HDR: Worth it?

You love it or you hate it. No inbetweeners talking about it.
As you try it, the temptation is to go all the way. The more you use it, the more you pull way back and use it as a tool.
It's here to stay, either way. Cameras have started the movement with Active-D Lighting.

With the help of a photo of Montreal's famed Silo No.5 from Mario Jean of Madoc Photo, we'll take a ride through options (excluding the crazy, grunge option!). And to make it easy, we'll start with only one, normally exposed shot. I'll also talk in Lightroom/Photomatix Pro, but any combination will do. I always use RAW (NEF, DNG, etc.) files because they hold the most data in the shadows and highlights, but Mario gave me a TIFF file, so, that's that.

The original photo has a lot of HDR potential. A nice sky, loads of details in the building and landscape and reflective water. The exposure is good and the composition is nice.

In the next image, the photo was imported into Lightroom. Exposure was not touched, but it was color corrected, sharpened and got a little contrast with the Tone Curve sliders. It was then exported to size as a JPEG. About a minutes work. It came out great because it was a good picture to start with. That's very important. HDR will not fix bad photos, it will only make them much worse.


For the next shot, we'll take it easy on the end result, but we'll make an HDR that won't make people scream.

Like I said, I only had one shot and making a pseudo HDR can be done, but not with very good results. So, in either the Lightroom Library or Develop Module, create a virtual copy and up the exposure by 2 full stops to overexpose it. Create another virtual copy and underexpose that one by 2 stops. You can do another on each end at +4 and -4 for a total of 5 shots if you have very light areas and very dark areas, but three is enough for us.

Now, you have 3 shots as if you bracketted the exposure in your camera. This method is especially useful if you want to HDR treat previously taken photos that do not have bracketted exposures. Export these shots as different 16 bit TIFF files. Import those into Photomatix, making sure you select 2 stops on the menu and then click the Tone Mapping button.

We will only touch the radial buttons for Light Smoothing and only one of the two on the right. The right-most selection is what was chosen here. For this more natural image, we want to only use Photomatix to merge the images for us. Don't try this in Photoshop, you'll be disappointed. Click process and then save the new TIFF file.

Bring the photo into Lightroom (or Camera Raw, etc.). Make a few adjustments to color saturation, etc. and then open it in Photoshop. Now, work on the image as it it was a normal photo, adding levels adjustments, sharpening, high pass, etc.

Do this once and the second time it will take you only a couple of minutes. You come out with a more punchy shot than the normally processed one and a lot more detail. Most notably is the rusty equipment above the pipes. They show rusty pipes instead of a black blob. I can now also see what's happening in background-left.

For the last shot (and this is as far as I'd ever go), more was done in Photomatix Pro. Here, the defaults were not used and the keys are Luminosity and Micro Smoothing with a little white and black point adjustment. This is where you get the famous clouds that made HDR famous and desireable. You still have to work in Photoshop, reduce noise where you can. HDR processing adds noise if you're not careful and you'll need less sharpening in Photoshop, but still do it.

This last image may still be a little much for some, but it is memorable as it smacks you in the face. HDR for the greenery in the image was removed completely. Leaves and grass, when not a main subject tend to get over sharp and ugly. The water was reduced by 50%. Ripples become knives in the water if fully processed. Play with the shot until you get what you want.

For me, the sky and water are cool and dramatic. The building looks either more ancient than it is or too grungy for me.

Once you go too far, I must say, it's difficult to back away. HDR can be like a drug.

The 'dirty' look is common with HDR and is why you don't see a lot of people photos done with it. But when they are done well, people photos look great. Think Nike commercials. People with darker skin look fantastic in HDR. You notice more of the lightening effect than the darkening, blotchy effect that looks dirty. Always watch for noise and if you wind up with some correct it with a noise filter like Noiseware Pro and then mask it in Photoshop so it doesn't smooth too much detail that you worked hard to get.

Abandoned places with dark corners, bulldozers, and those big, round hay bales are great HDR subjects destined for a little over processing. Inside homes with uneven lighting or windows or your pet in the dense shade of a tree are great choices for light HDR processing.

Thanks to Mario at Madoc Photo for the picture.

To see some examples of HDR, try Eric Bowers Photography. Eric stays on the edge, but his processing is consistent and his shots are interesting.
John Maslowski does excellent work at his Sirius2 Photoblog. You can tell John spends a lot of time getting it just right.
For the good, the bad and the ugly, try HDRCream.