1. IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! My name is Ben Long and welcome
to HDR Shooting and Processing High
| | 00:10 | Dynamic Range Photos.
| | 00:12 | HDR or High Dynamic Range imaging is a
shooting and processing technique that
| | 00:17 | allows you to capture scenes with your
digital camera that are simply impossible
| | 00:22 | to record with a normal photographic process.
| | 00:24 | With HDR, you can take photos of scenes
that have tremendously bright areas and
| | 00:30 | deep dark shadowy areas and process
them to produce an image with good exposure
| | 00:35 | through both highlights and shadows.
| | 00:38 | Alter your process a little bit and you
can record tremendous levels of detail,
| | 00:42 | or press your images on into
a painterly or surreal world.
| | 00:47 | In this course, we're going to look
at all aspects of HDR production from
| | 00:51 | shooting to postproduction.
| | 00:53 | You are going to learn what HDR
techniques can be used for, how to shoot to
| | 00:57 | capture the best HDR ready data, and
how you might modify your techniques
| | 01:02 | depending on your subject matter.
| | 01:04 | As with any type of photography,
shooting is only half of the HDR process.
| | 01:09 | So once we're done taking pictures,
we will look in-depth and how to process
| | 01:13 | them using HDR software.
| | 01:15 | You'll learn how to use Photoshop's
built-in HDR features, as well as leading
| | 01:20 | HDR processors Photomatix
and NIK software's HDR FX.
| | 01:25 | Finally, because most HDR images need
more than just straight HDR conversion,
| | 01:31 | we will take a look at how you can
improve your images, how to use HDR to create
| | 01:35 | better black-and-white
images, and a lot of other stuff.
| | 01:38 | HDR is not a magic bullet.
| | 01:40 | It won't immediately make
you a better photographer.
| | 01:43 | In fact, it's very easy to arrive at
very ugly images using HDR techniques,
| | 01:48 | but for many circumstances, HDR techniques are
the best way to capture the image before you.
| | 01:54 | And in this course you'll learn
everything you need to add this valuable tool to
| | 01:58 | your shooting arsenal.
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| What you need for this course| 00:01 | You can shoot HDR images with any type
of camera, but you will definitely have
| | 00:05 | an easier time with some
cameras more than others.
| | 00:07 | We are going to cover several
different shooting techniques for handling
| | 00:10 | scenes with high dynamic range, but the most
popular involves shooting a series of images.
| | 00:15 | Now because we want the images to be
as similar to each other as possible,
| | 00:19 | it helps to have a camera with a fast burst rate.
| | 00:21 | In fact, the faster the better.
| | 00:23 | But if your camera can only manage
two or three frames per second, you will
| | 00:26 | still be doing okay.
| | 00:27 | Now those multiple frames that you are
shooting won't be completely identical;
| | 00:31 | instead their exposures will be bracketed.
| | 00:33 | That is, each frame will be exposed
slightly differently than the previous frame.
| | 00:38 | This is much easier to achieve if your
camera has an auto-bracketing feature,
| | 00:42 | which is sometimes referred
to as auto-exposure bracketing.
| | 00:46 | You will be using this in conjunction
with the camera's burst or drive mode.
| | 00:50 | Though not completely necessary, you
ideally want a camera with an aperture
| | 00:54 | priority mode to help ensure that all
of the images of your bracket set
| | 00:58 | have the same depth of field.
| | 01:00 | You will get the best results from your
HDR work if you have a camera that can
| | 01:03 | shoot in RAW not just JPEG.
| | 01:06 | Now because I'm usually pretty lazy, I
actually do most of my HDR work while
| | 01:11 | hand holding the camera.
| | 01:13 | However, there are times when the only
way you can get a good HDR shot is with
| | 01:18 | a tripod, and certainly any HDR image will
benefit from the stability provided by a good tripod.
| | 01:24 | If you are really a stickler for
sharpness, then you are going to want a remote
| | 01:27 | control to use when tripod mounting.
| | 01:30 | Now for postproduction, you
will need a copy of Photoshop CS5.
| | 01:34 | You can get away with an earlier version,
but some of the new HDR features that
| | 01:38 | we are going to cover here
are only available in CS5.
| | 01:41 | You will also be looking at
Photomatix and NIK software's HDR FX.
| | 01:48 | There are free demo versions of all of
these programs and we will look at where
| | 01:51 | you can get those when we get
to the postproduction sections.
| | 01:54 | Finally, you'll need a basic
understanding of exposure, what aperture and
| | 01:59 | shutter speed and iSO mean, and
how to change them on your camera.
| | 02:03 | You can learn more about exposure in the
Foundations of Photography: Exposure course.
| | 02:09 | So, if you're still not clear on what
kind of camera you need, know that if you
| | 02:14 | have an SLR, you're probably fine.
| | 02:16 | If you have an advanced point-and-
shoot, then you probably have aperture
| | 02:20 | priority mode, exposure bracketing, a
burst mode and possibly the ability to
| | 02:25 | shoot RAW, so you're probably okay.
| | 02:28 | If you have a more simple point-and-shoot,
don't run out and buy a new camera just yet.
| | 02:31 | It's possible that your camera will be
fine, but you will need to do some tests
| | 02:35 | and experiments to be sure.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you are a premium subscriber to lynda
.com or you have bought the DVD, well,
| | 00:06 | I'd just personally like to thank you,
but also I'd like to tell you that
| | 00:09 | you're in luck, because you should have access
to a folder of exercise files for this course.
| | 00:15 | So if you are a Premium subscriber, if
you are accessing this course online,
| | 00:19 | download this folder.
| | 00:21 | If you have it off of the DVD, copy
this to your desktop or documents folder,
| | 00:26 | just somewhere where you know where
it is where you can get to it easily.
| | 00:29 | Inside you'll find separate folders
for each chapter and in each chapter
| | 00:34 | you will find a whole bunch of, in this case,
images. Tthese are all are all RAW files.
| | 00:38 | Most of these raw files were shot
with a Cannon 5D Mark II, and we will be
| | 00:42 | working a lot with these
in Photoshop, Photoshop CS5.
| | 00:46 | Even if you've got CS5, you should
probably get the latest version of Photoshop
| | 00:50 | Camera RAW, which you can get from
Adobe's website for free at Adobe.com.
| | 00:55 | So it's a good idea to get that
updated and that will give you all the latest
| | 00:58 | raw processors from Adobe.
| | 01:00 | In the course of these lessons, if I
want you to open a file or we are about to
| | 01:05 | work with a particular file, you are
going to see a big yellow overlay come up
| | 01:08 | and it's going to tell you which files
you need to go get and I will also in
| | 01:12 | many cases direct you to them by name.
| | 01:14 | But if I don't, there will be a bit of
text to queue you into which ones you need.
| | 01:18 | There are a couple of places where I am
actually just demoing a process and I am
| | 01:23 | not providing you with the files
because we have only got so much space and
| | 01:25 | you don't really need them.
| | 01:26 | It's one that you just watch, but most of
these there are files that you can along with.
| | 01:31 | As I will say a couple times
throughout here, you are going to need a copy of
| | 01:34 | Photoshop CS5, a copy of
Photomatix, and a copy of HDR Efex.
| | 01:40 | Even if you don't plan to use all of
those, I really recommend following
| | 01:45 | along because in some of these
movies I'm not just showing you how to use
| | 01:49 | those specific pieces of software.
I'm kind of describing a thought process
| | 01:53 | and letting you know what I look for
and how I work through a particular image
| | 01:58 | editing problem and those steps are true
regardless of what software you are working with.
| | 02:03 | So it's worth going ahead and getting
that stuff installed, so you can really
| | 02:07 | follow along with each and every step.
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|
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2. What Is HDR?Dynamic range defined| 00:00 | When we refer to dynamic range, we are
speaking simply of a range of brightness.
| | 00:05 | For example, your eyes have a dynamic range.
| | 00:07 | That is a range of
brightness in which you can see.
| | 00:11 | If you go into a room that's so dark
that you can't see anything, then you're
| | 00:14 | outside the dynamic range of your eyes.
| | 00:17 | Similarly, if you're driving your
car west at sunset, you might be having
| | 00:21 | trouble seeing the road. You might
think of yourself as blinded by the sun.
| | 00:25 | But another way of thinking about this
is that you are again outside the dynamic
| | 00:29 | range of your eyes. You are
experiencing more light than they can handle.
| | 00:34 | Obviously, the more dynamic range
you can perceive, the more places where
| | 00:38 | you'll be able see.
| | 00:40 | Dynamic range also impacts your perception
of color, because colors have a brightness.
| | 00:44 | So when you see a greater range of
brightness, you can possibly perceive a
| | 00:47 | greater range of color.
| | 00:49 | You should already be familiar with the
photographic concept of a stop of light.
| | 00:54 | Every time the light in a scene doubles,
we say that it has increased by one stop.
| | 00:58 | Halve the light and we say
that it has decreased by one stop.
| | 01:02 | Therefore, stops are a measure of light.
| | 01:05 | And if you measure the dynamic range of
your eye, that is, the range from the
| | 01:09 | darkest light to brightest light that
you can perceive, you find that your eyes
| | 01:13 | have something in the range of
18 stops worth of dynamic range.
| | 01:17 | Now, you can't see that entire range at once.
| | 01:21 | If you walk out of a dark room into a
bright light, it takes your eyes a bit
| | 01:25 | before they can adjust to perceive that
brighter part of their range, but they
| | 01:28 | can't adjust themselves to see this
tremendous range of 18 stops worth of light.
| | 01:33 | By comparison, your camera probably has
a dynamic range of just 10 to 12 stops.
| | 01:39 | In other words, your camera might
have just barely better than half the
| | 01:43 | dynamic range of your eye.
| | 01:45 | Now this is a very important concept
to understand whether you are interested
| | 01:49 | in HDR or not, because you might see
a scene in the world with very broad
| | 01:54 | dynamic range, take a picture of it, and
then be disappointed when you get home
| | 01:57 | and find that there's no detail in
the brightest areas or that shadows have
| | 02:01 | gone completely black.
| | 02:02 | For example, say you came across me
right now standing in front of a bright
| | 02:06 | background like the sky.
| | 02:08 | To your eyes I'd probably look
something like you're seeing me right now.
| | 02:12 | That is you would be able to see
detail in the sky and on my face.
| | 02:16 | Thanks to your eye's tremendous dynamic range,
you'd have no trouble seeing this whole scene.
| | 02:22 | Now say you wanted to take a picture.
| | 02:23 | So you raise your camera and you shoot.
| | 02:26 | Most likely you would end
up with something like this.
| | 02:29 | I am now dark and shadowy.
| | 02:32 | Most auto features will expose to
preserve details in the highlights, because
| | 02:37 | blown out highlights are always less
attractive than dark shadows, but in this
| | 02:40 | case exposing for the highlights, the
bright background, leaves my face too dark.
| | 02:45 | Again, the camera just
doesn't have enough dynamic range.
| | 02:48 | You might review the image and say, oh,
| | 02:50 | that's no good, and so dial in some
over-exposure using maybe your camera's
| | 02:54 | exposure compensation control.
| | 02:56 | When you do that, I'll brighten back
up but the sky over exposes like this.
| | 03:01 | So now you have got me, but no sky.
| | 03:04 | In this case, there's nothing you can do
in camera with a single shot to capture
| | 03:09 | this scene the way your eye sees it.
| | 03:11 | It is simply beyond the
dynamic range of the camera.
| | 03:15 | Now, obviously I'm not really
standing in front of the sky like this.
| | 03:18 | I'm standing in front of a green screen,
because our video cameras are just like
| | 03:22 | you're still camera, they cannot
capture a scene the way your eye does.
| | 03:26 | They don't have the dynamic range.
| | 03:28 | So we have concocted this simulation
through some clever compositing on the part
| | 03:32 | of lynda.com's excellent graphics team.
| | 03:35 | In the real world, you will
find a lot of situations like this one.
| | 03:38 | Anytime you shoot someone in front
of a window in your house for example,
| | 03:42 | landscapes are often subject to
dynamic range issues also, because you often
| | 03:45 | have a very bright sky and a foreground
that's darker than the camera's dynamic
| | 03:50 | range can reach, if it is
exposing properly for the sky.
| | 03:54 | Basically, anytime there's a big
difference between the brightest and darkest
| | 03:58 | objects in your scene, you have
probably gone beyond the dynamic range
| | 04:01 | capabilities of your camera.
| | 04:04 | To be a good photographer, you have to
understand what your camera is capable of
| | 04:08 | seeing and know how that differs
from what you are capable of seeing.
| | 04:13 | If you can recognize when you're
facing a scene where your eye is showing you
| | 04:17 | more dynamic range than what your
camera will be able to capture, then you can
| | 04:21 | employ techniques to try to
capture all that extra range.
| | 04:24 | We refer to those techniques as HDR
or HDRI, High Dynamic Range Imaging.
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| Understanding bit depth| 00:01 | Whether you create a digital image by
scanning from a piece of film, taking a
| | 00:06 | picture with a digital camera,
painting in a painting program, or capturing an
| | 00:09 | image with a digital video camera,
however you do it, you are creating a grid of
| | 00:14 | pixels and each pixel has an individual color.
| | 00:20 | Every color is represented by a number.
| | 00:23 | So all red pixels might be represented
by the 4, while all purple pixels might be
| | 00:28 | represented by the 5.
| | 00:31 | The total number of colors that you
can represent depends on the range of
| | 00:35 | numbers that you have to work with.
| | 00:37 | If we have only 64 colors to
work with, then I look like this.
| | 00:41 | Whereas, if we have 8 colors to work with,
I look like this. 4 colors, 2 colors,
| | 00:47 | 256 colors, millions of colors.
| | 00:52 | The process of reducing the number of
colors that we have to work with is called
| | 00:56 | Posterizing and the range of numbers
that we have to represent the color of a
| | 01:01 | pixel is called bit depth.
| | 01:04 | A computer can only store
and manipulate 0s and 1s.
| | 01:07 | A single 0 or 1 is referred to as a bit
and we group bits together into bytes to
| | 01:12 | create larger numbers.
| | 01:14 | Now we usually count using a base 10 system,
most likely because we have 10 fingers.
| | 01:21 | If I limit myself to only two digits
when counting in base 10, and I don't mean
| | 01:25 | digit as in a finger, but digit as in
the 1s or 10s digit in number, with two
| | 01:31 | digits I can count from 0 to 99.
| | 01:34 | If I give myself a third digit,
I can count from 0 to 999.
| | 01:39 | A fourth gets me to 9999 and so on.
| | 01:44 | Computers count in binary or Base
2 system and it works the same way.
| | 01:48 | If you add another digit you can count higher.
| | 01:51 | In Base 2 with 8 digits or
bits, I can count from 0 to 255.
| | 01:57 | With 9 bits I can count from 0 to 512 and so on.
| | 02:02 | Therefore, if I say that I'm going to
store 8 bits of data for every pixel in an image,
| | 02:07 | then I'm storing a number between
0 and 255 and that number represents the
| | 02:12 | color of 1 pixel in the grid of
pixels that makes up my image.
| | 02:17 | In other words, I can have 255
different colors in my image, 256 if you
| | 02:22 | count black, which is 0.
| | 02:24 | We say that such an image
has a bit depth of 8-bits.
| | 02:29 | Now, this is not a measure of dynamic range.
| | 02:31 | The darkest and lightest colors can
be anything I want them to be, but with
| | 02:35 | 8 its per pixel I get only 256
slots between the darkest and lightest.
| | 02:42 | If I go to a higher bit depth,
say 10 or 12 bits per pixel, I get a
| | 02:47 | tremendously greater range of
numbers to work with and therefore a much
| | 02:51 | greater number of colors.
| | 02:54 | Now, your camera probably captures
10 to 14 bits of color per pixel.
| | 02:59 | The JPEG format only allows
8 bits of color per pixel.
| | 03:03 | So if you are shooting in JPEG mode,
then the camera throws out a fair amount of
| | 03:08 | color data before it saves the file.
| | 03:09 | I am talking about all this now
because later some of our HDR processes are
| | 03:15 | going to involve creating images with a
very high bit depth, 32 bits per pixel,
| | 03:20 | which allows us to store lots and
lots of colors and tones, and then we are
| | 03:24 | going to crunch those big numbers down
to 16 or 8 bit numbers and that crunching
| | 03:29 | down step, that change a bit depth,
is a critical part of certain HDR methods.
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| Image sensor and shadows| 00:00 | Here is a weird one.
| | 00:02 | If the amount of light in this room is
doubled, I do not actually perceive a
| | 00:07 | doubling of light. I perceive less than that.
| | 00:10 | All your senses work this way actually.
| | 00:11 | If someone hands me a bowling ball
and then they hand me a second bowling ball,
| | 00:15 | I'll probably think, "I really wish this
personal will stop handling me bowling balls."
| | 00:19 | Then I might actually realize that I'm
not experiencing a doubling in weight.
| | 00:24 | Our senses are nonlinear.
| | 00:26 | That is my sense of brightness does
not follow perfect doublings. My sense of
| | 00:31 | brightness increases on a curve.
| | 00:33 | Now don't worry too much
about understanding that.
| | 00:36 | The practical upshot of it is that we
end up with a very good ability to see
| | 00:40 | detail in bright highlights and dark shadows.
| | 00:43 | The image sensor in your camera
though captures light in a linear fashion.
| | 00:46 | If you double the amount of light, the
image sensor records a doubling of brightness.
| | 00:51 | This has a curious effect on
image capture and it goes like this.
| | 00:55 | Let's say my camera can capture
4,096 different shades or tones.
| | 01:01 | Half of those 4,096 available tones go
into representing just the brightest stop in my image.
| | 01:08 | That is half of the data I capture is
being used to represent the very, very
| | 01:14 | brightest things in the scene.
| | 01:16 | Now half of what's left over from that goes
into representing the next brightest stop.
| | 01:20 | Half of what's left over from that
goes to the next and so on and so forth.
| | 01:24 | When all this plays out, by the time I
get down to the darkest stop in my image,
| | 01:28 | that is all the shadowy parts of the
scene, I may only have 4 or 8 or maybe even
| | 01:33 | just two tones available to
represent all the data in those areas.
| | 01:38 | Now, earlier you saw what happened when
we used only a few tones to represent my image.
| | 01:43 | I got posterized.
| | 01:44 | That same thing can happen to the
shadow areas in your image, because of the
| | 01:47 | nature of linear capture.
| | 01:49 | Worse though is that because there's
so little data for those areas,
| | 01:53 | the signal-to-noise ratio of your shadow
images degrades, and so you end up with
| | 01:57 | shadows that have ugly noise
patterns in them. Colored splotches usually.
| | 02:03 | If I want more data in the shadow
areas, then I can choose to underexpose.
| | 02:07 | Then the brightest things in my image
are not so many stops away from the shadow
| | 02:11 | tones that I end up with too
little data for the darkest areas.
| | 02:15 | Of course, then my bright
things aren't very bright.
| | 02:16 | My image looks dingy.
| | 02:18 | In other words, if I want to expose
normally, that is to ensure good highlight
| | 02:22 | detail and have a good level of
overall brightness, then there's a very good
| | 02:26 | chance that I'm going to have noise in
my shadows, simply because the camera
| | 02:30 | can't capture enough data
down into the shadow areas.
| | 02:34 | With HDR techniques, I
don't have to worry about this.
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| Three methods for capturing more dynamic range| 00:00 | When you encounter a scene with very
high dynamic range, there are several
| | 00:04 | different ways that you can choose to handle it.
| | 00:06 | In Foundations of Photography:
Exposure we looked at three ways of handling
| | 00:09 | backlight situations.
| | 00:11 | Fill flash, intentionally overexposing,
or using a different metering mode.
| | 00:17 | These options will help even out
the exposure, so that your foreground
| | 00:20 | element is well exposed, but they
won't necessarily capture the full dynamic
| | 00:24 | range of your scene.
| | 00:25 | Depending on your image, you might
still have an overexposed sky or an
| | 00:29 | underexposed shadow area
in your scene somewhere.
| | 00:32 | If you want to really capture more
dynamic range, then you'll need to resort to
| | 00:36 | one of these tactics.
| | 00:37 | First, you can try to assess if
there's really a picture to be had.
| | 00:40 | There may not be, because it may simply not
be possible to capture a usable image in some
| | 00:45 | situations, especially if you're
shooting into bright lights or something which
| | 00:49 | can cause bad flare on your lens.
| | 00:51 | Hopefully though, you'll find
that one of these alternatives works.
| | 00:55 | If you're shooting a landscape or
another type of image where the very bright
| | 00:58 | part of the scene is delineated by a
horizon like line, then you can try fitting
| | 01:03 | your lens with a Graduated
Neutral Density filter or ND filter.
| | 01:08 | An ND filter cuts out light without
altering any of its properties and a
| | 01:13 | Graduated ND filter performs this cut
through a gradient, so there's a lot
| | 01:17 | of cut on one side of the image and a
smooth transition through to no cut on the other.
| | 01:22 | This will dim the brightest parts of
the image, effectively reducing the dynamic
| | 01:26 | range back to something that your
camera can capture. Because it's a graduated effect,
| | 01:30 | you won't see any
kind of harsh dividing the line.
| | 01:33 | Now what's tricky about a graduated
filter is that it can be hard to get that
| | 01:37 | boundary of filtration positioned just
right, and anything in your scene that
| | 01:41 | sticks up into the bright part of the
image, or a building sticking up in front of
| | 01:44 | the horizon for example,
| | 01:46 | that'll also get filtered.
| | 01:47 | Still, if you shoot a lot of landscapes,
carrying a Graduated ND filter is not a bad idea.
| | 01:53 | Another option is to shoot the image
like you normally would and then use
| | 01:58 | your image editor to restore the
part of your image that's beyond your
| | 02:01 | camera's dynamic range.
| | 02:03 | For example, here's an image we're
going to work with later when we get to the
| | 02:06 | postproduction portion of this course,
wherein we darken the sky and make some
| | 02:10 | other changes to fit the full
dynamic range back into our image.
| | 02:14 | If you're going to this, then you
want to expose for the highlights.
| | 02:17 | That is, expose so that the
highlights in your scene are not overblown.
| | 02:22 | This means that the bright bits will look
good so you'll be using your image editor
| | 02:25 | to brighten the dark parts of the image.
| | 02:28 | Doing this we require masking and an
understanding of tonal adjustments in your image editor.
| | 02:33 | Now the advantage to this technique is
that you can shoot the way you always do,
| | 02:37 | but disadvantage is that
that masking bit can be tricky.
| | 02:40 | If you need to mask around trees or
flowing hair or something partially
| | 02:44 | transparent or any other difficult
masking subject. Any of that's going to put
| | 02:48 | you into a lot of hard work.
| | 02:50 | Also, as we learned, because of the
nature of linear image capture, really dark
| | 02:54 | shadow areas often don't have much
image data in them and they might be noisy.
| | 02:58 | So you may only be able to brighten
those areas so far before you exaggerate
| | 03:03 | noise or introduce other
visible artifacts of some kind.
| | 03:07 | Another option, shoot two exposures,
one exposed for the brightest part of
| | 03:12 | the image and another exposed for the
darkest, then you can take those two
| | 03:15 | images into your image editor and composite
them, so that you take the best bits from each.
| | 03:20 | This will allow you to have
extreme highlight and shadow detail in a
| | 03:23 | single final image.
| | 03:24 | Now performing that composite is going to
require masking to get the images to blend together.
| | 03:29 | So again, if you've got difficult
masking subject matter, leafy trees or hair
| | 03:34 | or fluffy animals or waving wheat, you might
have a difficult time creating an effective mask.
| | 03:39 | Also, if there's something in your
image that's moving, you want to make sure
| | 03:43 | that it's not located on that scene
where you're going to blend your images.
| | 03:47 | These are all valuable techniques
and we'll look at all of them in this course,
| | 03:49 | but there is one more process
that's significant enough that it gets its own movie.
