sliders which should make things a little easier.
Radius
Radius specifies how large of an area to group in brightness regions. Moving the slider to the right will result in larger edge glow. Higher contrast areas (such as trees against a cloud backdrop) will have a noticeable glow. When you first see excess edge glow it can appear to be a cool effect, but trust me, it gets old fast. It's a good idea to use lower settings for radius and strength to minimize the effect.
Strength
Strength tells Photoshop how far apart the tones of an image should be in order to be included in a brightness region. The further you move this slider to the right, the more detail you will have at the expense of creating halos.
Gamma
The gamma slider affects the contrast of the image. Moving the slider to the left will increase the contrast to give added punch, while moving the slider to the right will give a contrast which is closer to the feel of a painting.
Exposure
Often you will find that the merged HDR photograph is slightly off in exposure. Use this slider to to brighten or darken the overall image.
Detail
The detail slider adjusts the sharpness of your HDR photograph.
Shadow
Move the shadow slider to the left will darken the shadows to give more contrast. Moving the slider to the right will bring back some of the detail which may have been lost in the darker areas.
Highlight
Moving the highlight slider to the right will blow out the highlights in the photograph. Moving the highlight slider to the left will bring back detail while lowering the highlight brightness.
Vibrance
The vibrance slider works just like the saturation slider except that works on the less saturated pixels to prevent higher saturations from getting blown out. In other words it prevents colors from clipping.
Saturation
The saturation slider can be used to give the photo more color punch or to tone it down a bit. Lower saturation can lend itself to a more painting like quality.
Toning Curves and Histogram
You also have the option to adjust the photo using curves. Curves in HDR work just like curves you might apply to any other photo. I don't use curves in most of my HDR work because I get the results I'm looking for with the other settings.
The best way to learn is to practice on several HDR photos. You will find that different styles work better for different types of photos. For this image I decided to go with the surrealistic settings as a starting point. I bumped the shadows slider to 100% to get a little bit of the lost areas back. I also dropped the detail slider to 250% so I could get just a bit more detail in the blown out skin areas. I bumped up the vibrance to 80% to add more color punch and dropped saturation to 0%.
The HDR settings I used for this photo.
Here is the resulting HDR photograph.
The HDR image after toning has been applied
Right now the photo is looking pretty good but we need to make a few more adjustments. Having colors pop in a photo is great but a lot of times it's overdone with HDR. The first thing I want to do is tone down the blues showing in the dress. I do this by adding a selective color adjustment layer. In the selective color settings I selected the cyan and blue colors, and dropped the blacks to -100% for each. This has the effect of de-saturating just the blue tones in the image. For my personal taste, I didn't want to de-saturate the sky and the blues on the railing quite so much so I added a mask to keep those.
De-saturating the blue tones
The photo so far
I'm not a big fan of over-saturated skin so I created another selective color adjustment layer and dropped the reds to -90%. I used a mask so I could just apply the settings to her skin.
I really like the colors from the bricks, walls and windows on the old building, so I created a hue/saturation layer with the saturation increased to +42% and again used a mask to only apply it to the building walls. Here is the final image.
As you can see, HDR techniques can be used to create a truly unique look. When you get comfortable with creating HDR images, you will find that there are many ways that you can customize your own unique look. Thank you for checking out this tutorial and keep returning for more!
Article by Emmett Lollis Jr. November 5th 2010
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