It’s worth mentioning that the three (or five) exposures should be achieved by varying the shutter speed, and not the aperture. The reason for that is changing the aperture will also change the depth of focus, making it more difficult to merge the images in some cases, especially those with a shallower depth of field.
HDR gives many opportunities to expand the dynamic range of your camera. Personally, I think the sky is darkened too much in this image making the whole image feel rather muddy and I’d have taken a less is more approach, enhancing the sky detail but not darkening it so much. That apart, what a great video, with an excellent description and explanation of what hdr actually is!
💥Thank you. This was quite well done. I just did an HDR merge of two images of the Cummins Falls in Tennessee USA. There is sky in only a small section of the top middle of the frame and you can see that if you Google the falls. My bright image captured the details in the shadows with the sky blown out and my stopped down image got a nice blue sky. When I merged the two together, the final image did not show the nice blue sky anymore, even after pulling down the highlights. Pulling them down too much lowered other areas of the image where I didn’t want to reduce the exposure. I went to the HSL and increased the saturation of blue but it made the water more blue also which I didn’t want. So I went to masking and selected “sky” and did what I could to adjust the sky but at no point did it make it the same nice blue that I originally had in my lower exposure frame. I don’t understand why the original merge lost that nice blue sky. Any idea what went wrong because I don’t think that Lightroom classic HDR is that great.
Best explanation of the reasons to use HDR that I've come across 👏👏👏. Thanks Marc, very much appreciated, now to set the auto bracketing function and try it out.
This Lightroom demonstration has helped my real estate photography career take off! Thank you so much! What an in depth lesson! You certainly earned my sub and I’m now considering your course!
Thanks for explaining how this works. Just purchased a Canon 6D mark II and have since saw countless videos saying how awful the dynamic range is so hopefully trying this technique will work 🤞🏻
Thanks.... Have learnt a lot. Have taken shots in HDR of scenes with animals (I live on the boarder of Kruger in S. Africa) and have never known what to do when or if the animal moves. Another important lesson is degrading my photos with highlights and shadows. Am really trying to use curves a lot more and its taking a lot of practice.
Great explainer and walkthrough! Curious how you feel this interacts with Lightroom's new HDR exporting tools/gain maps, etc. Seems like you'd have to create two edits, one for SDR and one for HDR displays, and the HDR file will be automatically tone-mapped down to SDR for those kinds of displays. Is there a way to have the two 'best' edits export into a single file so regardless of display you'd end up with the best possible version of the image being displayed? Seems like we're in that middle 'growing pains' point with these technologies!
Great to hear a Brit for once. Also, letting us experience the video before asking for a like and subscription.I will definitely be looking out for more of your videos and advice.good work.
I thought you would use the HDR setting in Lightroom and thats it. I didn't know it is created from taking about three shots . I still don't think I understand . However, great video .
The new HDR update for Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom makes it so you can edit and export on a HDR display. Merge HDR (multiple photos) while it's been a feature, has always been processed in SDR standard dynamic range up until now. Of course, you need an HDR display for the new update.
How well does this process work if you just have one original Raw file with the middle exposure? Can you take that one file and process it say two stops brighter and another two stop darker and then do an HDR merge of those three?
Very common question Mark and although it's possible you will effectively be degrading the pictures then merging them back together. Better to get the correct exposures to merge.
What happens if instead of pictures with different exposure you merge pictures with different focus points, like close to camera, in the middle range and in the distance? Will you get an image with everything in focus?
That's known as Focus Stacking - it's used for a lot of Macro photography, as well as landscapes. There are lots of tutorials on how to do it on RU-vid or elsewhere online.