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| HDR shooting and processing| 00:00 | When people talk about HDR photography,
they're usually referring to a process
| | 00:04 | wherein you shoot multiple frames in
a particular way and then merge them
| | 00:08 | together using special
HD or processing software.
| | 00:11 | Learning that process is going to be the
bulk of this course. Here is how it works.
| | 00:15 | You find a scene that you like that has more
dynamic range than your camera can capture.
| | 00:19 | You frame your shot and you take a picture
according to your camera's normal metering.
| | 00:24 | This picture is probably going to
have overexposed highlights and possibly
| | 00:27 | shadows that are too dark.
| | 00:29 | Next, you take a second picture with
the exact same framing, but this time
| | 00:33 | underexposed, usually by a full stop.
| | 00:36 | This underexposed frame will probably
bring those overexposed highlights back
| | 00:41 | into the range of your camera.
| | 00:42 | those areas will now have detail in them.
| | 00:44 | Finally, you take a third frame, this
one overexposed usually by one stop.
| | 00:49 | This image will have wildly overexposed
highlights, but all of its shadow detail
| | 00:54 | should be much more visible.
| | 00:56 | So we've got three frames. If you
want you can shoot more and continue the
| | 01:00 | bracketing outward for example.
| | 01:02 | You could shoot a fourth frame exposed two
stops under and a fifth exposure two stops over.
| | 01:08 | Typically, I find that I only need
three and a one stop bracket over and under
| | 01:13 | is all that I need to get a good final result.
| | 01:15 | Now let's think about what we've got here.
| | 01:17 | We have three images. We have one with
clear detail on its mid-tones, we have a
| | 01:21 | second with very good detail on its
highlight areas, and a third with very good
| | 01:26 | detail in its shadows.
| | 01:27 | In other words, this set of three
images covers a much broader dynamic range
| | 01:32 | than any one single shot.
| | 01:34 | Now I'm going to take a second to
talk about that term High Dynamic Range,
| | 01:38 | because honestly it's a little misleading.
| | 01:41 | Your camera like your eyes has a dynamic
range that it can capture in a single shot.
| | 01:46 | We can't do anything to expand that.
We can only hope that image sensor
| | 01:51 | technology improves and that when
that happens the giant ,ultinational
| | 01:56 | corporation that made you camera will
feel so bad that you have older technology
| | 01:59 | that they will just give you a new one for free.
| | 02:01 | And as long as we're hoping,
let's just go all the way.
| | 02:04 | More importantly than your camera
though, and I'm assuming here that you're
| | 02:07 | ultimately going to print your image,
a piece of paper has a dynamic range.
| | 02:12 | The darkest tone that it can hold
depends on the black ink that you use and how
| | 02:16 | that ink sits on that particular type of paper.
| | 02:19 | The lightest tone is dependent on the
color of the paper itself, because white
| | 02:24 | in a print is just a spot
on the page with no ink on it.
| | 02:27 | There's nothing we can do to expand
the dynamic range of a piece of paper and
| | 02:31 | paper is always going to have a smaller
dynamic range than your camera or your monitor.
| | 02:36 | We can buy better paper, which will
have a bigger dynamic range, but it will
| | 02:39 | still be a smaller
dynamic range than our cameras.
| | 02:42 | When we talk about the HDR process,
we're not actually talking about a process
| | 02:46 | of expanding dynamic range.
| | 02:48 | That's simply not
possible for any chosen device.
| | 02:51 | Instead, we're talking about a
process of compressing dynamic range.
| | 02:55 | HDR software starts by taking that
bracketed set of images that you took and
| | 03:00 | layering them on top of each other,
getting them perfectly registered.
| | 03:04 | Then it intelligently combines them
through a process called tone mapping.
| | 03:09 | The result is a final image that has a
broader sampling of tones than you could
| | 03:14 | capture with a single shot.
| | 03:16 | The overall dynamic range though
remains the same, the overall dynamic range
| | 03:20 | of your output media.
| | 03:21 | After I print an HDR image,
the darkest thing on this piece of paper is no
| | 03:27 | darker than the darkest thing that
can be printed from a normal single shot image.
| | 03:31 | Similarly the brightest thing is
no brighter than what I can get from a
| | 03:35 | normal single shot.
| | 03:36 | And everything that I'm saying
here also applies to your monitor.
| | 03:39 | When you create an HDR image, your monitor
cannot suddenly display a darker or brighter
| | 03:43 | tone that it could before.
| | 03:44 | What tone mapping does is it goes to
the underexposed image and it looks up
| | 03:49 | the brightest tones and it puts those
into a new image. Then it does to the
| | 03:53 | overexposed image and grabs the darkest
tones, which are actually much lighter
| | 03:57 | than the same areas of the underexposed
image, and it puts those into our final image.
| | 04:02 | In other words it looks through all three
images to cherry-pick tones that are well exposed.
| | 04:07 | It remaps a selection of tones from all
of three images to create a single final
| | 04:13 | image that can show detail
throughout the entire tonal range.
| | 04:17 | That's a broad overview of the
process and for it all to work,
| | 04:20 | you have to take special care when shooting.
| | 04:22 | Also your HDR software will provide you with
a lot of control of that tone mapping step.
| | 04:28 | Obviously, this process depends
heavily on good post-production, using very
| | 04:32 | specialized tools, but once you've
done this all a few times, you should find
| | 04:36 | that overall it's fairly simple procedure.
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| Single-shot HDR| 00:00 | Tone mapping is a very powerful tool.
| | 00:02 | It can cherry-pick the very best tones from a
multitude of images to create a new final image.
| | 00:08 | Now obviously the more image data
that it has to work with, the better the
| | 00:12 | chance is that the tone mapping software
will be able to find a good source tone
| | 00:15 | for every little pixel in your image.
| | 00:18 | As you've seen an image with higher bit
depth can have a broader selection of
| | 00:21 | tones than an image with a lower bit depth.
| | 00:24 | JPEG images always have 8-bits per
pixel, while RAW files typically have 10
| | 00:29 | to 14 bits per pixel.
| | 00:30 | So it's usually better to shoot RAW images
for your HDR work, for the greater Bit Depth.
| | 00:36 | If you worked with RAW, then you know that the
same RAW file can be processed in different ways.
| | 00:42 | You can change white balance, alter
contrast, increase or decrease the exposure.
| | 00:47 | Perhaps you see where I'm going with this.
| | 00:48 | To make an HDR, we need at least three
images with bracketed exposures, but can
| | 00:54 | you create just that from a RAW file? Sort of.
| | 00:58 | You can take a RAW file, process it
normally, save that, then lower the
| | 01:02 | exposure, process it, save that, and
do the same for an increased exposure.
| | 01:07 | Now you've got three different files.
| | 01:09 | This is called faux HDR or single-shot HDR.
| | 01:13 | It does give you a tone-mapped look.
| | 01:16 | But remember that when you alter the
exposure in your RAW converter, you're not
| | 01:20 | creating data that wasn't there before.
| | 01:22 | Yes, you might be doing a little
highlight recovery when you lower the exposure,
| | 01:25 | but you're not creating the type of
highlight detail that you would capture if
| | 01:29 | you had actually shot an underexposed
image or the type of shadow detail that
| | 01:34 | you'd capture if you'd
shot an overexposed image.
| | 01:37 | So while this will get you something of
an HDR look, it's not a substitute for
| | 01:42 | the full HDR process.
| | 01:44 | But it is often a good option for
times when you're shooting a scene that has
| | 01:47 | moving objects in it.
| | 01:49 | Something that doesn't work very well
with a full HDR process, because the
| | 01:53 | moving object precludes
having identical frames to merge.
| | 01:56 | I want to clear up one
more thing before we go on.
| | 01:59 | I said that your camera probably
captures 12 to 14 bits of data per pixel when
| | 02:04 | you're shooting RAW.
| | 02:05 | We don't actually save a 12 or 14 bit file
out of Photoshop. We save a 16-bit file.
| | 02:11 | Now this doesn't mean that we
certainly have 16 bits of data per pixel.
| | 02:15 | It just means we have a 16-bit
container with 12- to 14-bit data inside it.
| | 02:20 | It's like each pixel value has a
bunch of leading zeros in front of it.
| | 02:24 | So single-shot HDR creates an HDR
look, but one that's different from
| | 02:30 | full HDR and both of those are of course very
different from a single normal dynamic range images that we shoot.
| | 02:37 | In the next movie we'll look at how
they're different and what that means for
| | 02:41 | your photographic vocabulary.
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| When to use HDR| 00:00 | Taking a picture involves answering a lot
of questions and solving a lot of problems.
| | 00:05 | How should I frame my shot, how can I
frame all those power lines, do I want
| | 00:09 | motion to be blurry or frozen, do I
want deep depth of field, how can I work
| | 00:13 | around that backlighting, how can
I preserve detail where I want it?
| | 00:16 | HDR techniques are just another set of
tools that you have at your disposal for
| | 00:20 | addressing all of those various problems.
| | 00:23 | HDR techniques will not
help you with every image.
| | 00:26 | On some images they'll have no effect at all.
| | 00:28 | But as we've seen and as we'll be
exploring throughout this course, for certain
| | 00:32 | situations HDR techniques give
you another way to solve particular
| | 00:37 | photographic problems.
| | 00:39 | For the entire history of photography,
photographers have been dealing with
| | 00:42 | the fact that that their cameras
cannot capture the full range that they can
| | 00:46 | see with their eyes.
| | 00:48 | Because of that limitation,
photographic vocabulary developed around the ideas
| | 00:52 | of light and shadow and their interplay.
| | 00:55 | And so, as photographers, we frequently
choose to plunge shadows into darkness
| | 01:00 | or choose to let highlights
blowout the complete white.
| | 01:04 | As viewers and even just as people who
shoot snapshots, we've all become used to
| | 01:08 | photographs that look like,
you know, photographs.
| | 01:12 | We're used to not seeing detail
in every shadow and highlight.
| | 01:15 | HDR changes all that.
| | 01:16 | Suddenly we have the ability to have
perfect exposure throughout our image.
| | 01:21 | This has a few impacts on
our jobs as photographers.
| | 01:24 | First, it can make an image look really flat.
| | 01:27 | Your main job as a photographer is to
ensure that the viewer understands what is
| | 01:32 | the subject of your image
and what is the background.
| | 01:35 | But if everything is exposed equally, the
viewer can get lost in an image of flat even tones.
| | 01:41 | As an HDR photographer we have to think
even harder about what detail should be
| | 01:45 | visible in our scene and how
to bring focus to our subject.
| | 01:49 | As a viewer, people often recognize
an HDR scene as being manipulated, even
| | 01:54 | if they don't quite know how or what it is
that they're recognizing as a manipulation.
| | 02:00 | With image editing you never want
your edits to upstage your image.
| | 02:03 | A good edit is one that the viewer never
recognizes, and HDR is often very recognizable.
| | 02:11 | So as we work through this course, we're
going to be trying to address these questions.
| | 02:15 | While we will go over how to create
extremely surreal processed-looking images,
| | 02:20 | my goal is usually to create HDR images
that don't look like obvious HDR images.
| | 02:25 | I try to continue to use the same
photographic vocabulary that I use in my
| | 02:29 | normal non-HDR shooting.
| | 02:32 | And so I aim for nice interplay between
shadows and highlights and always try
| | 02:36 | to figure out how to better reveal my subject.
| | 02:39 | Thanks to HDR, I have more flexibility
and, if I want it, more detail and tonality
| | 02:46 | at my disposal as I try
to solve those problems.
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|
|
3. Shooting and Organizing HDRFinding HDR subject matter| 00:00 | A while ago I was out shooting with a
friend who is an experienced photographer and
| | 00:04 | they said, "I just forget
about HDR a lot of times."
| | 00:08 | If you are new to HDR shooting, it can
be easy to forget that you have this tool
| | 00:12 | at your disposal and even experienced
HDR shooters sometimes get stuck in kind
| | 00:16 | of a rut as they assume that HDR
is only for certain situations.
| | 00:21 | So before we go out to shoot, I want to
take a quick look at three examples and
| | 00:24 | talk about how HDR can serve them.
| | 00:27 | The first is interiors.
| | 00:29 | I am here in this abandoned ruin and
obviously I have got a couple of problems.
| | 00:33 | I have this very, very bright thing out
the window which is biasing my exposure
| | 00:37 | way, way dark, and so I
am losing all this detail.
| | 00:40 | This was shot as the camera metered.
| | 00:43 | This is one shot underexposed and you can see
that I have picked up a lot of detail outside.
| | 00:49 | The sky still looks
overexposed and it still looks white.
| | 00:51 | I am not worrying about
that here for two reasons.
| | 00:54 | One, it was mostly overcast,
so the sky was pretty white.
| | 00:59 | I mean there just wasn't a lot
of texture there, but also, again, our
| | 01:02 | photographic literacy means that to a degree
we are not expecting perfect blue out here.
| | 01:07 | So that's okay.
| | 01:08 | This is one-shot overexposed and it's
showing me all this nice detail in here.
| | 01:12 | When I HDR the three images, I end up with this.
| | 01:16 | So a lot of things have happened here.
| | 01:18 | I have picked up a tremendous amount of
texture on the walls, a whole lot of detail.
| | 01:21 | I've preserved all of this detail out
the window, and as you'll recall, our
| | 01:26 | regular exposure, which was here,
this stuff was really blown out.
| | 01:30 | So I have pulled a lot of
nice detail back into here.
| | 01:33 | Now, you might say, well, the image
doesn't really look like a photo or it looks
| | 01:37 | a little flat or something.
| | 01:38 | And that may be true.
| | 01:39 | You can dial all these
parameters back and forth.
| | 01:41 | You don't have to go as far as
I did here, by way of example.
| | 01:45 | So interiors are a good place for HDR,
even if you're not facing a back lighting
| | 01:50 | situation, even if you're not trying
to shoot out of a window. Interiors very
| | 01:54 | often have very varied light,
particularly big spaces, cathedrals, and churches,
| | 01:58 | and things like that.
| | 02:00 | So HDR is simply a good way to preserve as
much detail as you can when shooting inside.
| | 02:06 | Objects, just things lying around,
particularly coloring things or textury things
| | 02:12 | are also good HDR subject matter.
| | 02:14 | Here is someone who had some parking
difficulties and what I liked about this
| | 02:19 | was one, it's a car stuck in the ground,
and two, I knew that all of this stuff
| | 02:23 | could maybe be something cool, if it
was amped up a little bit HDR wise.
| | 02:28 | But also I knew the sky back here was
probably going to turn into something.
| | 02:31 | This is as metered, and again, we are
beyond the camera's dynamic range here.
| | 02:36 | As metered, it was not able to
preserve much detail back here.
| | 02:39 | While I was standing there, I was able
to see a lot of texture in the clouds.
| | 02:42 | My camera couldn't.
| | 02:44 | One stop under does show some more
detail; one stop over, brings me more
| | 02:50 | detail down here, brightens up some of
my white tones, but blows the sky out
| | 02:54 | completely. Merged, I get this.
| | 02:57 | I didn't go super far with this image,
in so far as my HDR effect goes, but I
| | 03:02 | have managed to pull the sky back and I
do have some nice play on some of these
| | 03:06 | textures and things.
| | 03:07 | So objects, indoors, outdoors. Don't
think that HDR is only for capturing big
| | 03:12 | spaces where there are lots and lots of
varied light. Even just shooting small
| | 03:17 | things and thisisn't even
actually that small of a thing.
| | 03:18 | It's a car, but still, even smaller
things can work with HDR, and of course, the
| | 03:23 | obvious one, landscapes.
| | 03:25 | Here is a landscape with a
broad range of lightning.
| | 03:27 | I have got these bright bits back here where
the sun had come out from behind the clouds.
| | 03:32 | I have got deep shadow in the foreground.
| | 03:34 | This is it as metered.
| | 03:36 | This is one stop under, which serves to
put a lot of texture back in the bright
| | 03:41 | bits on this cloud and this is a
sandstorm here. This is probably 20 stories
| | 03:46 | high worth of sand blowing to this valley.
| | 03:49 | So you can see the difference between
my regular exposure, watch this area in here,
| | 03:53 | and my underexposure, pulls back some
more detail, but obviously I lose a lot here.
| | 03:58 | My overexposure blows the sky out
completely, but picks up all of the detail
| | 04:03 | here in the foreground, and
when I merge them, I get this.
| | 04:06 | So landscapes, again, are very
oftenly kind of obvious HDR scenario
| | 04:11 | because landscapes very often have
a huge dynamic range and HDR is the
| | 04:16 | only way to capture them.
| | 04:17 | So don't get in rut. Don't forget about HDR.
| | 04:20 | Know that there are lots and lots and
lots and lots of places that you can use it.
| | 04:25 | Now the good news is no matter what
you are shooting and where you are,
| | 04:29 | the techniques that you use for shooting
are pretty much the same, and we are going
| | 04:33 | to take a look at those in detail as
we go out shooting in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shooting HDR| 00:00 | I am out here on this old railroad
trestle to do a little HDR shooting.
| | 00:04 | And before we get started on how I am going
to do that, I want you to notice something.
| | 00:08 | The light is beautiful.
| | 00:09 | I am out here in the late afternoon/early evening
because that's when you-- and the plants are getting closer--
| | 00:15 | because that's
when you take good pictures.
| | 00:17 | Just because I'm shooting HDR, just
because I am going to have this tremendous
| | 00:20 | amount of dynamic range and color to
work with, doesn't mean that I don't have to
| | 00:25 | worry about good light.
| | 00:26 | HDR is not a substitute for good light.
| | 00:29 | I still want the long shadows, I still
want the rich textures, I still want the
| | 00:32 | deep color, I still want the nice
tone that I get from afternoon light.
| | 00:36 | You don't go out at noon and because
you are shooting HDR, suddenly I have this
| | 00:40 | magic bullet for bad light.
| | 00:41 | So I've waited for the light to turn good,
I've looked for subject matter that's
| | 00:45 | going to work well in the
good light and here I am.
| | 00:48 | Why did I choose this location?
| | 00:49 | A couple of reasons.
| | 00:50 | It's got all this colored graffiti on
it and one of the things that I can do
| | 00:54 | with HDR is really play up those colors.
| | 00:56 | So I think that that colored
stuff might look pretty cool--
| | 00:59 | These plants are just, like, friendly.
| | 01:03 | It's also got all of this rusty
texture on it, there are things about to fall over,
| | 01:07 | and I think a lot of that rusty
texture is going to get really interesting
| | 01:10 | once it becomes more
detaily and kind of crunchy.
| | 01:13 | HDR is very good for those kinds of effects.
| | 01:16 | What I don't have here is a really high
dynamic range situation that I couldn't
| | 01:20 | handle with a normal single exposure.
| | 01:22 | I could shoot the bridge this way.
| | 01:25 | HDR is going to give me this extra color.
| | 01:26 | I'm not having all this overblown
highlight or deep dark shadow problem.
| | 01:30 | So this is the case where I am doing
HDR just for these more stylized reasons.
| | 01:35 | So I got to get my camera
ready before I can do anything.
| | 01:37 | Now as you know, for this to work, I
need to shoot three images bracketed one
| | 01:41 | stop apart and those images have
to be as identical as possible.
| | 01:45 | So there are few settings that I need to make.
| | 01:47 | First of all, I need to turn
on auto exposure bracketing.
| | 01:50 | Setting auto exposure
bracketing varies from camera to camera.
| | 01:53 | On this camera, I go into the menu, I
look for AEB, Auto Exposure Bracketing,
| | 01:58 | and I activate it and I am just
dialing in the bracketing that I want.
| | 02:01 | I have got -1, 0, and 1.
| | 02:03 | I am going to hit SET
and my bracketing is ready.
| | 02:06 | Now when I do that, what's going to
happen is when I press the button down the
| | 02:10 | first time, it takes as shot as metered.
| | 02:12 | When I press it the next time, it takes
the shot one stop under because of the
| | 02:16 | way that I configured my auto bracket.
| | 02:18 | When I press it again,
it takes a shot one stop over.
| | 02:22 | That gives me three shots
bracketed one stop apart.
| | 02:25 | Now I got a lot to do. I am a busy guy.
| | 02:27 | I don't have time to be on my own
pressing that shutter button over and over.
| | 02:30 | So I am also going to turn on Drive mode.
| | 02:33 | When I do that, as long as I hold the
shutter button down, it will continue to shoot.
| | 02:37 | Because auto bracketing is turned on, it
will also automatically bracket those shots.
| | 02:41 | The real reason that I'm doing this,
I am actually not that busy of a guy.
| | 02:44 | I have got time to press the button
three times, but I need those shots to come
| | 02:47 | as quickly as possible, because when
they are composited, they need to be
| | 02:50 | registered as well as they can be.
| | 02:53 | With Drive mode on, it's going to knock
them off pretty quickly and so there's
| | 02:56 | less chance that I am going
to suffer from camera shake.
| | 02:58 | Also, it's very windy out here.
| | 03:00 | The plants are blowing around.
| | 03:01 | I want the shots taken as quickly together
as possible so that there's less movement.
| | 03:06 | There still might be some ghosting
from the movement, but we will try and
| | 03:08 | deal with that later.
| | 03:09 | So I have auto exposure bracketing turned on.
| | 03:12 | I have got Drive mode turned on.
| | 03:14 | If your camera has multiple drive mode
speeds, some have a fast and a slow, put
| | 03:19 | it in the fastest mode you can.
| | 03:20 | I have only got the one drive
mode speedso I have set it there.
| | 03:23 | Let's think for a moment about this shot.
| | 03:26 | It's a long railroad trestle.
| | 03:28 | I would like it to all be in focus.
| | 03:30 | That means deep depth of field.
