HDR Workshop

This afternoon I took part in a HDR workshop. To start off we had a short lecture about HDR photography which went into where it's often used in the industry as well as where not to use it. So to start off, HDR means high dynamic range which in basic is photographs taken at multiple exposures and put together - either manually in Photoshop or in Photo-matix (which does the hard work for you) - to bring out the detail within the highlights and shadows to make a much more dynamic piece. There are many ways of manually creating your HDR image in photoshop so I'm just going to include the one I felt was easiest to do and understand.

During the workshop we had a chance to go through the steps then and there whilst we had tutors to help if we didn't understand. Below are the 3 stages it takes to create a HDR.

+2 stops

Neutral

-2 stops

Above is the final image when merged together.

How to take HDR photographs?

To create a HDR photograph you need to make sure you have the appropriate equipment for the photos you'll be taking, the one crucial piece of equipment you need is a tripod as when you're taking a shot, you're going t be taking the exact shot but using different camera settings so you will definitely want it to be in the same place. As for your camera settings you need to make sure that your quality is on raw as when you come to merge the images and edit, it'll be better quality. You need to select aperture priority when selecting your settings as aperture is going to be a major part when taking your images. When you're actually taking the images you need to be prepared to change your f stop in order to get a larger range than just taking an ordinary photo. When taking you're photos you want to take them but make sure you bracket when taking a shot. This means to take the shot but to also take the shot in multiple f stop states surrounding the one which highlights most detail.

Photoshop Method

- To start off open your image in Photoshop raw plug in. Edit this however you usually would keeping the exposure the same and open it as an image into photoshop

- Open the same original file and move the exposure/contrast/clarity to suit the foreground

- Open the same file again as a yet again a new layer and change the exposure/contrast/clarity to suit the background

- Now you need to make sure the first edited image is at the bottom in layers and with the background image above and the foreground image on top of them all

- You will now want to erase all of the background on the foreground layer as it will get rid of the background you don't want and haven't edited leaving you with the clarified/correctly exposed one on top.

- This is now your edited HDR created manually in photoshop using layers

- Another photoshop method is where you edit you image to be + a few f stops as well as editing the same image - a few f stop on top of keeping the original. You can the use the quick selection tool to choose the best parts or put it into photomatix so it can be done for you.

Photo-matix Method

As I've already said, you are able to to use photoshop to do this in many ways butt you can also use a program called Photo-matix. Photomaix automatically puts your images together for you which a lot of people find easier.

For this you would select your best image from your shoot and choose the images which were taken when bracketing (going up and down a few f stops either side) You can do your editing before or after merging the images but I prefer after as it's one image so therefore a lot quicker and simpler. You open the program and insert your chosen images, select the image drop down and choose hdr processing which then does all the work for you so now you have a hdr image.