alexkess

This is an old tutorial I found on my abandoned wordpress blog. I’m currently working on one that is a little more up to date and reflects a bit more expertise on my behalf. But I thought that this might be helpful to some, so I posted it here:

Today, I’ll give you some insight my expirience so far in HDR-Photography using Photomatix and Lightroom (For more detailed stuff i still use Photoshop, but I found lightroom to be more suited for photographers).
Firstly, I bracket most of my images with 5 Exposures (-4 -2 0 +2 +4 EV) and i still shoot RAW (I use a Nikon D200).

In Photomatix I will usually generate a HDR from these 5 exposures. If I haven’t used a Tripod, I will use allign images, which usually does the trick, but still doesn’t work as well as using a tripod.

I then go to the Tone-mapping section for the fine tuning. How I adjust the settings is very much down to the result I want to achieve.

I usually leave the strength at 100%, Luminosity at +10, and the colour Saturation between 50 and 70%. I usually change this in Lightroom later anyways, so it is good to have a lot of definition in the colour. It is a lot easier to desaturate the image, then to saturate it.

The Lightsmoothing I usually leave at 0. However this depends largely on how surreal I want to go.

I boost up the Micro Contrast to +2. This is a bit of a personal choice. I like my images on the darker side, this setting does a great job, while not loosing the detail.

Black and White Clipping I usually have at 5%, but this may change depending on the overall brightness of the image. It also may give you a bit more definition in the shades and highlights. Without these you sometimes end up with fairly flat image, that does not have any real highlights or shades.

The dramatic effect in the skies and clouds mainly is down to the micro-smoothing setting. To create the effect I normally bring the smoothing right down, sometijmes even to 0. The problem with this is, it can create noise (mainly in large ares of same colour and tonality, like clear skies). But there is a cure for this too.
In photoshop, you can “Gaussian Blur” it out. Use the Magic Wand tool to select all of the sky, then feather it slightly (maybe 2 or 3) and then filter->blur->gaussian blur and set it in between 2 and 6. That should get rid of most of the noise.

In Lightroom, I then change contrast, colour exposure, crop, etc. to finish the photo off.

The crucial part in my opinion is the amount of initial exposures and by how many stops they vary (i.e +2 EV or +1 EV). The light-smooting and the micro smoothing in photomatix are equallt important.

I am also a big fan of images taken around the time of sunset and sunrise (The Golden Hour), the light just has a different quality at that time of day, which sometimes really ads to the effect.

As I said I am really not an expert on this subject yet. Stuck In Customs’ Trey Ratcliff has got some great tutorials on his website.

Cheers,
Alex