That means small aperture. That means I
| | 03:34 | want aperture control.
| | 03:35 | So I put my camera in Aperture Priority mode.
| | 03:38 | When I am in the priority mode and I'm
using auto bracketing, the camera will
| | 03:42 | still respect that priority.
| | 03:44 | So I have told it aperture
priority and I have dialed in F11.
| | 03:48 | Now when it's bracketing, it's only
going to achieve those exposure changes
| | 03:53 | through changes in shutter speed, so I
don't have to worry about my depth of
| | 03:56 | field changing from shot to shot,
which would look weird when I try to do a
| | 04:00 | merge if far-away stuff
is a little bit soft focus.
| | 04:03 | So once again, Auto Exposure Bracketing,
Drive mode, Aperture Priority at F11.
| | 04:10 | Those are a lot of settings to make.
| | 04:11 | I've configured them all.
I am ready to start shooting.
| | 04:13 | I want to give you a little hint though.
| | 04:14 | There's an easier way than doing it this way.
| | 04:16 | If your camera has the ability to store
custom mode settings and this camera does.
| | 04:22 | On my Mode dial, I have got
Program and Shutter Priority and Aperture
| | 04:25 | Priority and Manual.
| | 04:26 | I've also got C1, C2, and C3.
| | 04:28 | Those are custom modes that I
can configure any way that I want.
| | 04:31 | I've configured my camera so that
when I go to custom mode, I automatically
| | 04:35 | get Aperture Priority at F11, one stop,
Auto Exposure Bracketing with three
| | 04:40 | shots, and Drive mode.
| | 04:41 | So I am ready to go just with that one switch.
| | 04:44 | If you're walking around and you're
mixing it up, you are shooting some
| | 04:46 | normal and some HDR stuff,
| | 04:48 | having a custom mode is a
really speedy way to work.
| | 04:52 | So with all those settings done,
I'm ready to start shooting.
| | 04:54 | How does shooting work?
| | 04:55 | It's pretty simple.
| | 04:56 | I frame and shoot just the way that I
always would, but I take extra care to be
| | 05:02 | really stable in my shooting.
| | 05:04 | I keep my arms tucked into my sides.
I have got my feet shoulder-width apart.
| | 05:08 | I have got my neck straight.
| | 05:10 | I am pulling my camera all the way
to my face and I am just going to be
| | 05:13 | really, really stable to try to
ensure that those three shots are as close
| | 05:16 | together as possible.
| | 05:18 | One other very critical detail if you
are using a camera with a very, very high
| | 05:22 | pixel count on its censor.
| | 05:23 | This is a 21-megapixel camera.
| | 05:25 | I have found that when you are shooting
handheld with a camera above much more
| | 05:32 | than 15 megapixels, there's a good
chance that your software is not going to be
| | 05:36 | able to register your images.
| | 05:37 | I am shooting in RAW mode because
we always want to be doing RAW mode
| | 05:41 | if possible for HDR.
| | 05:42 | Fortunately, this camera has
something called sRAW mode which cuts
| | 05:45 | the resolution in half.
| | 05:46 | I am set on sRAW so I am actually
only shooting at 12 megapixels because
| | 05:50 | I am shooting handheld.
| | 05:51 | That's going to greatly improve my
chances of registering the images.
| | 05:54 | If I was shooting on a tripod, I
could put it in full RAW mode at full
| | 05:58 | resolution, but because I am shooting
handheld, I cut the resolution down just
| | 06:02 | to help ensure that I am getting better merging.
| | 06:04 | So now I am going to do a little shooting.
| | 06:11 | So I've stabled myself up. I framed my shot.
| | 06:14 | I have very gently squeezed the camera and
knock off those three images in quick succession.
| | 06:18 | Bracketing mode is
automatically bracketing them for me.
| | 06:21 | I am trying a few different things here.
| | 06:27 | I want to go a little bit wider on my
shot to get more distortion of the structure.
| | 06:31 | So I am moving in closer.
| | 06:38 | And I'm just trying a few different framings.
| | 06:40 | I am not really sure what the keeper is.
| | 06:41 | I like these shadows on the ground.
I want to keep them in play here.
| | 06:47 | And that's good, but I also
like the symmetry of this thing.
| | 06:50 | So I am going to come out here to the
middle and see what happens if I just
| | 06:52 | frame the thing up in the middle of the frame.
| | 06:54 | A lot of times people are afraid to
just put something in the middle of the
| | 06:57 | frame because they are afraid
that's too regular and boring.
| | 07:00 | Regular and boring is often very good.
| | 07:02 | Sometimes if you get too fancy,
you are just trying to look clever.
| | 07:05 | So I am going to take the boring shot here.
| | 07:07 | Unfortunately, my shadow is in the image.
| | 07:11 | So I am going to come back here
and zoom in and see what I can get.
| | 07:21 | I have gone low just to mix it
up, just to try different things.
| | 07:27 | I'm working the shot.
| | 07:28 | I'm taking as many
different frames as I can think of.
| | 07:31 | It's very, very, very rare that when
you're walking around the world and you see
| | 07:35 | the interesting shot that you just
happen to be standing in the best location in
| | 07:38 | the world to take that shot. No one
goes into a scene, takes one picture, and
| | 07:43 | then goes home with a good image.
| | 07:45 | Okay, maybe some people do,
but it's very, very rare.
| | 07:47 | You have got to work the shot, you got
to try everything you can think of, you
| | 07:50 | got to try and mix it up.
| | 07:51 | Now, this blowing grass is
a drag. It's moving a lot.
| | 07:54 | It's moving a lot between frames
because the wind is really blowing hard.
| | 07:58 | There's a very good chance that that's
going to show up as little ghost grass
| | 08:01 | images in my final composite.
| | 08:04 | There's nothing I can do about that
short of getting a machete and chopping it
| | 08:07 | all down and I just don't have one in my bag.
| | 08:10 | So my only options are processing options.
| | 08:13 | I can choose to try this as a single
shot HDR. That is, to take one image, save
| | 08:17 | out different exposures
from it, and try and merge those.
| | 08:21 | I don't need to go back and shoot
separate single-shot images because those
| | 08:25 | bracketed sets that I have shot all
have a regularly exposed image in them.
| | 08:29 | There are going to be times when
you're out shooting, when you think "While I
| | 08:32 | like this scene, I am not sure if it should
be a regular image or an HDR image." Fine!
| | 08:35 | Just shoot the HDR set because
you're getting the regular image for free,
| | 08:39 | unless you really, really need to do some
special weird metering to get the normal image.
| | 08:44 | For the most part, you can
shoot an HDR setting at what you want.
| | 08:46 | Does that mean you should
just shoot HDR all the time? No.
| | 08:49 | Some things just don't
lend themselves to HDR at all.
| | 08:51 | Fast-moving subjects.
People don't work very well.
| | 08:54 | Their skin tends to turn crunchy and weird.
| | 08:56 | So no, you shouldn't shoot HDR all the
time or else you are going to end up with
| | 08:59 | a mess of images that are drag to work with.
| | 09:02 | It's good to get out and experiment and see
what kind of affects you can get from HDR.
| | 09:06 | The obvious ones are landscapes.
| | 09:08 | Skies always look great in HDR.
| | 09:09 | They're typically high dynamic range
scenes that really benefit from HDR.
| | 09:13 | Objects can look very interesting
because they pick up lots of texture.
| | 09:16 | People can look interesting.
| | 09:17 | Interior shots are very good
because you can still see things out the
| | 09:20 | windows, shooting objects.
| | 09:22 | Don't just get fixated that there's
one type of image that's good HDR.
| | 09:26 | Go out and experiment, try
shooting lots of different things.
| | 09:29 | But then remember that as you learn
more about it, that there are times when HDR
| | 09:34 | is a good tool and times when it's not,
and as you do this some more, you are
| | 09:37 | going to learn how to mix it up and when
it's appropriate to use one or another.
| | 09:40 | Hopefully, what you realized here as
the important thing is you got to get
| | 09:42 | out and practice.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Workflow and organization| 00:00 | Starting in the next chapter, we're
going to dive into multi-shot tone mapping
| | 00:04 | HDR, the kind of HDR that most
people think of when they think HDR.
| | 00:10 | But before we start merging and
mapping images, I want to take a moment to
| | 00:13 | discuss organization.
| | 00:15 | If you're out shooting multi-shot HDR,
you will inherently be coming back with
| | 00:19 | a tremendous number of images and it's
very easy to get overwhelmed after you've
| | 00:24 | dumped them all onto your computer.
| | 00:25 | For every scene that you've shot, you'll
have at least three images depending on
| | 00:30 | how much you were bracketing and if
you were doing the correct job of a
| | 00:33 | photographer and working your shots,
shooting it from lots of different angles,
| | 00:36 | trying and experimenting in lots of
different ways, then you'll have three shots
| | 00:40 | for each one of those experiments.
| | 00:41 | So it's very easy to open up those
images that you've just downloaded and go,
| | 00:46 | oh boy, this is a whole a lot of data
and not even know where to start and kind
| | 00:49 | of get discouraged.
| | 00:50 | Also, it's easy to lose track of which
images go together to create a single HDR set.
| | 00:57 | So I want to talk a little bit about
how you stay organized and how you build a
| | 01:00 | functional HDR workflow.
| | 01:02 | I'm here in Bridge, but the things I'm
going to show you here will also work
| | 01:06 | in Lightroom or Aperture because both of
those applications provide similar features.
| | 01:11 | If you are working on a Photo Mechanic
or on another workflow application, I'm
| | 01:15 | sure you can find it
corollary to what I'm describing here.
| | 01:18 | These are the images that we shot on the
trestles and I poured them all into one folder.
| | 01:23 | And the first thing I do is I keep the
original filenames because I like the
| | 01:28 | sequential numbering, because odds are
if I get confused, I can fall back on
| | 01:32 | image numbering to know which
images fit together into a set.
| | 01:36 | So you can see here, I've got 14, 26, 27,
and 28, those are pretty obviously a
| | 01:40 | set of HDRs. I can see this one is
darker than this one, and this one is
| | 01:44 | lighter than the two of them.
| | 01:46 | Sometimes it's going to be harder to
tell like these images down here, that are
| | 01:49 | little more evenly exposed.
| | 01:52 | When that happens, I can fall
back on my metadata display.
| | 01:55 | Click on an image to select it in Bridge
and if I look over here at the Metadata
| | 01:59 | panel, this little thing right here,
these two dashes, indicate that that
| | 02:02 | there is no exposure compensation
dialed into this image, unless I was shooting
| | 02:06 | in Manual mode, which I'm not.
| | 02:08 | I can assume that this is how
the camera metered the shot.
| | 02:11 | I go to the next image and I see -1.
| | 02:14 | This image has one stop of underexposure
and the next one has one stop of overexposure.
| | 02:21 | So this is most likely a bracketed set.
| | 02:23 | I can even go on and look at the next image
just to be sure yeah, it's back to as metered.
| | 02:28 | So I know that this is a
single bracketed set of images.
| | 02:32 | Bridge, Lightroom, and Aperture all
have a feature called stacking which is a
| | 02:37 | great thing for the HDR photographer
because it allows us to group a set of
| | 02:41 | images into a logical entity called a stack.
| | 02:45 | I'm going to select these three that I
know are a bracketed set, and go up here
| | 02:49 | to the Stacks menu and choose Group as Stack.
| | 02:53 | I could also hit Command+G or Ctrl+G
depending on whether I'm using Mac or Windows,
| | 02:56 | and when I do that those three
images collapse down into this thing.
| | 03:01 | I am going to deselect it here so you
can see this is what an unselected stack
| | 03:05 | looks like, a little stack of images.
| | 03:07 | It will never have more than just two layers.
| | 03:09 | And up here in the upper left-hand
corner is this little 3 badge which means
| | 03:13 | there are three images in this stack.
| | 03:15 | So the thumbnail shows me the
first image and this tells me how many.
| | 03:19 | If I click on it, the stack opens up to
reveal all of the images that are inside.
| | 03:24 | If I want, I can rearrange the images.
| | 03:27 | I tend to keep them in bracketed
order which means straight numeric order.
| | 03:30 | I can close the stack up again.
| | 03:32 | So in addition to keeping my images in
a stack, I can de-clutter this view by
| | 03:39 | getting rid of a bunch of
kind of redundant images.
| | 03:41 | So I'm going to select these.
| | 03:43 | I had clicked the first one, hold
down the Shift key, click this one.
| | 03:46 | It selects everything in between.
Command+G stacks the images.
| | 03:50 | Another way to do this is with the arrow keys.
| | 03:52 | This is how I usually work.
| | 03:54 | With my first image selected, I'll hold
down the Shift key, hit the arrow key to
| | 03:58 | go to the next image, and it
gets added to the selection.
| | 04:00 | The next one gets added to the selection,
then Command+G groups the images.
| | 04:04 | Now arrow key to go to the next set.
| | 04:06 | And I can just work through my images here.
| | 04:09 | I'm doing this by eyeball. I'm pretty
assured that that's a bracketed set.
| | 04:13 | If I want to double check, again, I can
just hit the arrow key to go over here,
| | 04:18 | take a quick glance down here to look at
my exposure compensation, look at those
| | 04:23 | three images, and look at the next one.
| | 04:25 | Yup, that's a bracketed set.
| | 04:26 | Shift key to select them and group them.
| | 04:28 | So I can work very quickly
here to get my images grouped.
| | 04:32 | Now Aperture has a feature called auto
stacking which looks at the timestamp
| | 04:37 | on your images, and tries to figure out
automatically which images are part of the bracketed set.
| | 04:43 | It works pretty well.
| | 04:44 | It doesn't always work, but it's
often a good way if you've got a
| | 04:47 | thousand images in a folder,
| | 04:48 | iIt's a good way to quickly get an initial
set of stacked images done very, very quickly.
| | 04:53 | I'm going to just stack all these.
| | 04:55 | Now I know that each one of
these has a bracketed set.
| | 04:57 | Again, I've de-cluttered my screen here.
| | 04:59 | I'm looking only at basically
individual shots, but everything I need to finish
| | 05:04 | the HDR is inside this stack.
| | 05:06 | As we work up the finished HDR as we're
going to be generating more files.
| | 05:10 | I'll take those files and throw them back
into the same stacks, which is cool because
| | 05:14 | then when I'm done I've got my finished
HDR and all the components necessary to
| | 05:18 | build it, all contained
in this one logical entity.
| | 05:22 | So again, staying organized from the
beginning is very important step as we move
| | 05:26 | through the rest of our HDR process here,
because when you come back from an HDR shoot,
| | 05:30 | you've just got a
lot of images to deal with.
| | 05:32 | So let's look at what we do to get them merged.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Expanding Dynamic Range Through MaskingUsing gradient masks to improve dynamic range| 00:00 | When we talk about expanding dynamic
range, it's usually the multi-shot tone
| | 00:05 | mapping special software HDR process
that gets all the attention, but very often
| | 00:11 | all you need to do to solve the
dynamic range problem is a little selective
| | 00:15 | tonal adjustment, which you can
achieve through some simple masking.
| | 00:19 | As we discussed earlier, in most
cases your camera will expose to protect
| | 00:23 | highlights and that will tend to
underexpose darker areas in your scene.
| | 00:27 | However, very often you'll be able to brighten
up those darker areas to even out your exposure.
| | 00:32 | We're going to do that right now with
a raw file that I shot on a cloudy day.
| | 00:36 | Now, I first took a picture of this
scene exposed normally and I got this.
| | 00:41 | Now, there are some bright spots in
the clouds up here but because this is a
| | 00:46 | RAW file I could probably recover those.
| | 00:48 | However, it was a very dramatic sk,
and I knew that I'd really want to play
| | 00:52 | up the contrast in the clouds and
that I would have an easier time of that
| | 00:56 | with a darker exposure.
| | 00:58 | So I dialed in some negative exposure
compensation, shot again, and got this.
| | 01:04 | This is the image we're going to work
with and right off the bat you might look
| | 01:07 | at it and say, well, that's too dark.
| | 01:08 | And it is too dark, except look.
| | 01:10 | The sky already is a lot more
dramatic than what we were seeing before.
| | 01:13 | So this is working to get us a sky
that's a little bit crunchier and got some
| | 01:17 | more drama in it, but we're way
outside the dynamic range of the camera here
| | 01:20 | because this ended up too dark, so
we're going to have to brighten that up.
| | 01:23 | Now, this is a RAW file, so when I
open it up in Photoshop, the first thing
| | 01:27 | that happens is it gives me the
Camera RAW dialog box, which you should be
| | 01:31 | familiar with by now.
| | 01:32 | So what I need to do is figure out how
to brighten just the foreground and I
| | 01:35 | can do that in Camera RAW with a gradient mask.
| | 01:39 | Now, this gradient mask may not be
the only edit that I need, but it's a
| | 01:42 | good starting place.
| | 01:43 | So if I click up here on the Graduated
Filter, and when I do that I get a set of
| | 01:49 | exposure controls over here.
| | 01:50 | I'm not going to worry too much about--
actually I'm not going to worry at all
| | 01:53 | about getting these set properly,
because I can't really tell what they're
| | 01:56 | supposed to be until I've got the mask on.
| | 01:57 | So I want to click where I want this
adjustment to be strongest in the image,
| | 02:02 | and so I'm brightening. So I'm going
to click down here in the grass and I'm
| | 02:04 | going to drag up here and as I do,
our brightening gets ramped off.
| | 02:10 | Now, I don't know that this is the
right amount of brightening. I can't tell
| | 02:13 | that for sure until I get the mask in
place, so I'm going to put this here.
| | 02:16 | And that's kind of not doing too much,
so I'm going to brighten it up some
| | 02:20 | more and there we go.
| | 02:21 | now we're getting somewhere.
| | 02:22 | I am going to dial in some contrast too,
and I might as well dial in a little
| | 02:28 | Clarity, just make some of that
crunchy grass texture appear more.
| | 02:33 | Now, why is this edit working?
