Yip, it’s true! I was really excited when I came across the instructions (you see it really does pay to read your cameras manual) on how to take a series of shots which can be turned into a High Dynamic Range image.

What is a High Dynamic Range image?

In wikipedia words: “techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wider dynamic range allows HDR images to more accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight”

In English: if you take a photo of an area, like the gorgeous pool side setting, depending on how your camera is set – either the sky will be bright and detailed and the chairs will be dark and shaded OR the chairs will be bright and detailed and the sky will be dark and shaded…

So what do you do? You take three photos of the same scene using your cameras HDR capability and then you merge those three pictures so that they are layered on top of each other and basically the resulting image allows for all the sections of your picture to be in bright detail, even the shadowed areas that otherwise wouldn’t be.

How do you do this.

You use your Auto Exposure Bracketing on your camera. (AEB)
For my Canon – I press the menu button and find it in my settings menu. I chose to set my AEB to take three shots that each two exposures apart. So the first shot will be underexposed, the second will be correctly exposed and the third will be over exposed – each exposure being two up from the previous. I could choose to make the gap a lot greater and end up with images that are very under and over exposed on either side of my correct exposure. It is up to you depending on the look you want for your HDR shot.

With my AEB settings adjusted to how I want them I set my camera to continuous shooting mode. What is going to happen now is that when I press (and hold down) my shutter button – my camera is going to fire off three shots, taking three photos of the scene in each exposure bracket that I have selected. It is best to do these shots on a tripod to ensure alignment and exact scene replicas.

The camera has now done its part of the process. The next step involves Photoshop.

Open Photoshop (don’t open your images) Select File – Automate – Merge to HDR.
The screen that pops up asks you to select the images you want to merge. Click browse and go to where they are saved on your computer and add them to your merge list.

If you are running Photoshop CS3 or later – then select the “auto align” box. If you are not – then I hope you used a tripod ;)

When you have all your photos in the list click ok.
Your computer is now going to run the merge to HDR program like a processed machine. Just sit back and let it do its thing.

The next screen that will pop open shows your three images merged into one glorious HDR image.
Along the left side of the box you can tick or untick the various photos that make up your HDR image to see how it looks with or without them included.

You can also adjust your white point preview by sliding the slider bar up or down.

When you are ready you can click OK to create your file.

You have just made an HDR image!
Then you can go about your usual editing (brightness and contrast / hue saturation etc)

Just a note: your HDR image is a 32bit image. When you save it you will want to convert it to 16bit or 8bit for use. You can do this by selecting image – mode – and then 16 or 18bit.

PS - you don’t have to use Photoshop for this - there are other programs that are made just to create HDR images.

Here are some STUNNING sample images.

rodgersbw
 

hdr10Images by Colin