Nothing beats the Lightroom workflow and cataloging. Also, I've found its HDR merge to be the best so far as well (in terms of the dynamic range and quality of the merged photo combined with CameraRAW's editing capability). However, to fix the fine details of the HDR merge artifacts, the only solution is to use manual blending, and there's not a good workflow for this. I need to manually edit all the bracketed photos to a similar brightness level and sync the editing, then export them to Photoshop, and do the manual overlay and masking. I hope there's something to improve this workflow....
I agree with this --"Nothing beats the Lightroom workflow and cataloging. Also, I've found its HDR merge to be the best so far as well". Yes as of now blending is a pretty manual process. Don't know a workaround for that other than just using and accepting HDR merge's result.
The purpose of blending and HDR merge is the same-- to get more detail in highlights and shadows. You can think of HDR merge as automated merging while blending is done manually. Here is a video I did on HDR merging on the ipad, I'll see if I can make one for the desktop soon. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mH4dgGO7rVk.htmlsi=xNomLi5xyxZ88UEv
I have used the 'new stack' option in Affinity Photo to blend 3 brackets. The output is fine to my eye and I do not need any other layers. Is this what you refer to as 'image blending' ?
Stack option is one type of blending. That basically takes the average of the dark, normal and bright exposures. The blending I'm referring includes some masking to combine the best parts of multiple exposures into one image. However both blending strategies have essentially the same goal.
@@takebetterphotos8132 : thanks for this update. Can the technique you demonstrate in this video also be used to create 'window pulls' for real estate photography ?