Because it really is. I've got a very
| | 02:36 | natural looking image here.
| | 02:38 | I have a bright foreground and
I've still got my nice dark sky.
| | 02:42 | Depth queuing is one of the ways
that we see depth in the real world.
| | 02:45 | Very often we expect things to get
darker towards the horizon, so the fact
| | 02:48 | that we are brightening up this part
of the image and slowly ramping off that
| | 02:52 | brightening until there's not very much up
here, this is the original tone of the image,
| | 02:57 | that actually looks very often
like something we expect to see.
| | 02:59 | This is not an unreasonable type of
lighting to see in a scene like this and
| | 03:02 | our eyes recognize that.
| | 03:04 | So this is a case where just with a
single gradient mask, I can make a big
| | 03:07 | change to this image.
| | 03:08 | Now, again, this may not be the
only edit that I want to make.
| | 03:11 | If I go back here to my global
adjustments, I can see that I probably want to
| | 03:17 | maybe brighten up the whole image a
little more and maybe dial in some contrast
| | 03:22 | to the whole image a little more.
| | 03:24 | I'm watching these areas
very carefully on my screen.
| | 03:27 | They're not overexposing and I'm not
seeing any clipping over here, so that can
| | 03:32 | work a little bit better.
| | 03:33 | After I print it I may decide that I
need even more adjustment, but this is a
| | 03:37 | very simple way of effectively doing
the same type of thing that we do in HDR.
| | 03:42 | We have chosen one exposure for one
part of the image and another exposure for
| | 03:47 | another part of the image, and in a lot
of cases this will be the only type of
| | 03:51 | adjustment that you'll need to get more
apparent dynamic range into your image.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| More dynamic range masking| 00:00 | Selectively editing tones like we
did in the last movie is basically like
| | 00:04 | dodging and burning in a darkroom.
| | 00:06 | For years darkroom photographers have
struggled to selectively tone images using
| | 00:11 | analog dodge and burn techniques,
which entail a long time to master.
| | 00:14 | Fortunately, our digital tools are much easier.
| | 00:18 | However, the gradient tool that we
looked at in the last lesson isn't
| | 00:21 | appropriate for every image, because you
don't always have an area that you want
| | 00:25 | to mask that has a straightedge on one side.
| | 00:27 | Fortunately, Photoshop has
lots of it in the masking tools.
| | 00:31 | Now a full masking lesson is way
beyond the scope of this course, but we're
| | 00:34 | going to take a quick look at two more
masking examples, both of them instances
| | 00:38 | where a gradient filter wouldn't work.
| | 00:40 | In the Chapter 4 exercises folder
you should have an image called cat.
| | 00:45 | Open that up and again this is a
raw file, so it'd open in Camera RAW.
| | 00:48 | And I've got pretty much the same
situation I had last time. I got a sky that I
| | 00:51 | would like to get a little more dramatic.
| | 00:53 | And I am going to just poke around with
some settings here to see how much data
| | 00:57 | there maybe in the sky, what I might
be able to do with it, and it looks like
| | 01:00 | there is some more texture
to be brought out in the sky.
| | 01:05 | In doing that though, I am
obviously darkening the foreground.
| | 01:08 | So I'm going to need again
to do some selective masking.
| | 01:11 | Now I can't use the gradient tool here,
because the edge of the horizon isn't flat.
| | 01:16 | It's got this hill in it and some cat
ears, and a column and some other stuff,
| | 01:20 | so I need some different
masking tools to solve this problem.
| | 01:24 | So this is not a masking chore that I
can do in Camera RAW. I'm going to have to
| | 01:28 | do this in Photoshop.
| | 01:29 | I'm going to put these back to their
original settings and I'm going to take a
| | 01:33 | look at my Histogram and I see that
there are no overexposed highlights.
| | 01:37 | In fact, I am not even pushing the
highlights at all, so I don't need to do any
| | 01:40 | highlight recovery, something
that I can only do in Camera RAW.
| | 01:43 | So I'm just going to take
these settings and hit Open Image.
| | 01:47 | Actually I'm going to first change this and
make sure that we're working with 16 Bits/Channel.
| | 01:51 | Just because that's going to
give me more editing latitude.
| | 01:55 | I'm going to be able to push my edits
farther before I start seeing posterizing
| | 01:59 | and bending and other ugly things.
| | 02:01 | I hide Bridge back there
so we just see our image.
| | 02:05 | So I'm going to start by editing my
sky to the tonality that I want, because
| | 02:10 | that's the area that I'm want more dramatic.
| | 02:12 | So I go to my Layers palette, I go
down here to New Adjustment Layer and I
| | 02:16 | choosing Levels adjustment layer.
| | 02:19 | Now everything I'm doing here should
be stuff that you are familiar with.
| | 02:21 | You should already know about adjustment
layers and how to use Levels and that kind of thing.
| | 02:26 | So what I'm going to do here is just see
what I can pull out of the sky in terms
| | 02:30 | of some nice better contrast.
| | 02:32 | So I'm going to work on mostly midtone contrast.
| | 02:36 | I don't want to brighten things up too
much, because these areas in here start
| | 02:40 | looking overexposed.
| | 02:41 | And so if I push my Midtone slider
over there to the right, I can pick up a
| | 02:45 | little more midtone contrast in these areas.
| | 02:47 | Now one problem is this bit is
starting to look really dark.
| | 02:52 | However, I think that what I might do
to this image ultimately is vignette it a
| | 02:55 | little bit, so I'm going to worry too
much about that darkening, the little
| | 02:59 | oversaturated. We'll take care of that thing.
| | 03:01 | Important thing to realize is I got
my sky the way that I want it, but my
| | 03:05 | foreground is too dark.
| | 03:06 | So again, I've got the situation
here where I need to create a mask.
| | 03:09 | So I'm going to now use one
of Photoshop's selection tools.
| | 03:14 | This is the Quick Selection tool,
which is a brush that you can use for very
| | 03:19 | quickly intelligently making
masks and certain types of situations.
| | 03:23 | I want a bigger brush size than this, so
I'm going to use the right bracket key.
| | 03:27 | Left and right bracket in Photoshop
always changes the size of your current
| | 03:31 | brush and I'm just going to brush into the sky.
| | 03:32 | And as I do that Photoshop is doing
kind of a magic wandy sort of thing.
| | 03:37 | It's automatically searching and trying
to figure out where the boundary of this
| | 03:41 | selection should be.
| | 03:42 | And it's done a really good job, partly
because I had increased the contrast in
| | 03:46 | the image with that Levels adjustments.
| | 03:47 | So that's good, but I can't stop here,
because this is going to be kind of a
| | 03:52 | hard-edged selection.
| | 03:54 | You can see back here the boundary here
between the foreground and the sky, the
| | 03:58 | transition zone, is very blurry
because of shallower depth of field.
| | 04:03 | And so this mask as I have it
right now is going to be a hard edge.
| | 04:06 | So if I cut this mask like this, there
is going to be a very sudden change from
| | 04:10 | my tonal effect to not, and that's
going to look very obvious and possibly it
| | 04:14 | will leave a white or black halo
on one side or the other of my mask.
| | 04:17 | So I need to adjust the edge of this
selection, which I can do up here in the
| | 04:22 | Select menu with the Refine Edge command.
| | 04:25 | In Photoshop now with the Refine
Edge command we got this great thing
| | 04:29 | called Edge Detection.
| | 04:31 | And if I turn on Smart Radius here and
dial in kind of a big Radius, maybe about
| | 04:36 | 4 and then grab this brush right
here. I've clicked on it to select in.
| | 04:39 | Again, using my bracket to little make
a bigger brush. I'm going to brush over
| | 04:44 | the edge of my selection, and then
let go and when I do, Photoshop is just
| | 04:50 | going to think about this.
| | 04:51 | It's going to mull it over.
| | 04:52 | It's going to ponder what might
make a better selection on this edge.
| | 04:56 | Now, you can't see the details of it
too much when I'm zoomed out this far.
| | 05:00 | But what it's doing is it is examining
that transition zone and feathering the
| | 05:06 | edge of the selection in such a way
that that transition is going to be much
| | 05:12 | more gradual, rather than a sudden hard edge.
| | 05:14 | So all I'm doing is just brushing over
this edge and you may notice, as I brush,
| | 05:20 | there is a little bit of gray coming in here.
| | 05:22 | Those are areas that it is now deciding
to include within the selection and it's
| | 05:27 | including them as gray, which means
there are not going to get the full effect
| | 05:30 | of the edit, so that's good.
| | 05:32 | I know that it may not look like much,
but let's hit OK and it's going to think
| | 05:35 | for a minute, and there is my selection.
| | 05:37 | Now, in the marching ants view it doesn't
actually look any different. That's fine.
| | 05:41 | What I have done though is to select
the sky with this nice feathered edge.
| | 05:45 | What I want to do now is invert that
selection, because I want to create a mask
| | 05:50 | that blocks this part of the image
from that darkening that I applied.
| | 05:55 | So I'm going to go up here to my
Select menu and choose Inverse.
| | 05:58 | This is not invert the tones in the image.
| | 06:01 | That's a different command.
This inverses the selection.
| | 06:04 | In my adjustment layer I have this
layer mask over here which is currently
| | 06:07 | selected. The layer mask controls which
parts of the image will get the effects
| | 06:12 | of this adjustment layer.
| | 06:14 | You can think of it like a stencil.
| | 06:15 | If this is my adjustment layer, which is
applying a darkening effect to the image,
| | 06:19 | that darkening effect is being sprayed
through this adjustment layer onto my image.
| | 06:24 | Where the image is white, the adjustment
hits full on. Where it is black it's get
| | 06:30 | no adjustment at all. Where it's
gray, we get somewhere in the middle.
| | 06:33 | So what I can do now is fill in this
part of the mask that I've selected
| | 06:38 | with black, to protect this part of
my image from the darkening effect of
| | 06:44 | the adjustment layer.
| | 06:45 | So I'm going to choose black
and hit OK and there we go.
| | 06:49 | Look at my mask and you see I've got
white up above, meaning the mask is open.
| | 06:52 | I get the full effect of the edit.
| | 06:55 | Black means no adjustment at all.
| | 06:58 | Now these marching ant lines things
are annoying so I'm going to hide those.
| | 07:01 | I'm not sure that that I'm done with
the mask yet, so I'm going to go up here
| | 07:06 | and say hide Selection Edges. You can
also do it with Command+H. So this is
| | 07:12 | looking pretty good now I'm going to
show you before and after. This is before.
| | 07:15 | The sky is little blown out.
| | 07:16 | This is after. I've got some nice
detail in my sky and I've got foreground
| | 07:21 | that's pretty well exposed.
| | 07:22 | Now I would like to make the foreground
a little punchier. It's a little flat,
| | 07:26 | it doesn't have a lot of contrast,
but I don't want to alter my sky and
| | 07:29 | Fortunately I have a mask already
built to protect either one of those things.
| | 07:35 | So I'm going to turn on Selection
Edges so I can see this again and right now
| | 07:39 | this is the area that is selected.
| | 07:42 | If I make a new adjustment layer with a
selection already made, Photoshop will
| | 07:47 | automatically build a layer mask for me.
| | 07:50 | So what I'm going to do now is
increase the contrast in my foreground and I'm
| | 07:57 | getting only the foreground, because
of that nice handy mask that I had.
| | 08:00 | And if we look here in the Layers palette,
you can see, look, I've got this nice
| | 08:03 | layer mask already built up and
because image does needs one more thing, let's
| | 08:06 | brighten up the cat a little bit.
| | 08:08 | This cat was having a rough time with
other cats, so the least we can do is
| | 08:12 | brighten him up a little bit.
| | 08:14 | And so what I've done here is just add a
little brightening, and actually that's
| | 08:17 | brightening the entire
image and I think that's okay.
| | 08:20 | The image was a little dull before.
| | 08:22 | If I turn this off, you
can see, just a little flat.
| | 08:25 | Turn it back on. I get my
whites back where they need to be.
| | 08:28 | Now it turns out as I've adjusted
this image that I find that it had some
| | 08:31 | vignetting in it already, some naturally
occurring vignetting as a result of the
| | 08:36 | lens that I was using.
| | 08:37 | So don't think I need to add
anymore, so I'm going to stop here.
| | 08:39 | I think this is looking pretty good.
| | 08:40 | It's going to need to be sharpened.
| | 08:41 | Test print, and all that kind of thing.
| | 08:43 | So here is my before, here is my after.
| | 08:46 | I've good even exposure in the sky,
good even exposure in the foreground.
| | 08:50 | This, again, is in a way a form of
increasing the dynamic range of the image
| | 08:55 | for selected masking.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Masking with brushes| 00:00 | We're going to look at one more
masking approach to try to pull some dynamic
| | 00:05 | range back into a more reasonable zone.
| | 00:08 | In your Chapter 4 folder, you should
see a RAW file called View. Open that up
| | 00:13 | and you're going to get a RAW dialog box here.
| | 00:16 | So right off the bat, you can see that I've
got a huge dynamic range issue in this movie.
| | 00:21 | It's a backlight situation.
| | 00:23 | I've got this huge bright window out here
and I was trying to expose over foreground.
| | 00:27 | So I'm going to start by doing
my normal raw conversion stuff.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to do some highlight recovery
to get as much detail back as I can, and that
| | 00:34 | puts a little bit back in there.
| | 00:36 | I can try and get more with the
Exposure slider and look, there is some other
| | 00:40 | blue sea and some green.
| | 00:42 | There is no reason to go
much further than about there.
| | 00:46 | Now that darkens my foreground.
| | 00:48 | So I'm going to fill that back up
with Fill Light, which is roughly akin to
| | 00:52 | firing a flash into my scene.
| | 00:54 | I'm looking to be careful
about the edges of toes.
| | 00:59 | You always need to be worried about the
edges of toes when you're using Fill Light.
| | 01:02 | Actually you need to be worried about high
contrast edges that can pick up some artifacts.
| | 01:07 | So that looks pretty good,
but it could be better.
| | 01:09 | I think there is more saturation
and color to be had out of there.
| | 01:12 | Let's see what it looks like if I go
ahead and open this image and apply some
| | 01:17 | additional adjustments to it.
| | 01:19 | I'm going to, as we've been doing, make a
Levels adjustments layer and I'm going to darken it.
| | 01:25 | And when I do, I get some nice
additional color saturation in there.
| | 01:29 | I don't get much more detail and that's
actually not because of a dynamic range
| | 01:33 | issue, but because of a fog issue.
| | 01:35 | It was foggy out there and there
is not actually any detail to add.
| | 01:40 | So what I want to do now is create a
mask and really, the whole point of
| | 01:45 | this particular movie is to show you
that masking around irregular things
| | 01:49 | like this doesn't always have to be
intimidating, because sometimes you can
| | 01:52 | really get away with murder,
because you don't actually have to cut an
| | 01:56 | extremely accurate mask.
| | 01:58 | So what I want to do first is fill my
mask with black, which I'm going to do by
| | 02:02 | going to Edit > Fill, with
foreground color of black.
| | 02:07 | And before I do that, I have to make
sure that this bit is selected; otherwise I
| | 02:11 | could inadvertently fill my image with
black, which I could fix with an undo,
| | 02:14 | but I don't have time to be hassling
with lots of undoes and things like that.
| | 02:18 | Now what I want to do is grab a
paintbrush, some white paint, and just start
| | 02:23 | painting into my mask here to punch a
hole into it so that what's underneath
| | 02:29 | that part of the mask will get the effects
of the Levels adjustment that I've created.
| | 02:34 | Now you can see that I'm not being
real careful about where I'm painting.
| | 02:39 | In fact, I've spilled over a little bit
onto that post, but it doesn't matter.
| | 02:43 | It just looks like a
little bit of discoloring there.
| | 02:46 | I suppose if you're really a wooden
post expert, you might notice that that
| | 02:50 | looks a little strange, but most people are not.
| | 02:53 | And personally, I find you just
shouldn't trust those wooden post experts.
| | 02:56 | They are not the people
you should be hanging around.
| | 02:59 | So I'm just going to brush
these things into wherever I go now.
| | 03:01 | If I mess up, there I've darkened that,
and even that doesn't look that strange.
| | 03:05 | It could just be that that's a
natural stain of the wood somehow.
| | 03:09 | But if I mess up, I can fix this by
going back in and painting into the mask
| | 03:14 | with a different color.
| | 03:16 | For example, maybe I decide that I
really don't like that bit so dark.
| | 03:20 | So I'm going to swap my
colors here back to black.
| | 03:23 | You can see over here where
I'm punching holes in the mask.
| | 03:26 | So I'm just going to fill that part of the
mask back up, and I can undo my masking there.
| | 03:30 | So this is just another way of going
in and effectively expanding the dynamic
| | 03:37 | range a little bit by doing some
localized lightening and darkening.
| | 03:41 | We've got a little bit of a
tricky situation with this tree here.
| | 03:43 | Am I going to darken the whole tree or not?
| | 03:46 | I kind of like it in the fog.
| | 03:48 | So I'm not quite sure how I'm going
to handle that, but that's maybe just
| | 03:52 | something you are going to experiment
with and see how you like the look of it.
| | 03:55 | It looks a little strange to have the tree
darkened up there but not the posts around it.
| | 03:59 | So I'm going to undo that, but I've
brought a lot of detail to the sea and to
| | 04:04 | the wooded hills over here.
| | 04:06 | If I turn off this adjustment
layer, you can see the difference.
| | 04:09 | I like having that extra color saturation.
| | 04:11 | This plainly is not an image
that's meant to be a work of fine art.
| | 04:14 | I was simply trying to capture this
moment to make everyone who gotten left at
| | 04:19 | home feel terrible that they
weren't laying by the Mediterranean.
| | 04:23 | So it's really a vindictive kind of
image and therefore it's critical that I
| | 04:27 | be able to see what's in
the distance over there.
| | 04:29 | That's all I'm trying to do
is to bring out that detail.
| | 04:32 | So before and after. I've managed to
expand my color range a little bit, get a
| | 04:38 | little more detail in there, and I
haven't had to be especially picky about how
| | 04:43 | I'm doing this masking.
| | 04:44 | Other scenarios are not going to be so
forgiving to this type of effect, but
| | 04:48 | just because you see trees and things
doesn't mean you shouldn't give this a
| | 04:51 | try and see if the places where you're
masking efforts spill over into other content,
| | 04:56 | actually just see if it matters or not.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Processing Multi-Shot HDR Images in Photoshop CS5Creating an HDR image in Photoshop| 00:00 | In this course, we're going to look at
three pieces of HDR processing software:
| | 00:05 | Photoshop CS5, Photomatix, and HDR Efex.
| | 00:09 | In this movie, I'm going to show you the
process of merging and tone mapping in Photoshop.
| | 00:14 | Then in the next movie we're going to merge
and tone map the same images in Photomatix.
| | 00:19 | And in the movie after that,
we'll do it all again in HDR Efex.
| | 00:22 | I think you'll see that each program
has its own strengths in it. You're probably
| | 00:27 | going to want to end up with at
least either Photomatix or HDR Efex in
| | 00:31 | addition to Photoshop.
| | 00:32 | All three of these applications are
available for a free demo download.
| | 00:38 | You can get Photoshop at
adobe.com/downloads. That will give you the
| | 00:43 | latest version CS5.
| | 00:45 | Photoshop has had HDR Merge for a
couple of versions, but CS5 is the first
| | 00:50 | version where it's really kind of usable and
it's pretty different than previous versions.
| | 00:53 | So if you're using CS3 or CS4,
you'll need to get 5 to follow along.
| | 00:59 | We're not going to be taking these
images all the way to completion yet.
| | 01:02 | We're just getting them merged and tone mapped,
so you can see how the process works
| | 01:06 | in each application and what the controls are.
| | 01:08 | So let's start with Photoshop.
| | 01:10 | As I do with all of my photo processing
workflow, I start in Bridge and Bridge
| | 01:14 | is a very good place to start for HDR
also because it allows you to easily
| | 01:19 | launch into different HDR processors.
| | 01:22 | In the Chapter 5 folder of exercise
files, you should find three images:
| | 01:27 | 3714, 3715, and 3716.
| | 01:30 | And we can see just by looking at
them that they're a bracketed set.
| | 01:34 | This one is my normal exposure,
one stop under, one stop over.
| | 01:40 | So there are lots of different ways
of launching HDR Merge in Photoshop.
| | 01:45 | These are RAW images.
| | 01:46 | I could just go ahead and open them.
| | 01:48 | I'll do that and I get Camera Raw here.
| | 01:50 | I don't want to make any changes to them in
Camera Raw, simply because there's no need.
| | 01:54 | I'm going to take all of the data in the
images and merge it all into one big file.
| | 01:58 | I don't need to adjust it in any way.
So I'm going to select them all, which I
| | 02:02 | did by hitting Command+A and
I'm going to hit Open Images.
| | 02:06 | And it's going to go through the RAW
processing step, and I end up with three images.
| | 02:11 | Now if I go to File > Automate > Merge
to HDR Pro, this brings up a Merge to HDR
| | 02:19 | Pro dialog box, which is where I can
pick some images to merge and there are a
| | 02:22 | lot of different ways of picking them.
| | 02:24 | If I wanted, I could tell them I'm
going to pick some files and I can hit the
| | 02:27 | Browse button and then navigate to the
folder where those files are and simply
| | 02:32 | select them and they would appear in this box.
| | 02:34 | Or if I had already grouped the
files into a folder by themselves so that
| | 02:38 | those were the only things in the folder, I
could pick Folder and then browse to that folder.
| | 02:43 | Instead, I'm going to say Add Open
Files and that just adds all of the
| | 02:48 | currently opened files to this list.
| | 02:50 | I need to be sure that I don't have any
other files opened of any kind and then
| | 02:55 | I can hit OK and the process would start.
| | 02:57 | There's an easier way of doing this though.
| | 02:59 | I'm going to cancel out of here and I'm
going to just close all of these documents.
| | 03:02 | That's the long way.
| | 03:03 | I can't really give you a reason to
ever use that, unless you don't typically
| | 03:08 | start your workflow in Bridge,
would be one reason not to.
| | 03:12 | I can launch into HDR Merge
directly from Bridge though.
| | 03:16 | Simply select the images that you want
to merge in Bridge and then go up to
| | 03:19 | Tools > Photoshop > Merge to HDR Pro.
| | 03:23 | I pick that and it simply starts the process.
| | 03:26 | I don't have to go through any of
the problem of trying to find images.
| | 03:31 | So what's happening now is Photoshop
is doing the RAW conversion for these
| | 03:34 | images, opening them up, and
automatically copying each one of these images into
| | 03:39 | a single final document, wherein
each image exists as its own layer.
| | 03:44 | It then stops and shows me this.
| | 03:47 | This is the Merge to HDR Pro dialog box,
and I see a nice big thumbnail here.
| | 03:52 | And I see all of the images that I have
selected and it's identified that this
| | 03:56 | is the one that was exposed
normally and this is an exposure value of +1.
| | 04:00 | It's one stop overexposed.
| | 04:02 | This is an exposure value of -1.
| | 04:04 | This allows me to turn off or remove
some of the data from my merge if I want to.
| | 04:10 | So I can say well, don't include the
underexposed image in your calculations.
| | 04:14 | And you can see the
image gets a little brighter.
| | 04:16 | Honestly, I have never used these
controls. I can't tell you why you might
| | 04:21 | want them, unless you're finding that
maybe you shot a 5 or 7 stop bracket
| | 04:25 | and you're seeing some noise in the
shadows, because your darker images have a
| | 04:29 | lot of noise in them maybe. You could turn
those off and try and control the noise that way.
| | 04:34 | These are the controls that
we're interested in over here.
| | 04:38 | By default, your dialog probably comes
up looking like this, with Mode set to 16 Bit
| | 04:44 | and a bunch of sliders here.
| | 04:46 | I want you to take a look at
32 Bit for a minute though.
| | 04:49 | What has happened is Photoshop has
combined all three of those 16-bit images
| | 04:53 | into a single 32-bit file.
| | 04:56 | Now with 32 bits of color per pixel,
we can hold far more colors than it's
| | 05:02 | possible to display on this
monitor. Or any monitor in existence.
| | 05:06 | In other words, this image has a
tremendous amount of data in it.
| | 05:11 | And I can see from my histogram here
each one these red lines is a stop.
| | 05:15 | One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
I have got eight stops of dynamic
| | 05:19 | range here, which is enormous.
| | 05:21 | If I move this thing around, I can
basically see a view of just different
| | 05:28 | slices of my 32-bit data.
| | 05:30 | So I can see that way down here I've
got full detail in the shadows and way up
| | 05:35 | here, if I want, I've got
detail all the way down under here.
| | 05:39 | So I've just got this huge mess of data.
So the slider lets me move around and
| | 05:43 | look at it and it also determines what
part of the data is going to be viewable
| | 05:49 | if I save this image as a 32-bit
file and open it up again later.
| | 05:53 | Honestly, there's no
reason to really ever use this.
| | 05:56 | It's an interesting way to explore a
32-bit file, something you normally
| | 05:59 | can't do on a monitor.
| | 06:01 | It's not something you'll ever do in
practice while you're doing HDR Merge.
| | 06:05 | What you will normally do is
switch over to 16-bit mode.
| | 06:08 | We need to take that 32-bit mess of
data and crunch it down to 16-bit color.
| | 06:14 | This is the tone mapping processes.
| | 06:16 | This is where we are going to cherry-
pick tones from different parts of that
| | 06:19 | 32-bit range and map them back into our image.
| | 06:23 | And I control that mapping
process through these sliders.
| | 06:26 | So let's just take a look
at the image for a minute.
| | 06:27 | We've got actually good dynamic range
and I'm judging that simply by detail.
| | 06:31 | I've got good detail here in the
clouds, the brightest parts of the image,
| | 06:35 | nothing looks really overexposed.
| | 06:36 | There's still detail visible.
| | 06:39 | I can see a little bits of graffiti way
down here in the shadows of this image.
| | 06:42 | So I've got a lot of good detail in
here, but the image looks kind of flat.
| | 06:46 | It's a low-contrast image.
| | 06:48 | And this is not an accurate histogram
from my 32-bit final, but you can see that
| | 06:52 | I don't have data across the
entire 32-bit range of the file.
| | 06:57 | And that's apparently holding
true as we map it down into 16 bits.
| | 07:01 | I'm not getting a full contrast range,
so I can use these sliders to try
| | 07:04 | and deal with that.
| | 07:05 | Now with Photoshop and Photomatix, you
never during the tone mapping process
| | 07:10 | get the image completely finished.
| | 07:12 | You can get it ballpark, but you
always have to go in and do a little bit of
| | 07:15 | extra work in Photoshop
using Photoshop's normal tools.
| | 07:18 | So you'll be far less frustrated if you
go into the process knowing that most of
| | 07:23 | the time you cannot nail the image
exactly the way that you want it.
| | 07:26 | The other thing you should be ready
for is these sliders do not work like
| | 07:30 | sliders that you might be used
to in other parts of Photoshop.
| | 07:33 | For example, Gamma, in the Merge to HDR
dialog box, if I slide it to the left,
| | 07:39 | my midtones get darker.
| | 07:40 | If I slide it to the right, my
midtones get lighter, but my whole image
| | 07:44 | just loses contrast.
| | 07:45 | In the Merge to HDR dialog box you can
almost think of Gamma simply as a contrast
| | 07:50 | slider with more contrast appearing as
you slide to the left. More is it the
| | 07:55 | left, not to the right,
which that's a little bit weird.
| | 07:58 | So that immediately punches
up my contrast a little bit.
| | 08:00 | Exposure does just what you think.
| | 08:02 | It brightens or darkens the image.
| | 08:04 | I want to leave it pretty much where it was.
| | 08:06 | It had done a good job of finding nice
balance of highlight versus shadow detail.
| | 08:11 | I don't have any clipping in the highlights
and I've still got good shadow detail.
| | 08:15 | Detail is making a bunch of
little micro-contrast adjustments.
| | 08:18 | It's a little bit like sharpening, but
you don't have to worry about overdoing
| | 08:23 | it in the way that you do
with the Sharpness slider.
| | 08:26 | Now I can get a little bit of a
crunchy effect like I could with a sharpening effect,
| | 08:30 | but it's a little more fine, so
that's a way of putting a little bit if
| | 08:34 | texture back into the image.
| | 08:36 | Shadow lightens or darkens the shadows
in the image and it's a very subtle.
| | 08:41 | If I go to the right, I
am lightening the shadows.
| | 08:44 | So this again is a little bit backwards.
| | 08:47 | Sliding to the right does not give
me more shadow. It gives me less.
| | 08:51 | It lightens the shadows. So I'm
going to go back here to the left.
| | 08:54 | I'm still just trying to get a little more
contrast in. Than Highlight does the opposite.
| | 09:00 | It lets me brighten or darken the
highlights in the image, with more highlights
| | 09:03 | coming to the right, less
highlights coming to left.
| | 09:06 | And this slider actually works a
little bit like you'd expect it would.
| | 09:10 | Edge Glow has to do a little bit with
that HDR effect that we're all used to.
| | 09:15 | Let me just dial it up real high.
| | 09:16 | If you ever get confused as to what
these sliders do, a quick way to find out is
| | 09:21 | to simply crank them to their
maximum and see what's happened.
| | 09:24 | It's a little bit hard to tell in this image.
| | 09:26 | This is bumping up tones in a way that
does tend to make them look like they're
| | 09:31 | glowing and I usually keep these pretty low.
| | 09:34 | Even if you're going for a real surreal
kind of HDR look, it's very easy to push
| | 09:40 | these too far and end up
with overexposed highlights.
| | 09:43 | In fact, I'm just going to turn that off.
| | 09:45 | Down here I've got Vibrance and Saturation.
| | 09:47 | These are exactly what you would expect.
| | 09:49 | Saturation increases the color
saturation of the image; Vibrance increases color
| | 09:54 | saturation while protecting skin tones.
| | 09:56 | So flesh color usually won't turn all
orange, the way that it does with the
| | 10:00 | Saturation adjustment.
| | 10:02 | Now something else that's nice is
right here in the Merge to HDR dialog.
| | 10:06 | I have a Curve control.
| | 10:08 | So this can be a way that I can also try
and put some contrast back into the image.
| | 10:12 | And this is far more akin to the
Curve control in Camera RAW than it is to
| | 10:18 | the Curve control in Photoshop.
| | 10:19 | And what I mean by that is its tiny,
tiny little movements of the curve
| | 10:24 | give you quite a bit of adjustment,
because we are working with such a data-rich
| | 10:28 | image at this stage.
| | 10:30 | So I'm just going to try and boost the
shadow tones a little bit, but there we go.
| | 10:35 | The highlights, so I'm going to pull
those back down, and that gives me a
| | 10:38 | little bit of brightness.
| | 10:40 | Again, I'm not worrying if I can't nail
this image exactly the way that I want it.
| | 10:44 | I'm just trying to ballpark it.
| | 10:46 | So these are the main controls.
| | 10:48 | Now I have presets that Adobe has
provided and so I can go up here if I want
| | 10:53 | and use one of these as a starting place.
| | 10:55 | Honestly, I don't typically do that,
because most of these are a little bit
| | 11:00 | over-the-top for my taste.
| | 11:01 | And even if you like a really over-the-
top HDR look, these still aren't that
| | 11:06 | great because as you can
see, these bad halo problems.
| | 11:10 | It just hasn't done a very good job.
| | 11:12 | This stuff is really orange. We lost all
those brightness in our sky. This stuff
| | 11:16 | is punched up nicely, but
we've got this halo around the car.
| | 11:19 | So these presets are a little garish
and honestly, Photoshop just doesn't do a
| | 11:25 | great job with tone mapping yet, or at
least the interface of their tone mapping
| | 11:29 | is not quite there yet, so I tend
to stay with the default controls.
| | 11:34 | I've lost the settings that I had
dialed in earlier, but that's okay. We're not
| | 11:37 | going to keep this image.
| | 11:38 | You'll also find a pop-up menu here
that says Local Adaptation, Equalize
| | 11:42 | Histogram, Exposure and Gamma,
and a Highlight Compression.
| | 11:45 | You don't need to worry about these other three.
| | 11:47 | these are legacy controls from
earlier versions of Photoshop, they're very
| | 11:52 | difficult to use, and none of them can
provide you the quality of the results
| | 11:57 | that you can get from Local Adaptation.
| | 11:59 | So I would simply stay
here and use these controls.
| | 12:01 | When you're done, click OK to process
the image, open it up in Photoshop, and
| | 12:05 | then you're going to need to do more work on it.
| | 12:07 | And we're going to talk in detail
about the type of work that you do to a
| | 12:11 | tone mapped image later in this chapter.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating an HDR image in Photomatix| 00:00 | Photomatix from HDRsoft is an
incredibly popular HDR merging and tone mapping
| | 00:06 | tool and with good reason.
| | 00:07 | It's been around for years, seen a
number of updates, it's got a very full
| | 00:12 | featured set, and it produces great images.
| | 00:14 | We're going to be working with
Photomatix throughout the rest of this course
| | 00:17 | and in this movie we're going to
take a look step-by-step through of
| | 00:20 | Photomatix's controls.
| | 00:22 | If you don't already have Photomatix,
you should run off and download the free
| | 00:27 | demo version, which you can get on hdrsoft.com.
| | 00:30 | This is a fully functional demo except that
when you're done and you go to save an image,
| | 00:36 | it's going to put a watermark across it,
but otherwise, you're going to be able
| | 00:39 | to follow along with everything we do here.
| | 00:41 | Obviously, I'm not in
Photomatix right now. I'm in Bridge.
| | 00:44 | There are a lot of ways of
getting images into Photomatix.
| | 00:47 | The way that I like is to simply start
with my workflow tool, which is Bridge.
| | 00:51 | I'm going to select the
three images of a bracketed set.
| | 00:54 | Each one of these was exposed one stop
apart and I'm just going to pick those up
| | 00:58 | in Bridge and drag them
down to Photomatix on my dock.
| | 01:02 | And when I do that, you can see I've switched
to Photomatix and I now see this dialog box.
| | 01:06 | I can choose to simply open the files,
which is going to let me work on them
| | 01:11 | individually, because there are some
things that I can do with an individual
| | 01:13 | photo in Photomatix, but what I
want to do is merge them into an HDR.
| | 01:17 | So I'm going to leave that checked and hit OK.
| | 01:20 | First thing that happens after I do
that is I get this box which is another way
| | 01:23 | that I can choose images
to come into the program.
| | 01:26 | I can hit Browse and go look for
files, but these are the images I want.
| | 01:30 | So I'm going to keep those and hit OK,
and now I'm onto Preprocessing Options.
| | 01:35 | This gives me some ways to control
how the merge is going to happen.
| | 01:39 | So let's step through these.
| | 01:40 | I'm going to start by telling
it to align my source images.
| | 01:43 | I typically shoot all of my HDR sets
handheld, which means there is probably some
| | 01:47 | variation for one image to the other.
| | 01:49 | I need Photomatix to get them registered.
| | 01:51 | And I have two different ways of doing that.
| | 01:53 | I can tell it to simply move the
images around until the actual edges of the
| | 01:57 | images are aligned, but a
better way is to match features.
| | 02:01 | It's going to look through each
image and look for a particular feature.
| | 02:04 | Someone's face, in this case, a
Volkswagen, and it's going to align the
| | 02:08 | Volkswagen in each image.
| | 02:10 | Sometimes when I'm shooting a bracketed
set, in addition to pushing the camera up
| | 02:16 | or down or left and right, I might
tilt it or pivot it, which is going to
| | 02:20 | introduce perspective
troubles from one image to another.
| | 02:24 | And so I can tell it that yes, I want
it to include some perspective correction
| | 02:27 | and what that will do is map each image
onto a 3D plane so that it can rotate it
| | 02:31 | around to the correct perspective.
| | 02:33 | I can also choose to turn this off
if I'm feeling confident that I wasn't
| | 02:37 | tilting the camera and that will
speed up the alignment a little bit.
| | 02:40 | I can also give it a maximum shift amount.
| | 02:43 | So if there is something on the edge I
want to preserve, I may not want to end up shifting
| | 02:47 | images around too much so I can
fiddle with that control. Remove ghosts.
| | 02:52 | If something in the image moves between
the exposures in my bracketed set, say,
| | 02:56 | somebody's hand moves, then when the
images are sandwiched together I'm going to
| | 03:00 | say I ghostly hand from one
image and I full hand from the other.
| | 03:04 | So Remove ghosts gives me the
option to deal with that problem.
| | 03:07 | I have two different ways of doing it.
| | 03:09 | We're going to do a whole lesson on
ghost removal, so I'm not going to talk too
| | 03:12 | much about these now.
| | 03:13 | In this set of this car stuck in
the ground, nothing was moving.
| | 03:16 | Maybe some leaves are blowing around.
| | 03:18 | I'm not going to worry about that.
| | 03:19 | So I'm going to turn that off.
| | 03:21 | There is nothing wrong with leaving it on,
except that it will slow down the processing.
| | 03:25 | I would like to reduce noise.
| | 03:27 | Noise can quickly become a problem in
an HDR merge because a lot of what HDR
| | 03:31 | does is to increase contrast in areas
and as I increase contrast, I'm going to
| | 03:35 | make noise more apparent.
| | 03:37 | However, I can tell it to only apply
noise reduction to certain images in the set.
| | 03:41 | I am going to tell it to only apply
noise reduction to underexposed images and
| | 03:46 | there is only one of those.
| | 03:46 | And that's just because darker
underexposed images tend to have more noise on them.
| | 03:51 | I can also control the
amount of noise reduction.
| | 03:53 | Honestly, I usually just
leave this at the default.
| | 03:57 | If you're working with maybe an older
camera that has a problem with noise then
| | 04:01 | you might want to fiddle with this setting.
| | 04:03 | As you increase noise reduction, there
is a better chance that you're going to
| | 04:05 | soften fine details in your image
though so you don't want this any higher
| | 04:08 | than it needs to be.
| | 04:10 | Chromatic aberrations are those
colored fringes, usually purple or blue,
| | 04:14 | sometimes green, maybe even red, that
appears around high contrast areas, usually
| | 04:19 | things up against a bright sky.
| | 04:20 | So telephone wires or a tree limb
or a rooftop, something like that.
| | 04:24 | In this case, it could be the edge of this car.
| | 04:27 | I was shooting with a very good lens.
| | 04:29 | So I know that in this case, I do not
need to worry about chromatic aberrations.
| | 04:32 | They are also something that are
very easy to remove in Photoshop.
| | 04:35 | So I'm going to leave that unchecked.
| | 04:37 | Again, the less that I have checked,
the faster my processing will go.
| | 04:40 | Finally, if I don't like the white
balance of my image, I can choose a
| | 04:44 | different white balance here.
| | 04:46 | We've got some preset white balances to
choose from and I can see a preview of
| | 04:49 | how my white balance is
going to change over here.
| | 04:52 | Typically, if you're shooting correctly,
you won't have to worry about this.
| | 04:56 | I was shooting in Adobe RGB color space
on my camera so I'm going to leave that
| | 04:59 | set to Adobe RGB and
I'm going to tell it to go.
| | 05:03 | Now honestly, I want to
give you a little caveat here.
| | 05:05 | I find that Photomatix does not do
as good a job of aligning images as
| | 05:11 | Photoshop CS4 and CS5 can do.
| | 05:14 | So a lot of times what I'll do is I'll
do my alignment and my initial merge in
| | 05:18 | Photoshop, create a 32-bit image that way, say.
| | 05:21 | Then I would open that into Photomatix
and then to my tone mapping, and we'll
| | 05:25 | look at how to do that later.
| | 05:26 | And here I am in Photomatix
with the full Photomatix interface.
| | 05:29 | So what I've got here is a big preview,
we've got some Zoom controls up here, got
| | 05:33 | my nice handy Histogram palette over
here, a bunch of sliders and controls
| | 05:37 | over here for controlling what my
image looks like, and this floating palette
| | 05:41 | down here of presets.
| | 05:43 | This is sometimes a good way to start
with Photomatix if you're feeling a little
| | 05:46 | intimidated by on the sliders or you
don't really understand what they do.
| | 05:50 | You can simply start with a
preset and then adjust it later.
| | 05:54 | I'm going to just hide that preset thing for
a while, because we're not going to use that.
| | 05:57 | So let's take a look here at what we've got.
| | 06:00 | First of all, if you're following
along in Photomatix, come down here to
| | 06:03 | the Reset Default button and click
it to make sure that your sliders are
| | 06:07 | set the same as mine.
| | 06:08 | And go up here and choose Hide Others
just to get Bridge out of the way and
| | 06:12 | un-clutter my screen a little bit.
| | 06:14 | So now we're looking at the sliders and
their default configurations and let's
| | 06:18 | see what they do here.
| | 06:19 | First of all, up at the top, I have Process.
| | 06:21 | Photomatix can actually do two
different processes for merging HDR sets.
| | 06:26 | The first is Tone Mapping and this is
what we've been talking about so far
| | 06:28 | throughout in this course.
| | 06:30 | This is the process of taking a
big 32-bit data space worth of color,
| | 06:34 | picking specific tones from throughout
that entire big 32-bit data space and
| | 06:39 | placing them into a 16 or 8-bit
data space to get them back down into
| | 06:43 | something that we can print.
| | 06:45 | So that's tone mapping. That
is the traditional HDR effect.
| | 06:49 | I love it that there is now a
traditional HDR effect, given that HDR has been
| | 06:53 | around for all of five years.
| | 06:55 | I can also do Exposure Fusion.
| | 06:57 | If I turn this on, immediately
you see that my image changes.
| | 07:00 | Exposure Fusion doesn't do
the full-on tone mapping effect.
| | 07:03 | Instead it does something similar to
what you might do in Photoshop by stacking
| | 07:07 | layers and changing blend modes.
| | 07:09 | If you've ever changed the blend mode
in Photoshop of a layer from, say, Normal
| | 07:12 | to maybe Multiply, and noticed that your
images gotten darker as it's merged with
| | 07:17 | the underlying layers in a particular way,
| | 07:19 | that's Exposure Fusion. It's just a very
complex kind of layer blending sort of
| | 07:23 | thing and we're going to look at that later.
| | 07:25 | Typically, you'll find Exposure
Fusion is going to give you more of a
| | 07:28 | normal photographic look.
| | 07:29 | You can see here that my
shadows are very dark in here.
| | 07:32 | They're not very well exposed.
| | 07:34 | I don't really have overdone highlights.
| | 07:35 | When I go back to Tone Mapping,
I get more of that HDR look.
| | 07:40 | So within Tone Mapping, I
have two additional choices.
| | 07:43 | I can choose Methods.
| | 07:45 | Details Enhancer is going to give me
all that fine detail in here, all of that
| | 07:50 | that you expect to see in an HDR image.
| | 07:53 | Well, Tone Compressor is going to give
me something that looks again a little
| | 07:57 | more like a normal photograph in
that everything is not perfectly exposed.
| | 08:00 | I've got dark shadow areas.
| | 08:02 | I've got bright highlights,
but it is really amped up.
| | 08:04 | These dark areas are very exaggerated.
| | 08:06 | I can change all that, of course. I am
going to look at those controls later.
| | 08:09 | For now, let's stick with Details Enhancer.
| | 08:12 | Within that, I've got all of these sliders.
| | 08:14 | So let's see what happens as I start
playing with these. First, Strength.
| | 08:18 | Watch what happens as I drag
the Strength slider to the right.
| | 08:21 | Notice most of these sliders
do not update in real-time.
| | 08:25 | I have to let go of the
mouse before I see the change.
| | 08:28 | I've started to get a
little more detail in here.
| | 08:30 | The image looks a little more flat
overall because every part of the image is
| | 08:34 | now a little better exposed.
| | 08:36 | Let me drag it off over here
and you can see the difference.
| | 08:39 | Now my sky is going out.
| | 08:40 | It's not so perfectly exposed.
| | 08:42 | These bits have gotten darker
because they're not so perfectly exposed.
| | 08:46 | This is basically controlling the
overall strength of the HDR effect.
| | 08:50 | If you think about this HDR process
as being choosing from this huge set of
| | 08:55 | colors a subset that are
going to go into my final image.
| | 08:59 | Well, when I increase Strength, I'm
saying choose more of those colors.
| | 09:04 | Bring in more detail, bring in more
intermediate tones in these clouds, bring in
| | 09:07 | more tones in these shadows.
| | 09:09 | So I'm getting more of that HDR effect.
| | 09:11 | Now you may say, yeah, but the
image is looking dingier and darker.
| | 09:15 | For the most part, any initial image out
of Photomatix is going to look a little
| | 09:19 | rough and you're going to have to do
some work to get it fixed, and all of these
| | 09:22 | sliders are very tightly integrated and work
in concert pretty tightly. So don't worry.
| | 09:26 | We're going to be able to get
some of that brightness back.
| | 09:29 | What I'm looking for right now with
strength is just trying to assess overall
| | 09:33 | detail throughout the image.
| | 09:34 | How much detail do I want anywhere in the image?
| | 09:37 | I'm going to put it up here.
| | 09:37 | Default is 70. I'm going up to about 90,
because I really want the sky to get
| | 09:42 | some of the stuff in it.
| | 09:43 | Now we'll work on brightness and
contrast throughout the rest of the image.
| | 09:47 | Color Saturation is just
what you think it would be.
| | 09:49 | It's simply a saturation slider.
| | 09:51 | The exaggerated HDR aesthetic is for a
lot of saturation and we can pour that in
| | 09:56 | right here if we want.
| | 09:57 | We can go the other
direction and get a very pastel look.
| | 10:00 | If we want, we can even go
all the way to grayscale.
| | 10:02 | Draining saturation is never your
best option for going out to grayscale.
| | 10:06 | I like the default saturation here, because
this was kind of midday out in the desert.
| | 10:11 | It was not a supersaturated environment.
| | 10:13 | So I'm going to leave it maybe up a little bit.
| | 10:15 | Luminosity is going to control overall
brightness, but it's not going to do it
| | 10:20 | in the way that you're used
to with the brightness control.
| | 10:22 | Watch what happens when I drag to the right.
| | 10:26 | Yes, my image has gotten brighter, but
it has not gotten uniformly brighter.
| | 10:30 | My sky looks pretty much like it did before.
| | 10:33 | Here is my default.
| | 10:34 | So watch the sky and keep
an eye on this time here.
| | 10:37 | Just watch this whole area right here
as I drag to the right. It got brighter down
| | 10:42 | here, but not so much in the sky.
| | 10:43 | I didn't blowout any sky detail.
| | 10:45 | I've got my contrast kind of a same
there, but this bit is brightened up.
| | 10:49 | You can think of the Luminosity
slider a lot like the Shadows/Highlight
| | 10:52 | slider in Photoshop.
| | 10:53 | It brightens up dark areas
and leaves lighter areas alone.
| | 10:57 | I don't think I want to go quite that
far, because it just doesn't look natural
| | 11:01 | to have all of the stuff so bright.
| | 11:03 | So I'm going to back off of this.
| | 11:05 | The more I go to the left, the more
natural my image is going to look, because
| | 11:09 | I'm not getting all of this kind of
artificial brightening that wouldn't
| | 11:12 | actually exist in the scene.
| | 11:14 | So I'm going to drop these in about right here.
| | 11:16 | Detail Contrast used to be called
micro-contrast. If you're using an earlier
| | 11:21 | version of Photomatix, you're going
to see different names on some of these
| | 11:24 | controls. These used to be micro-contrast.
| | 11:27 | Every edge in the image is
basically a contrast change.
| | 11:31 | So the edge of this door is going from the
dark bit of the door to the light bit on the sky.
| | 11:35 | The edge of this door is going from
the dark bit of the door to the darker
| | 11:39 | green of this tree here.
| | 11:41 | So edges are always made by
creating an area of contrast.
| | 11:45 | Detail Contrast basically goes
through the image and makes lots of little
| | 11:50 | localized or micro-contrast adjustments.
| | 11:53 | All these little bits get
contrast increased along their edge.
| | 11:57 | Oddly enough, the practical upshot is
that my image gets darker, but again,
| | 12:00 | I can fix that later.
| | 12:02 | What's nice about it is I'm getting a
bunch of that good HDR crunchy, really
| | 12:06 | detail-y detail in here.
| | 12:08 | So you just need to play with that
balance of how much darkening do I want
| | 12:13 | without worrying about it too much,
because I'm going to be able to brighten
| | 12:15 | it up in other ways.
| | 12:17 | Also, as I'm doing any of these sliders,
I want to be keeping an eye out for halos.
| | 12:22 | I'm just barely starting
to get one around the car.
| | 12:24 | Older versions of Photomatix and less
capable HDR tone mapping programs are
| | 12:30 | going to have problems with
halos around high contrast areas.
| | 12:33 | And as I'm playing with these contrast
sliders, there is a chance I'm going to
| | 12:36 | be introducing halos.
| | 12:37 | So I want to keep an eye on those and
make sure that I'm not going so far that
| | 12:41 | I'm getting ugly halos.
| | 12:42 | Lighting Adjustments used to be called
smoothness and what that's doing is it's
| | 12:46 | going into those areas of micro-
contrast and trying to smooth them out so that
| | 12:51 | there is not such a sudden change.
| | 12:53 | The practical upshot of this control is it
can do a good job of getting rid of halos.
| | 12:57 | If you're not careful, it's going to add halos.
| | 13:00 | Overall, it's called lighting
adjustments, because it changes the overall look
| | 13:04 | of the lighting in the image.
| | 13:05 | It's difficult to completely
understand everything that it's doing, but here,
| | 13:08 | you can see this bit of the sky got
darker and now my car got a big halo around it.
| | 13:13 | If you don't see this halo, look away
from the image for a bit and then look
| | 13:17 | back and now watch as I dial this way.
| | 13:21 | Now this bit got brighter
and these bits got darker.
| | 13:24 | Lighting adjustments does a lot
of complex things to your images.
| | 13:26 | So there is nothing wrong with going,
"I don't know, what this does, but I like
| | 13:29 | the way that this setting looks more
than I like the way this settings looks."
| | 13:32 | Play with it until you find
something that you'd like.
| | 13:35 | If you're worried about well, what if
what I like is wrong, first of all, there
| | 13:39 | is no right or wrong, but there
are some things you can look out for.
| | 13:42 | Again, keep your eyes open for halos
around these areas and as you do with all
| | 13:47 | your HDR processing, keep an eye on
the image as a whole and make sure it's
| | 13:50 | not going too flat.
| | 13:51 | we want shadow in the image,
we want highlight in the image.
| | 13:54 | Those are the building blocks of
our vocabulary as photographers.
| | 13:57 | So we don't want to flatten
the whole thing out too much.
| | 14:00 | Now I have some additional
lighting adjustment controls here.
| | 14:02 | If I click this Lighting Effects Mode
button, my slider goes away and gets
| | 14:06 | replaced by these buttons.
| | 14:08 | These buttons are not simply preset
values on that slider that we saw before.
| | 14:12 | Each button is actually a different algorithm.
| | 14:14 | So I've got Natural, I've got Natural+
which is just I guess a little more
| | 14:19 | natural and actually it
does look a little bit better.
| | 14:21 | I got Medium, and obviously, each
one of these as I go up is increasing
| | 14:25 | the overall HDR effect.
| | 14:27 | I'm getting more weird detail and more exposure.
| | 14:29 | Then go all the way to Surreal.
| | 14:31 | Now you can very clearly see the
halos that are something you often have a
| | 14:35 | problem with, with tone mapping and
HDR software. And Surreal+ or Surreal 2.0
| | 14:41 | which is getting really, really
surreal and very, very processed looking.
| | 14:45 | It's actually starting to look a little
bit like a color Xerox. So bad halos here.
| | 14:49 | Weird, kind of posterize-y looks all around.
| | 14:51 | I actually like this Natural+
look back here or maybe even Natural.
| | 14:55 | Now, overall my image is still too dark.
| | 14:58 | So I need to get some brightening going
on here and I got some tools for that.
| | 15:01 | I may come back after I've got it
brightened and play with these some more
| | 15:04 | that's perfectly normal.
| | 15:05 | You're not going to be able to just
work through these in order and end up
| | 15:08 | with a finished image.
| | 15:09 | You're going to have to juggle
settings across the control set here.
| | 15:13 | So I have this More Options
section that I can open up.
| | 15:17 | I've got a few things in here.
| | 15:18 | Let's come back to Smooth Highlights
in a second, because this next one here,
| | 15:21 | White Point, is going to let us get some
brightness into our image real quickly.
| | 15:25 | Look at my histogram and you see that
all the tones are in the lower half of the
| | 15:28 | image, meaning this is a dark image.
| | 15:31 | I want to get some of
these tones spread out here.
| | 15:33 | White Point is just like the White
Point slider in the Levels dialog box.
| | 15:37 | As I drag it to the right, my image gets
brighter and my tones spread across the
| | 15:42 | image, and now I've actually got a
lot of highlight clipping over here.
| | 15:44 | I've overexposed some highlights.
| | 15:46 | Obviously, some of these in here, this
one here, maybe even up into the clouds.
| | 15:50 | So I'm going to back off a
little bit. But it's nice.
| | 15:53 | I've have gotten some of that gray
dinge off of my image and it's looking
| | 15:56 | a little bit nicer.
| | 15:58 | I also have just below the White
Point slider a Black Point slider, which
| | 16:01 | is just like the Black Point slider
in the Levels dialog in Photoshop or
| | 16:04 | another image editor.
| | 16:06 | You can see I don't have a lot of
good strong blacks down here, really
| | 16:09 | practically none at full black.
| | 16:11 | That's going to make an
image that lacks a little punch.
| | 16:13 | I can get some more contrast into my image.
| | 16:15 | I can get stronger blacks, which are
going to look better in print, by dragging
| | 16:19 | my black point to the right.
| | 16:21 | As I do that, I feel like I need to
brighten things up again a little bit more,
| | 16:25 | because I've pulled some of
my tones back to the left.
| | 16:27 | Now I'm getting a nice contrasty image
and it's curious that here even in the
| | 16:31 | HDR world, the tools that have the
most effect are just your basic white
| | 16:35 | point and black point.
| | 16:36 | You've got to have black-and-white set
properly to have good contrast in your image.
| | 16:40 | I also have Gamma, which is going to let
me, just like the Midpoint slider in the
| | 16:44 | Levels dialog, move my midpoint around
to get some of those middle gray tones,
| | 16:50 | shoved more up into the bright areas.
| | 16:53 | Now all that blackens more.
| | 16:55 | I'm going to back off on the Gamma a
little bit. I lost a bit of punch there.
| | 16:58 | Okay, so now I've got the overall
exposure of my image looking a little bit better.
| | 17:02 | You may want to start with your White
/Black Point and Gamma corrections,
| | 17:07 | before you do too much of the other HDR
stuff. Just get your histogram looking
| | 17:11 | healthy, get the image to an overall
good level of brightness and contrast.
| | 17:14 | So we skipped to this Smooth Highlights control.
| | 17:16 | If you're a landscape photographer and
you shoot a lot of skies, you're going to
| | 17:19 | want to spend a lot of
time with Smooth Highlights.
| | 17:21 | What this does is smooth out-- and
remember in HDR terms or rather in tone
| | 17:26 | mapping terms, when we say smoothing,
what we mean is we're controlling the
| | 17:30 | transition in areas of high contrast.
| | 17:32 | So if we are going from a darker area
to a lighter area, we're controlling
| | 17:36 | this transition in here.
| | 17:37 | When it's not controlled well,
that's when we end up with these halos.
| | 17:41 | When it is controlled well,
| | 17:43 | we have a smooth transition in
here and it doesn't look so bad.
| | 17:45 | Skies sometimes suffer from smoothing
problems and what that looks like is the
| | 17:52 | bottom of the clouds turned very,
very dark gray or even black.
| | 17:55 | There are no clouds in the world
that have black on their underside.
| | 17:59 | Smoothing out the highlights, as
you'll see, I've lost some contrast in the
| | 18:03 | highlight areas of my image. That
will take care very often in that dark
| | 18:08 | underside of a cloud.
| | 18:09 | So again, if you're a landscape
shooter and you're shooting big, puffy white clouds
| | 18:12 | and they're coming out too dark
on the bottom, Smooth Highlights is going
| | 18:15 | to be usually how you can take care of that.
| | 18:18 | We may not be able to get this image all
the way to finished here in Photomatix.
| | 18:22 | we may need to go into Photoshop
and do some work here and there.
| | 18:25 | There is nothing wrong with that,
that's normal, but we can get it easily
| | 18:27 | 90-95% of the way there.
| | 18:30 | Temperature is just a white balance adjustment.
| | 18:32 | I can warm up my image a little bit.
| | 18:33 | I can cool it down.
| | 18:35 | Again, there is no right or wrong here.
| | 18:36 | This is purely just your taste for the image.
| | 18:38 | I'm going to leave it kind of just
flat or it was maybe a little bit warmer.
| | 18:43 | And now I have one last additional set
of tools, Advanced Options, which give me
| | 18:48 | some controls that I may not use that much.
| | 18:51 | That's why they're hidden away
in this Advanced Option section.
| | 18:53 | Micro-smoothing is yet another smoothing option.
| | 18:56 | It's going to again let me
control very, very fine contrast details.
| | 19:00 | So as I increase it, I'm getting more
smoothing and I've lost contrast in some
| | 19:05 | of these fine detail areas.
| | 19:07 | So I lost some detail in my
clouds. I lost some of this.
| | 19:10 | Why would I want to lessen the detail?
| | 19:12 | Well, I might want less of an HDR look,
but I might also be having a problem
| | 19:16 | with noise in my shadows.
| | 19:18 | As I back off on Micro-smoothing, I
might sometimes find that these areas
| | 19:23 | get very, very noisy.
| | 19:24 | So it's important to keep an eye on
that and know that increasing your
| | 19:28 | Micro-smoothing is way of taking them out.
| | 19:30 | I'm not having too much of a noise
problem, really none at all in this image, and
| | 19:33 | I'm liking the detail I'm getting in the cloud.
| | 19:35 | So I'm going to leave this here.
| | 19:37 | I can control the Saturation and the
Highlights and Shadows independently.
| | 19:41 | This can be handy, again, if you are a
landscape shooter and you shot some nice,
| | 19:44 | bright, white clouds
that have come out a little blue.
| | 19:47 | I could drain some color out of just the
highlights to take care of that problem.
| | 19:51 | Similarly, if I've got a colorcast in
shadows, this could be a way of taking it
| | 19:55 | out or increasing it if I would like more.
| | 19:56 | Shadows Smoothness is the exact
opposite of Smooth Highlights.
| | 20:00 | This will smooth out details in the
shadows, effectively lowering contrast.
| | 20:05 | This can be one way of
handling some noise issues.
| | 20:09 | To be honest, it's not
something that I use very often.
| | 20:12 | Shadow Clipping has the look of being a
more extreme version of Shadow Smoothness.
| | 20:16 | But it's actually doing
something much simpler than that.
| | 20:18 | It's simply redefining my blacks,
letting the clip darker areas into full black.
| | 20:22 | Watch these dark shadows in here.
| | 20:25 | As I increase Shadows Clipping,
I start to lose some detail.
| | 20:29 | I'm getting darker shadows.
| | 20:31 | Here I've gone to complete black.
| | 20:32 | That's starting to look pretty unnatural there.
| | 20:34 | This can be a way of trying to restore
some nice dark tones back into my shadows.
| | 20:39 | If I'm feeling like my image is so
flatly perfectly exposed to HDR, this is a
| | 20:45 | way of getting some oomph back
into shadows and getting some kind of
| | 20:48 | dimensionality back into my image.
| | 20:50 | If I was shooting a 360 degree panorama,
there would be a point whether there
| | 20:55 | was a scene in the image where the
size of the panorama hit each other.
| | 20:59 | I can check the 360 degree image box to let
Photomatix know that there is a scene that
| | 21:04 | needs to look out for and
not exaggerate too much.
| | 21:07 | So this is looking pretty good.
| | 21:08 | There might be some things
that I'd like to do in Photoshop.
| | 21:10 | I'm going to want to take
out these power lines here.
| | 21:13 | I might want to try and get a little
more shadow in here underneath these doors,
| | 21:18 | because it would look a little more natural.
| | 21:19 | We're going to look at how to do those
kinds of things in Photoshop, but right
| | 21:22 | now I'm liking my
overall merge and tone mapping.
| | 21:25 | Again, if you really like the HDR
look, the way you're going to get it is
| | 21:28 | to increase Strength and play a lot with your
Smoothing controls and with Micro-smoothing.
| | 21:34 | If you get a set of parameters that
you really like, you can save them as a
| | 21:37 | default. Go down here and choose
Save Settings, give it a name and when I
| | 21:41 | do that back here in my Presets panel,
there is a place where my presets will
| | 21:45 | appear and I can just click on that to
apply those to every other image that I want.
| | 21:50 | So that's a rundown of the
basic tools in Photomatix.
| | 21:53 | we're going to be looking at all of these in
more detail throughout the rest of this course.
| | 21:56 | So if you don't have it already, get the
demo installed so you can follow along.
| | 22:01 | Before we get to that though,
we're going to take a look at another
| | 22:03 | HDR processing tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating an HDR in HDR Efex| 00:00 | HDR Efex Pro is a plug-in from Nik
Software that works with Photoshop CS4 and
| | 00:06 | CS5, Lightroom, and Aperture.
| | 00:09 | I like it for a few reasons.
| | 00:11 | It's very well-integrated with Photoshop
or whatever host application you're using.
| | 00:16 | It offers great results in terms of
image quality, and it has the best interface
| | 00:20 | and controls of all three of the
HDR tools that we're looking at here.
| | 00:25 | You can download a free trial of the
software from the Nik web site and as
| | 00:29 | we did with Photoshop and Photomatix,
we're going to merge the same three
| | 00:33 | images that we merged before, but this time
using HDR Efex, so you can see what it offers.
| | 00:38 | Again, there are a number of ways
of getting images into HDR Efex.
| | 00:42 | The easiest though I
think is to start in Bridge.
| | 00:45 | And the reason I like starting in
Bridge for all these things is because I've
| | 00:48 | got a nice view of the images that I
want to work with, I can tell exactly where
| | 00:52 | the bracketed sets are, and I
can easily select them in here.
| | 00:55 | Getting images into HDRsoft is
a little bit hidden in Bridge.
| | 01:00 | As you'll recall for Photoshop, we
went up here to Tools and down to the
| | 01:03 | Photoshop menu and there was a
way to get to Merge to HDR Pro.
| | 01:06 | We don't have a way of
getting to HDR Efex Pro from here.
| | 01:10 | instead, we have to right-
click on one of these images.
| | 01:13 | Now, if you're on a Mac and you're using
just a one-button mouse, then that's Ctrl+Click.
| | 01:18 | And I get this menu.
| | 01:19 | If I scroll all the way down to the
bottom, there's a Nik Software pop-up.
| | 01:23 | Now, I have two options:
| | 01:24 | Merge to HDR Efex Pro or Tone Mapping.
| | 01:28 | This allows me to do a merge in one step,
save an image, and then tone map it later.
| | 01:32 | I need to do the merge, so I'm
going to pick that and I get this.
| | 01:36 | This is just like before in
Photomatix where I have the option of adding or
| | 01:40 | removing files that I've selected.
| | 01:42 | Got a couple of other options here.
| | 01:44 | I can open the result as a Smart Object.
| | 01:47 | This is a way of having some kind of
nondestructive editing if I wanted.
| | 01:51 | If you're not used to working with
Smart Objects, don't worry about it.
| | 01:53 | If you are used to working with Smart
Objects but you are not sure if you want
| | 01:56 | to do it here, that's okay because you
can always convert something to a Smart
| | 01:59 | Object later in Photoshop.
| | 02:01 | I can choose to align and I can choose
to reduce ghosting and if I do choose
| | 02:05 | Ghost Reduction, I have a few methods.
| | 02:08 | I don't have any moving objects in here
so I'm not going to do Ghost Reduction,
| | 02:11 | but I do want Alignment.
| | 02:12 | So I'm going to hit OK and it's
going to start loading and merging.
| | 02:16 | I find generally that alignment in HDR
Efex is better than it is in Photomatix,
| | 02:23 | but not necessarily always
quite as good as it is in Photoshop.
| | 02:28 | So again, if you run into a problem where you
can't merge an image in HDR Efex, that's okay.
| | 02:33 | You'll be able to merge it in
Photoshop and then tone map it later here.
| | 02:39 | And we're going to look at all of
these workflow issues later as we move
| | 02:42 | on through the course.
| | 02:44 | When it's done, my HDR Efex interface
comes up and I see my merged result.
| | 02:49 | First thing I'm going to do is make
this a little bit bigger so that you can
| | 02:51 | get a bigger preview.
| | 02:53 | If you've used other Nik plug-ins,
you should recognize this window.
| | 02:56 | It's a pretty standard Nik interface.
| | 02:58 | And right off the bat you will
probably also notice that while this image is
| | 03:02 | already looking better than either
the Photoshop or Photomatix merges did
| | 03:07 | right when they done,
| | 03:08 | one of the things I like about HDR
Efex is Nik has really tried to streamline
| | 03:13 | the process to make this as simple as
possible and get you to good results as
| | 03:17 | quickly as you can by very
intelligently deciding what good default parameters are
| | 03:21 | and giving you some sliders and
controls that are far more intuitive than
| | 03:26 | what you'll find in
either Photoshop or Photomatix.
| | 03:29 | So over here on the left
I've got a bunch of presets.
| | 03:32 | These are just Nik's predefined
presets that ship with the package.
| | 03:35 | They're divided into categories. I
might consider this a landscape image, so I can
| | 03:40 | click on the Landscape category
and get some presets for that.
| | 03:43 | If I'm going for that Surreal
HDR look, I can get that over here.
| | 03:46 | I'm going to skip those for now
because I want to explore the sliders.
| | 03:49 | As with the other options that we've
looked at here, sometimes it's good to
| | 03:52 | start with a preset. Sometimes you
can just dive right into the sliders.
| | 03:56 | These are all pretty intuitive though.
| | 03:57 | Tone Compression is the only thing
that might be a little confusing to you,
| | 04:01 | because it's just not something that
we deal with in any other image editing
| | 04:04 | process besides HDR.
| | 04:07 | Increasing Tone Compression tends to
make my image less contrasty, possibly even
| | 04:12 | a little darker, but it might bring
up some more detail here and there.
| | 04:16 | Decreasing gives me a more realistic look.
| | 04:19 | But as you can see already,
I'm losing detail in the clouds.
| | 04:22 | So if I want a more HDR-y look, I go here
with the idea that I'm going to have to
| | 04:28 | do some editing later to pull
contrast back into the image.
| | 04:30 | If I want a more realistic look, I go
here with the understanding that I might
| | 04:35 | risk blowing out
highlights or stopping up shadows.
| | 04:38 | I'm going to put this at 0.
| | 04:40 | All of these fields are actually editable.
| | 04:43 | I can click on one and just enter a
numeric value, so I'm going to put that back
| | 04:47 | to its default position.
| | 04:48 | Exposure does just what you think it would.
| | 04:50 | It brightens or darkens the image in
regular exposure values. That is, in stops.
| | 04:54 | If I dial this up to 1, then my
image gets brighter by one stop, which
| | 04:58 | dramatically overexposes it.
| | 05:00 | This is a way of brightening and
darkening my image and just as with any
| | 05:04 | exposure adjustment, when I'm doing this,
if I'm going up, I'm keeping an eye on
| | 05:08 | highlights to make sure I
don't overexpose things.
| | 05:10 | If I'm going down, I'm keeping an eye
on shadows to decide whether or not I've
| | 05:14 | got the detail that I want.
| | 05:16 | So right away I can pretty easily put
back in the brightness that I wanted.
| | 05:19 | The image looks a little flat now.
| | 05:21 | Let's go down here, LOUPE and HISTOGRAM,
you've probably noticed that flying
| | 05:25 | around as I mouse about.
| | 05:26 | I can put the mouse somewhere and
automatically see a magnified version
| | 05:30 | down there in the Loupe.
| | 05:31 | But I can also go over here and mouse
over the palette somewhere and I get this
| | 05:35 | little pop-up bar and I can say I want
the Histogram instead of the Loupe and
| | 05:38 | now I get this Histogram.
| | 05:39 | That's what I want right now as
I'm doing these tonal adjustments.
| | 05:41 | So I'm looking pretty good here.
| | 05:43 | This is the three-channel Histogram.
| | 05:45 | Whites over here, blacks over
here. I've got some latitude here.
| | 05:49 | This image is a little low contrasty,
not super low contrast, but I've got a lot
| | 05:52 | of extra room down here underneath
my darkest tone before I hit black.
| | 05:56 | Actually my darkest three-channel tone
is right there, so I've got a lot of room
| | 05:59 | there, I've got a lot of room there.
| | 06:00 | So I'm going to spread my contrast out.
| | 06:02 | I'm going to increase the Contrast slider,
and my image is going to get more contrasty.
| | 06:06 | Now, as I do that I'm starting to
get a little worried about the sky.
| | 06:10 | It's starting to blow out a little bit.
| | 06:11 | So I'm going to pull my Exposure
slider back down to buy myself some latitude
| | 06:15 | to increase contrast.
| | 06:16 | And right away my image is
picking up a lot of punch.
| | 06:20 | Saturation does just what you would expect.
| | 06:22 | Increases or decreases color saturation,
and just as I was saying in Photomatix,
| | 06:26 | if you're really looking for that HDR-y
look, you might want to lean heavily on
| | 06:30 | the Saturation slider.
| | 06:32 | Structure is what in
Photomatix was called microcontrast.
| | 06:35 | If I increase Structure, let's switch
back to the LOUPE here so you can see, I
| | 06:42 | basically get a lot of tiny little
sharpening adjustments all around my image.
| | 06:45 | It is possible to take Structure too far
and get a very chunky looking image, an
| | 06:49 | image with halos around
the edges of its details.
| | 06:52 | Blacks does just what you think it would do.
| | 06:55 | It increases the blacks in the image.
| | 06:57 | This works a little more
intuitively than the Photoshop one does.
| | 07:00 | As I drag to the right, the blacks get darker.
| | 07:02 | as I drag to the left, the blacks get lighter.
| | 07:05 | So this is just like the black
point slider on a Levels adjustment.
| | 07:08 | Whites does the opposite.
| | 07:09 | Let's remove the white point
independently of the black point.
| | 07:13 | So I can brighten and darken
my image with these sliders.
| | 07:16 | They differ from Exposure in that they are
only affecting the white and black points.
| | 07:20 | Obviously other tones are stretched.
Overall tonal relationship remains the same.
| | 07:24 | But these are like the white
and black point sliders on Levels.
| | 07:28 | Warmth lets me basically change
the white point as if I was doing a
| | 07:31 | white balance adjustment.
| | 07:32 | I can warm up my image.
I can cool down my image.
| | 07:35 | I'm going to leave it about where it was.
| | 07:36 | HDR Method, there are lots of
different algorithms for taking 32 bit data and
| | 07:41 | crunching it down to 16, and Nik
provides a lot and here they are.
| | 07:47 | They're trying to be descriptive in
their names, but Clean, Crisp, Halo
| | 07:50 | Reduction, Subtle, Sharp, Dingy,
Grainy, Illuminate, Diffused, Fresco,
| | 07:54 | it's difficult to tell
exactly what they're going to do.
| | 07:57 | Don't worry about trying to understand them.
| | 07:59 | I think it can be, a lot of times
people think, "Well, I can't figure out what
| | 08:03 | these are doing and I need
to be able to remember them."
| | 08:05 | And if you are the type of person who
worries about really trying to understand
| | 08:08 | blending modes in Photoshop, don't
worry about it. Just switch to them and see
| | 08:12 | what you like. Experiment and play.
| | 08:15 | I've changed to Clean. Didn't see any
change because I need to increase the
| | 08:18 | Strength of the Method.
| | 08:19 | So I'm going to put that on Clean and
drag it up, and now the image is just
| | 08:24 | changing in a lot of different ways.
| | 08:26 | My clouds have gotten a little more
HDR-y, the image has brightened, the color
| | 08:30 | saturation has increased.
| | 08:31 | So these are just different
ways of processing the image.
| | 08:35 | Dingy goes even chunkier and weirder.
| | 08:38 | Let's pick one that's
maybe way out there, Textured.
| | 08:42 | Make sure it's not that Textured.
| | 08:43 | Again, sometimes you've just got to play
around with these and see what happens.
| | 08:47 | You will probably find ones that you like
more for certain types of images than others.
| | 08:51 | I typically find Clean or Crisp are good
for landscape images with skies in them.
| | 08:56 | One is brighter than the other.
| | 08:58 | As you change Method you may need to
alter the global adjustments that you've
| | 09:02 | already played with.
| | 09:03 | Sometimes it's best to pick the method first.
| | 09:05 | Next I get into Selective Adjustments.
| | 09:08 | Control points. If you've worked with
Nik Software before, you've probably
| | 09:11 | encountered control points.
| | 09:12 | I hope you've encountered control points.
| | 09:14 | They are amazing tools.
| | 09:15 | They allow me to very easily perform
selective edits without having to do any masking.
| | 09:21 | I don't have to try and select things.
| | 09:24 | I don't have to try to paint masks.
| | 09:26 | Here I am just making a localized
contrast adjustment to the clouds without
| | 09:30 | having to do any mask cutting or anything.
| | 09:33 | I'm not going to explain how these
work right now. We're going to do a
| | 09:36 | whole movie on this.
| | 09:37 | I'm just going to throw that here and
do some of the adjustments that I want.
| | 09:41 | And then later we'll look at
exactly what they're doing.
| | 09:43 | If you're already familiar with
control points from maybe Nik Silver Efex or
| | 09:47 | Viveza or Nik's CaptureNX2, these work
exactly the same way, so you should feel
| | 09:54 | pretty comfortable with them.
| | 09:55 | I'm just going to throw a little bit of
Brightness onto the top of the car here.
| | 09:57 | Woo, maybe not that much Brightness.
| | 10:00 | Finishing Adjustments, one thing I
really like about HDR Efex is I've got all
| | 10:04 | sorts of post-processing
effects I can apply in here.
| | 10:07 | I'm going to throw a vignette on
this image, darken the corners up there,
| | 10:10 | maybe even go darker.
| | 10:12 | It brings a lot more attention to
the center there as I've done that.
| | 10:14 | It makes me think I might need to put
a little bit of brightness back into the
| | 10:18 | image, so I'm going to go there.
| | 10:21 | And then finally I have these
Levels and Curves adjustments here.
| | 10:25 | Don't worry about trying to
understand these icons. I still haven't
| | 10:28 | entirely figured them out.
| | 10:29 | These are going to apply canned Levels
and Curves adjustments to create both
| | 10:34 | tone and color adjustments to the image.
| | 10:36 | So here's a photographic
adjustment which has increased the color and
| | 10:40 | saturation in the image.
| | 10:41 | Here's a Dark Contrast adjustment.
| | 10:43 | Let's go for one of the vintage ones.
| | 10:46 | It makes it look like it's an aged photograph.
| | 10:49 | These are just nice post-
processing things that you can add.
| | 10:52 | All of these get wrapped up
into these presets over here.
| | 10:55 | So those are the basic controls.
| | 10:57 | We're going to be looking at them
in more detail as we go through it.
| | 11:00 | I hit the OK button now, the image will
process, and I will end up with a result.
| | 11:03 | As you've seen, I got to this
particular state of this image much quicker than
| | 11:08 | I could in Photomatix using terminology
that personally is a little bit easier
| | 11:11 | for me to understand, because it's a little
more like terminology that I already know.
| | 11:15 | In fact, even as I'm talking to you, I
can't just help but sit here and tweak
| | 11:19 | some more, because HDR Efex is so easy to use.
| | 11:22 | So I definitely recommend taking
a look at this piece of software.
| | 11:25 | You need something in addition to Photoshop.
| | 11:27 | You still need Photoshop for
retouching and other operations.
| | 11:31 | Both HDR Efex and Photomatix are great.
You're not going to do wrong with either.
| | 11:36 | But think about how you work and how
you like to work, because one might work
| | 11:39 | better for you than the other.
| | 11:41 | And as we look into more of the
features of both programs, the choice of what's
| | 11:45 | right for you may become more clear.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Merging in Photoshop and processing elsewhere| 00:00 | As I mentioned earlier, Photoshop
often does a much better job with aligning
| | 00:05 | multiple image than does
either Photomatix or HDR Efex Pro.
| | 00:11 | It doesn't mean that you give up
on those programs for alignment.
| | 00:13 | They might be fine, especially if you
are using a tripod, but if you're shooting
| | 00:17 | handheld, you may find that you've
got to do your merging in Photoshop.
| | 00:21 | Let me show you what the difference is here.
| | 00:22 | This is, I am looking at 100%, a 1:1 pixel
ratio, of this image that was merged in Photoshop.
| | 00:30 | Now, I didn't bother finishing it. Don't
worry about the fact that it's a little drab.
| | 00:32 | Just pay attention to the
sharpness, and here along this column, and this
| | 00:38 | is the same set merged in Photomatix.
| | 00:41 | Much softer in here, all of
these details are much softer now.
| | 00:45 | By the time we shrink this movie down
for delivery, I don't know how apparent
| | 00:49 | this will be, but imagine, if you
will, that this image is much softer.
| | 00:53 | Trust me, if you do some tests on your
own of handheld images, maybe just as
| | 00:56 | you're working, you will find that
very often in Photomatix and HDR Efex your
| | 01:00 | merges come in a little bit softer.
| | 01:02 | Adobe has built very, very good
alignment technology into both CS4 and CS5.
| | 01:08 | So what do you do if you run into that problem?
| | 01:09 | Maybe you've been merging along in
Photomatix and everything works great and
| | 01:13 | then you hit an image.
| | 01:14 | It was a windy day, you've got a set of
images that you were just having trouble
| | 01:18 | standing still, and you were doing
your best to shoot similar images, but you
| | 01:22 | came out with some camera
shake and they are not merging right.
| | 01:24 | I am going to go in here.
| | 01:25 | Let's say that these did not
merge well in Photomatix or HDR Efex.
| | 01:29 | What I will do is merge them in Photoshop.
| | 01:32 | So I am going to go up here to the
Tools menu > Photoshop > Merge to HDR Pro.
| | 01:36 | So you've seen this process already.
| | 01:38 | It's going to go through and
merge them into a single 32 bit image.
| | 01:42 | What I need to do after that's done
is save that out as a 32 bit file.
| | 01:47 | Photomatix and HDR Efex can
read certain 32 bit file formats.
| | 01:52 | So this will take that whole merged,
aligned, mess of data that we have right here.
| | 01:56 | I am going to make sure
that Mode is set to 32bit.
| | 02:00 | If I do this, which is where I
normally perform my tone mapping in Photoshop,
| | 02:04 | if I am doing it there, this isn't going to work,
because it's going to spit out a 16 bit file.
| | 02:08 | I can also spit out an 8 bit file if I want.
| | 02:11 | I am going to go here and make sure that
this says 32 bit and I am going to say OK.
| | 02:17 | And it doesn't have to do
any tone mapping or anything.
| | 02:19 | It's just pouring that huge data rich
blob of 32 bit goodness into a file here.
| | 02:25 | When it's done I will do a Save, and I
just need to do one little thing to make
| | 02:28 | sure that it saves in a
format that Photomatix can read.
| | 02:31 | So I have Untitled_HDR2, I am going to
go up here and choose File > Save As, and
| | 02:37 | I want to be sure that my format is set
to OpenEXR. This is an open standard for
| | 02:43 | 32 bit files. And I am just going
to through that out on the desktop.
| | 02:47 | Save this file, and
Photomatix can now read that format.
| | 02:51 | So I am going to go out here to my
desktop and here is my untitled exr document.
| | 02:58 | I can just drop that right onto Photomatix.
| | 03:01 | Takes it a while to load all that data,
but when it's done, I end up here.
| | 03:05 | Now I can start my tone mapping process.
| | 03:07 | I just hit the Tone Mapping button.
| | 03:09 | It gives me an initial
tone map and I'm ready to go.
| | 03:13 | If I want to emerge in Photoshop and
tone map in HDR Efex, that's a little bit
| | 03:19 | simpler because HDR Efex is a plug-in
to Photoshop. So here in Photoshop I've
| | 03:25 | done my merge already.
| | 03:27 | Now, with this document open I can go
Filter > Nik Software > HDR Efex Pro and
| | 03:32 | it will simply open that image
and start its tone mapping process.
| | 03:36 | So this is a very easy procedure.
| | 03:39 | So if you find yourself frustrated
with soft images after you do a merge into
| | 03:43 | either one of these programs, you can
fall back on merging in Photoshop and then
| | 03:47 | continuing with your normal tone
mapping, wherever you like to do that.
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| Using Tone Compressor in Photomatix| 00:00 | I am here in Photomatix.
| | 00:01 | I still have my process set to Tone Mapping.
| | 00:05 | I'm going to reset down here by
hitting the default button to get my settings
| | 00:09 | back to normal, because I want us to
look at the other Tone Mapping method.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to change this method pop-
up menu from Details Enhancer to Tone
| | 00:17 | Compressor, the other option,
and right away my image changes.
| | 00:21 | Now as I mentioned before, this
is still a tone mapping process.
| | 00:25 | It's still cherry picking tones from
that big 32-bit mess of data and putting them
| | 00:30 | down into a smaller 8 or 16 bit data
space, but it's doing it in a way that
| | 00:35 | yields and image that's a little less
HD-yR and more like a normal photograph.
| | 00:40 | I have got shadows that are punched
in the darkness here. I don't have
| | 00:43 | overexposed highlights, but my overall
tonal relationships are a little more
| | 00:46 | like a normal photo.
| | 00:48 | So let's take a look at the controls that
we have here and see how we can adjust this.
| | 00:51 | Brightness, Tonal Range Compression and
Contrast Adaptation, I am grouping these
| | 00:57 | together, because these three sliders
really work together to adjust overall
| | 01:00 | brightness and contract.
| | 01:01 | I am going to crank up the brightness
here because this image is too dark. I can
| | 01:05 | tell that just by looking at it, which
is a pretty easy way of telling whether
| | 01:08 | it's too bright or too dark, but
I've also got my histogram over here.
| | 01:11 | So I'm keeping an eye on my whites,
making sure they're not over exposing too much.
| | 01:15 | And I'm trying to get this blob of mid-
tone data up to be a little bit brighter,
| | 01:21 | shows some of the stuff over here.
| | 01:22 | So it's just an overall brightness adjustment.
| | 01:25 | However, note that it is
respecting my black point.
| | 01:28 | It's mostly a mid-tone adjustment.
| | 01:30 | It didn't wash out my shadows,
and it also did a pretty good job of
| | 01:34 | respecting my white point.
| | 01:35 | It didn't blow out my highlights.
| | 01:37 | Tonal Range Compression is for all
intents and purposes a contrast adjustment.
| | 01:43 | It's doing something much more
complex than simple contrast.
| | 01:47 | It's changing the way that tones from
that big 32-bit space are compressed into
| | 01:51 | the smaller data space, but the
overall effect is a contrast change.
| | 01:55 | Contrast Adaptation is a lot
like a saturation adjustment.
| | 02:00 | It's going to let me put more saturation
into my image and I get a little bit of
| | 02:04 | brightening in that process.
| | 02:05 | So these three controls work pretty
well together. I want to try and get a
| | 02:09 | little more contrast back into my
skies, so I'm going to drop my brightness
| | 02:14 | down, so that I can fiddle with my
Tonal Range Compression here, get that stuff
| | 02:20 | looking a little better, and then
brighten the whole thing back up again, maybe
| | 02:25 | back off from this little bit.
| | 02:26 | I also have White Point and Black Point,
which are additional controls that I
| | 02:30 | can use for brightening and darkening my image.
| | 02:33 | Again, these sliders are
not working in real time.
| | 02:37 | I have to let go of them
before I see their effect.
| | 02:39 | This image doesn't really
need a black point adjustment.
| | 02:42 | I am clipping my black point already.
| | 02:44 | So you can think of these as, again,
just like the White Point and Black Point
| | 02:49 | in the Levels dialog box
of an image editing program.
| | 02:53 | One difference for you Windows users,
here on the Mac, the White Point scale
| | 02:57 | goes to 10 and on Windows it only goes
to 5, but the actual effect that's being
| | 03:03 | applied by either extreme is the same.
| | 03:05 | So don't worry if you're seeing
different numbers in this video. The control
| | 03:09 | works the same and you can get the
same effect that I'm getting here.
| | 03:12 | And I'm just filling with all three of
these in concert, trying to get overall
| | 03:17 | brightness good but still
have some contrast in the image.
| | 03:20 | Color Temperature is just what you think it is.
| | 03:22 | It adjusts the Color Temperature of the
image, lets me warm it up or cool it down.
| | 03:26 | And then Color Saturation is just a
saturation adjustment and you may be saying,
| | 03:30 | well, you've said earlier that Contrast
Adaptation is a saturation adjustment.
| | 03:34 | Well, Contrast Adaptation is
making some contrast changes.
| | 03:37 | It's also giving you a bit
of a saturation adjustment.
| | 03:39 | Color saturation is truly just
a full-on saturation adjustment.
| | 03:43 | I don't want it quite that much.
| | 03:45 | We have adjusted this image and you
may think, well, that doesn't really look
| | 03:48 | like an HDR image to me, but let's go
back to Bridge for a minute and look at
| | 03:52 | one of our original exposures.
| | 03:53 | Here's the shot as the camera wanted to
expose it and you can see I don't have
| | 03:58 | a lot of detail in here.
| | 03:59 | I got pretty good detail in there,
and my underexposed one, I picked up a
| | 04:03 | little, and these have gone pretty dark.
| | 04:05 | And then back here, you see
that I've good detail in here.
| | 04:09 | This was looking a little bit like the
underexposed image, but I've got better
| | 04:12 | color saturation throughout
and better detail throughout.
| | 04:15 | So the Tone Compressor method of the
tone mapping process is going to give you
| | 04:20 | expanded dynamic range, but
without that super HDR look.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Exposure Fusion in Photomatix| 00:00 | In our earlier walk-through of
Photomatix you saw that there are two different
| | 00:03 | processes to choose from:
Tone Mapping and Exposure Fusion.
| | 00:08 | We looked at Tone Mapping in detail.
| | 00:10 | Now let's take a look at Exposure Fusion.
| | 00:12 | Switching over and the first thing
that happens is, as I mentioned before, my
| | 00:16 | image becomes a little less HDR and starts to
look a little more like a normal photograph.
| | 00:21 | That is my shadows are not so
perfectly exposed, my highlights aren't
| | 00:25 | so perfectly exposed.
| | 00:26 | It doesn't have that flat look that
an initial HDR adjustment can have.
| | 00:30 | I also don't have the super refined detail.
| | 00:32 | So if you want to be able to have good
exposure throughout your image, that is,
| | 00:37 | have some detail down here and have
some detail up here, without going to the
| | 00:41 | full HDR look, Exposure Fusion
might be a good option for you.
| | 00:45 | As I mentioned before, this is basically
blending my stack of images together in
| | 00:50 | the same way that I might do in
Photoshop using a bunch of layers.
| | 00:54 | Within Exposure Fusion I have five
different methods to choose from. The default
| | 00:59 | is going to be Fusion-Adjust,
and it's not a bad place to start.
| | 01:03 | I've got all these different controls.
| | 01:05 | Let's just take a quick look at them.
| | 01:07 | Accentuation, as I drag it to the
right, is going to make local contrast
| | 01:12 | adjustments a little bit stronger and
as with some of the sliders in the Tone
| | 01:16 | Mapping, what that's going to do is
increase detail in all of these little local
| | 01:22 | contrast areas, like the
transition from this leaf on to door.
| | 01:25 | With the transition from the door
into the sky is going to make those more
| | 01:27 | contrasty, which is going to make better detail.
| | 01:30 | What I want to look out for, again, are halos.
| | 01:34 | Fortunately, most of the sliders that
you'll find in Exposure Fusion don't have
| | 01:38 | nearly the power that the sliders have
in Tone Mapping, so it's pretty hard to
| | 01:42 | come into really bad
artifacting with any of these sliders.
| | 01:45 | You can see it's pretty subtle.
| | 01:47 | Again, if you think of Exposure Fusion
working by taking your three different
| | 01:52 | images and putting them into a stack
and then combining them so that maybe the
| | 01:56 | bright parts of the underexposed image
show through and the dark parts of the
| | 01:59 | overexposed image show through,
| | 02:01 | Blending Point is a way of
controlling am I seeing more of the bright image
| | 02:06 | with its nice shadow detail, or am I
seeing more of the dark image with its
| | 02:11 | nice highlight detail?
| | 02:12 | So this is just a way of controlling
the blending of my different exposures and
| | 02:18 | as you can see, for the most part it's
just letting me make my image brighter or
| | 02:21 | darker, but it's not a uniform brightening.
| | 02:24 | Most of the brightening and
darkening is happening in the shadows.
| | 02:28 | These mid-tones aren't changing too much.
| | 02:30 | They are changing a little bit,
but not real dramatically.
| | 02:32 | So it's not like just a normal brightening.
| | 02:34 | As I use it, the things I want to
lookout for are, am I coming into overexposure
| | 02:38 | and highlights, do I like the
level of detail in my shadows?
| | 02:42 | Shadows is just like the Shadow slider in
the Shadow/Highlight dialog box in Photoshop.
| | 02:48 | It lets me brighten shadows without
doing anything to mid-tones and highlight.
| | 02:53 | It's a very subtle effect and it's
not even getting me very much in here.
| | 02:56 | In fact, it's mostly getting these
lighter toned shadows up here in the sky.
| | 03:00 | So I think I'm going to back off with that
completely actually, put it back where it was.
| | 03:05 | Sharpness is going to increase the
sharpness of my image and it's doing it.
| | 03:09 | Let's go all the way over here to the
right and you can see what should look
| | 03:12 | familiar to you if you ever over applied an
unsharp masking filter in an image editor.
| | 03:18 | I'm starting to get really pronounced
halos around every edge in my image.
| | 03:23 | It's giving me this garish overdone look.
| | 03:26 | So this is a lot like just the normal
unsharp masking tools which you will use
| | 03:30 | in your image editor.
| | 03:32 | First of all it's only one slider.
| | 03:33 | You don't get as many controls as you
would have with an unsharp masked tool,
| | 03:37 | and it's fairly subtle up
until you'll get into the extreme.
| | 03:39 | So this is a nice way of putting some
details back into your image. As with any
| | 03:42 | sharpening operation, be careful
that you're not exaggerating noise.
| | 03:46 | So keep an eye on your shadows and
make sure they don't go too noisy.
| | 03:50 | Color Saturation does just what you think.
| | 03:51 | It's going to increase saturation of color.
| | 03:53 | Again, this is an aesthetic choice
that I can simply make for myself.
| | 03:57 | In the Tone Mapping section earlier we
saw on the black clippings slider.
| | 04:01 | This one does the same thing.
| | 04:02 | It just clips my blacks after a certain
point so that they go to complete black,
| | 04:07 | which removes all detail in my shadow areas.
| | 04:09 | White Clip does the same thing on the
other end of the histogram and in this
| | 04:13 | particular image I can go a long way
before I start seeing bad clipping.
| | 04:16 | So I can use this as a brightening
control. I can use this as contrast control.
| | 04:21 | Midtones adjustment adjusts mid-
tones of my image just like the endpoint
| | 04:25 | slider on Levels adjustment, so this is a way
that I can get some more contrast into my image.
| | 04:31 | So that is just the Fusion
Adjust method of Exposure Fusion.
| | 04:36 | And as you can see, I've managed to get my
brightness and contrast back where I want it.
| | 04:39 | I got good detail in my highlights.
| | 04:41 | I got detail in my shadows.
| | 04:43 | So I've still got more dynamic range
than I could have in a single image, but I
| | 04:47 | don't have that full-on HDR look.
| | 04:49 | Let's go to Fusion-Intensive,
which gives me just three sliders.
| | 04:55 | Strength, which gives me control of
localized contrast, letting me add
| | 05:00 | more localized contrast, which is going to
bring out some more details here and there.
| | 05:03 | Color Saturation, which just is a
Saturation control, lets me goose up the
| | 05:08 | saturation in my image, And Radius.
| | 05:10 | Radius is a little bit like the blending
control that we were using in the last methods.
| | 05:15 | It's biasing one exposure over another,
helping me control how details are
| | 05:20 | brought in from different images,
basically just set this to taste, look for halos.
| | 05:25 | Lowering the slider is a
good way of reducing halos.
| | 05:27 | Always look for noise of course.
| | 05:29 | As you can see, with this method I have
no brightness and contrast controls, so
| | 05:33 | I can't get this image all the way
where I want it, but I can get a nice
| | 05:37 | control over blending.
| | 05:38 | I like these highlights that I was able
to bring in here and now I can take it
| | 05:42 | into Photoshop and finish my
brightness and contrast corrections there.
| | 05:46 | Average simply averages my images together.
| | 05:48 | There are no options. I take it or
leave it, and it's nice because again, I've
| | 05:52 | got detail here, detail here, so I've
already got more dynamic range than I
| | 05:55 | would have had with a single image
and I can fix the rest in Photoshop.
| | 05:59 | This is basically average with the
software making some decisions on its own.
| | 06:04 | there are no controls for this.
| | 06:06 | And as I do with any tone mapping
exercise, the first thing I look for is halos,
| | 06:10 | and this method produces some bad ones
here, here, all around here, and here.
| | 06:16 | Again, if you can't see them, look away
from the image for a minute, look back
| | 06:18 | at it, they'll probably be pretty visible.
| | 06:21 | Fusion - 2 images lets me take just
two of the images and see what they
| | 06:27 | look like when together.
| | 06:28 | So I can pick what I want for the first
image. So maybe I'll take 3716 and now
| | 06:33 | I'm getting 3714 for the second image.
| | 06:35 | I can pick another one.
| | 06:36 | So basically I can just try different
combinations of what two images I want and
| | 06:42 | then those get averaged together.
| | 06:43 | So these are my different
Exposure Fusion options.
| | 06:47 | Again, even if you can't remember
what every single control does, first of
| | 06:51 | all know that you've got this interactive
help down here at the bottom of the screen.
| | 06:56 | Right there below the process button.
I can't point at it with the mouse
| | 06:59 | because if I move the mouse off the
little Help will go away, which you can
| | 07:01 | see there it says Sharpness increases the
sharpness and contrast the details in the image.
| | 07:05 | I'm talking about this box right down here.
| | 07:07 | So that can give you a hint or clue into
what the different sliders do, but also
| | 07:12 | just with any tone mapping software of
any kind, keep an eye out for contrast-y
| | 07:16 | areas, make sure they don't have halos,
and always watch for noise and make sure
| | 07:20 | that it's not getting exaggerated.
| | 07:21 | And of course, just keep an overall eye
on how much of an HDR look do you want.
| | 07:27 | Do you want detail in every possible
location or do you want to leave some
| | 07:31 | shadows or possibly
overexposed highlights here and there?
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Single-shot HDR images in Photomatix| 00:00 | Earlier I mentioned a technique called
faux-HDR, which is kind of a phony HDR
| | 00:05 | process and you may have
thought about this already.
| | 00:08 | If normally for HDR I need to shoot a
normally exposed image, an underexposed
| | 00:13 | image, and an overexposed image, why
can't I just take my normally exposed image
| | 00:19 | into my RAW processor, create an
underexposed version, save that out, then
| | 00:24 | create an overexposed version, save
that out, and pass those three final images
| | 00:29 | off to my HDR merging process?
| | 00:33 | That is actually what the faux-HDR technique is.
| | 00:37 | It's creating a bracketed
set from a single original.
| | 00:40 | And it works pretty well, but it's not
actually a full-on substitute for truly
| | 00:46 | shooting a bracketed set. And here's why.
| | 00:48 | If I shoot this image like this, taking
it into my RAW converter and darkening it
| | 00:54 | simply does not yield the same
information as actually shooting a darker
| | 00:59 | image and truly capturing
that different tonal range.
| | 01:03 | So this is a bit of a hack. It's a fake thing.
| | 01:05 | It is again faux-HDR, but it can
work very well for certain situations.
| | 01:11 | Probably the most common place where
you would use Faux-HDR is if you are
| | 01:16 | shooting something that's simply
doesn't lend itself to a bracketed set,and
| | 01:19 | that's usually something with movement.
| | 01:20 | If you're trying to shoot people or an
action scene or if you're shooting a
| | 01:24 | landscape and it's really windy and
the trees are blowing and the grass is
| | 01:27 | blowing and the clouds are moving
through dramatically and that kind of thing.
| | 01:32 | You're going to have trouble getting
good HDR of those, because you're going to
| | 01:35 | have lots of ghosting problems.
Faux-HDR can be a workaround for that.
| | 01:39 | Faux-HDR can also be handy for times
when you come home with an image and
| | 01:42 | realize, ooh, this was a high-dynamic
range scene and I didn't shoot it that way.
| | 01:46 | You can still maybe save it and
get something workable by using a
| | 01:49 | faux-HDR technique.
| | 01:50 | So here's how you do this with Photomatix.
| | 01:52 | I'm going to start with a single image
and I'm using my flat exposure, the one
| | 01:57 | that we're shot as the camera chose to
expose, and I'm choosing to use this one
| | 02:00 | rather than one of the other two.
| | 02:02 | Now of course normally
that's probably all I would have.
| | 02:04 | In this case, just a little theory, I'm
choosing this one because the shadow we
| | 02:08 | want is possibly going to be more prone
to noise and the overexposed one might
| | 02:12 | have blown highlights.
| | 02:13 | Anyway, normally you would simply have
this well exposed image, hopefully, and
| | 02:18 | so that's what you'd use.
| | 02:19 | I'm going to pick this up and drag it down
Photomatix, just like I would with a bracketed set.
| | 02:24 | What I do then I get this RAW
Processing Options dialog rather than the
| | 02:29 | Preprocessing Options dialog box that
I get with a full set, and when I get
| | 02:33 | here are the noise reduction,
chromatic aberration, white balance, and color
| | 02:36 | space tools that you saw in that
Preprocessing dialog box before.
| | 02:40 | Obviously I don't have
alignment, because I don't need it.
| | 02:43 | These three images that I'm going to
end up with are going to register together
| | 02:46 | perfectly, because they're all
generated from the same source.
| | 02:50 | I don't have a ghosting problem
| | 02:51 | because there's no way that I'm
going to have ghosts from a single image.
| | 02:54 | So I'm going to hit OK and what
Photomatix sets about doing is automatically
| | 02:58 | generating those two extra images, the
underexposed and the overexposed from my source.
| | 03:05 | It takes those and the source and then
does an HDR merge on them and you can
| | 03:09 | tell it did a pretty good job.
| | 03:11 | I've got a good nice broad data set.
| | 03:14 | If I look into my image here, I see that
my highlights are not overexposed, I've
| | 03:18 | got good shadow detail, this looks
like an HDR image. This is not a high-dynamic
| | 03:22 | range scene and it's got detail throughout.
| | 03:25 | Once it's open, I've got all of my
normal options over here to play with, all
| | 03:28 | the usual controls and sliders.
| | 03:30 | What you will find though with a faux-
HDR scenario over a full bracketed set
| | 03:36 | HDR scenario is that the
sliders just don't do as much.
| | 03:40 | They don't have the latitude.
| | 03:42 | They don't yield as big a result, as
dramatic an effect, as they would if you
| | 03:47 | have shot with a true HDR bracketed set.
| | 03:49 | So that means I'm not going to be able
to push full-on into that really surreal,
| | 03:54 | crunchy, overwrought HDR look,
if that's what I'm wanting.
| | 03:59 | Nevertheless, faux-HDR can be a great
solution for those times that I mentioned before:
| | 04:04 | moving subject matter, at
times when you just didn't realize you were
| | 04:06 | facing high-dynamic range scene.
| | 04:08 | Once I've got it the way I wanted, I
hit the Process button, right out of file
| | 04:12 | and take that into the rest of my
workflow and we'll be seeing what the rest of
| | 04:15 | that workflow is later in this course.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Single-shot HDR images in HDR Efex| 00:00 | Single shot or faux HDR is the process
of spitting out three separate exposures
| | 00:06 | from the same RAW file and then merging those.
| | 00:09 | We looked at how to do that in Photomatix.
| | 00:12 | Now we are going look at how to do it in
HDR Efex and it's actually very simple.
| | 00:16 | I open an image in Photoshop just
like I normally would, go to Filter > Nik
| | 00:21 | Software > HDR Efex Pro, and it
takes care of generating those different
| | 00:27 | exposures from the same image data,
and now I've got all of my normal HDR
| | 00:32 | controls that I would have even if
I was working with a bracketed set.
| | 00:36 | Just as in Photomatix, all of these
sliders are going to do far or less than
| | 00:41 | they would if I was working with a real
HDR set and for the little bit that they do,
| | 00:47 | I am going to run into highlight
clipping and shadow clipping much sooner
| | 00:50 | than I would with a real HDR set.
| | 00:52 | So this is not a substitute for full HDR,
but again, it's a great thing to have
| | 00:58 | for times when shooting a
bracketed set is not practical or possible.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Single-shot HDR images in Photoshop| 00:00 | I can create a single shot or faux HDR
Efex in Photoshop rather in the way you
| | 00:07 | would think I would, by simply
taking a RAW file, processing it in three
| | 00:10 | different ways, and then merging the results.
| | 00:13 | If you were to sit down and just
try and think your way through this problem,
| | 00:15 | you'd probably have no trouble
figuring it out, but let's walk through it anyway.
| | 00:19 | Let's say that I had only shot one
image of this car instead of the full
| | 00:22 | bracketed set and I had shot it as metered.
| | 00:26 | So I am going to open that image up in
Photoshop and of course, it's a RAW file,
| | 00:30 | so I get my RAW dialog box.
| | 00:32 | Now normally when I am passing the RAW
files off to another HDR program, I don't
| | 00:36 | worry about any RAW conversion parameters.
| | 00:38 | In fact, I am not even given the
chance to adjust RAW conversion parameters.
| | 00:42 | I want to simply hand the full data set
from each file off to the RAW converter.
| | 00:47 | Here though I do need to think about things
that I might want to do in the RAW converter.
| | 00:52 | If I had overexposed highlights,
I would want to recover them.
| | 00:55 | In this case I think I might want to
make a white balance adjustment, because
| | 00:58 | that's not something I can
do very easily after the fact.
| | 01:01 | So I am going to warm that up a little bit.
| | 01:05 | In addition to being easier than
trying to warm an image up in Photoshop,
| | 01:08 | it's also a free edit.
| | 01:09 | It doesn't use up any of the edit
ability of my image, meaning I am not going
| | 01:13 | to lose data, I am not going to
possibly run into tone breaks.
| | 01:17 | So that's pretty good.
| | 01:18 | I think I am going to leave that right there.
| | 01:19 | I am going to check my exposure.
| | 01:22 | My exposure is set at 0 and this
was the image that I shot as exposed.
| | 01:26 | So I don't want to do anything else to
this. I do want to remember white balance
| | 01:29 | adjustments that I made. Fortunately
that's going to be stored in the XMP file
| | 01:33 | that gets saved alongside the RAW file.
| | 01:35 | I am going to hit Open and let it
process and making sure that it's coming in as
| | 01:39 | a 16-bit image, and now I am going to save it.
| | 01:41 | So I may go up here and choose File, Save As,
and I have a folder out here on my desktop.
| | 01:48 | So I am just going to call this exposure
value 0 and I am going to save this as
| | 01:53 | TIFF file, and say OK.
| | 01:57 | I could save it as a TIFF or PSD.
| | 01:58 | It doesn't really matter which I am
saving as a TIFF file just in case I decide
| | 02:02 | to go take this to some HDR processor
that doesn't support Photoshop documents,
| | 02:07 | although I am actually going to end up
processing this back here in Photoshop.
| | 02:10 | Now I am going back to Bridge and you
can see that my thumbnail has updated
| | 02:13 | with that white balance change that I made.
| | 02:15 | I am going to open the image again.
| | 02:17 | Everything is right where I left it last time,
so I don't need to fiddle with any of that.
| | 02:21 | I am just going to put in a +1
Exposure and open that image.
| | 02:26 | I lost my sky here, picked up some detail here.
| | 02:30 | Go to Save As, and go back to my single
shot folder, and now I am going to save
| | 02:36 | a same file named ev+1.
| | 02:39 | You can name these whatever you want.
| | 02:41 | I mean you could name them Bob and Carol
and Ted and Alice, if you want to.
| | 02:44 | I am just trying to keep track
of which is which exposure.
| | 02:46 | I am going to close that and
now my thumbnail updates here.
| | 02:52 | Open that again and I am going to
dial in a -1 Exposure. My white balance is
| | 02:58 | still where it was before, open that,
and I am going to save this as ev-1.
| | 03:06 | Obviously if this was a bigger bracket,
if I shot 5 or 7 images, I would need to
| | 03:10 | go through and continue to process and
save these stepping that Exposure value
| | 03:15 | out by 1 stop in each direction.
| | 03:18 | Close that up and now in Bridge I am
going to navigate up to my desktop to
| | 03:22 | this single shot folder.
| | 03:23 | Well, look-y here.
| | 03:25 | It has got me a bracketed set
of images. Although not really.
| | 03:30 | As I mentioned in Chapter 2 there
is a difference between lowering the
| | 03:33 | exposure of an image that you already have
and actually lowering the exposure and shooting.
| | 03:39 | Photoshop cannot create data.
| | 03:41 | Ys, it can do that to a degree
when it does highlight recovery.
| | 03:44 | But it's not the same
| | 03:46 | as actually capturing it the same,
because remember, your camera has a
| | 03:49 | limited dynamic range, and so when I
take that dynamic range and point it at a
| | 03:54 | lower end of the photographic spectrum,
if you will, I am going to capture a
| | 03:58 | different set of data.
| | 03:59 | So I am going to select these three
images, Tools > Photoshop > Merge to HDR Pro,
| | 04:05 | just as I would do with any other bracketed set.
| | 04:08 | First thing it does is it give me
this warning that I am not working from
| | 04:12 | the original RAW files.
| | 04:14 | It's worded a little strange, but I am
just going to say OK, I know what I am
| | 04:17 | in for and it goes ahead
and does its normal merge.
| | 04:20 | Layering all of the images together
into a single 32-bit file and then it's
| | 04:25 | going to give me my normal Tone Mapping dialog.
| | 04:28 | And just as in Photomatix and HDR Efex,
my controls will work the same but
| | 04:33 | they are not going to have the same
latitude that I would get if I was working
| | 04:37 | with a true bracketed set.
| | 04:39 | Now I am going to switch over down to
16-bit here and I've got all my usual
| | 04:43 | controls that I had before.
| | 04:45 | So I am going to try to put some
contrast back in the image by increasing the
| | 04:50 | Shadows and remember again, that means
I drag Shadows to the left, decrease the
| | 04:55 | Highlights some and just try to get
this back to where it was, and it is always
| | 05:00 | interesting how sliders have a feel in
your hand as you move them around and
| | 05:04 | kind of feel the change that happens in.
| | 05:06 | Right away I am feeling like, Wow!
| | 05:08 | These aren't doing anything.
| | 05:09 | Again, it's what you would expect
and it's what you get again with
| | 05:12 | Photomatix or HDR Efex.
| | 05:14 | They just don't have the
latitude, they don't have the effect.
| | 05:16 | You can't get the sky
looking the way that I did before.
| | 05:19 | Still, this is a nice alternative for
times when shooting a bracketed set isn't
| | 05:24 | possible, but if you are going to do a
lot of single shot HDR, you are going to
| | 05:28 | do far better using Photomatix or HDR Efex.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Ghosting and Photoshop| 00:00 | If you are shooting at bracketed set of
HDR source images and something in your
| | 00:05 | scene moves between shots, you
can end up with a ghosting problem.
| | 00:09 | This is actually a pretty intuitive thing.
| | 00:11 | Let's take a look at this set.
| | 00:13 | I am going to switch over here to
Filmstrip mode so we get a bigger view.
| | 00:16 | While taking their shot, these kids
moved and so if I take these three images
| | 00:20 | and mush them together, we get a
problem because in this image there is an arm
| | 00:25 | here, and in this image there is not.
| | 00:27 | So what should it choose
to do with these things?
| | 00:30 | Of course, it doesn't know from arms,
and so what it will end up doing is
| | 00:34 | putting half arm and half lovely
hillside, and I will get this kind of
| | 00:38 | semi-transparent arm over this hill.
| | 00:40 | That's called ghosting because you end up with
these kinds of ghostly figures in your scenes.
| | 00:45 | Fortunately, most HDR processing
software today has a ghost removing
| | 00:50 | mechanism of some kind.
| | 00:51 | We are going to look at Photoshop so
I am going to just launch right into a
| | 00:54 | merge here which I do just like I
always would. Select my images in Bridge and
| | 00:58 | then launch the Merge to HDR process.
| | 01:01 | And when it's done, I get my
normal Tone Mapping dialog box.
| | 01:05 | First thing I am going to do
is switch over here to 16 bit.
| | 01:08 | So let's take a look at what we got here.
| | 01:09 | I am going to zoom in a little bit to
the area in question and you can see we
| | 01:14 | got a lot of ghosting problems.
| | 01:15 | We've got several arms here.
| | 01:17 | We've got a ghost of an arm here, so
moving on the pants like two to three feet
| | 01:21 | down here, and a kind of shaky
head up here and some shaky shoulders.
| | 01:25 | These kids aren't super sharp either
because they were moving around a little bit.
| | 01:29 | So it's time to remove some ghosts.
| | 01:30 | I can do that by clicking the Remove
ghosts checkbox and when I do that,
| | 01:35 | Photoshop thinks for a bit, and then
when it's done, it's done an okay job.
| | 01:40 | I've lost some ghosting up
here. Still got some down here.
| | 01:44 | These kids are looking a little sharper.
| | 01:46 | There is something weird about the
edges of them. That may just be zoom level.
| | 01:50 | No, they are actually a little bit
weird, and it shows me which image it has
| | 01:55 | chosen to be the primary image.
| | 01:57 | The one that gets selected to have
prominence over other background elements.
| | 02:02 | If I want, I can change that. I can
just click on another one of these images,
| | 02:05 | and it changes around.
| | 02:07 | This one is working better.
| | 02:08 | We look here at the one that it had
chosen, I have got all these problems with
| | 02:12 | his pants on both sides.
| | 02:14 | Here that clears up.
| | 02:17 | There's a little problem around his head,
but I think I could clone that out very easily.
| | 02:21 | Let's look at the third one.
| | 02:22 | Now this one is definitely not usable.
| | 02:24 | I am going with this one.
| | 02:25 | Now notice, as I'm changing around, it has no
bearing on any other part of my HDR process.
| | 02:31 | So it's not affecting my exposure at all.
| | 02:33 | It's not affecting the overall merge.
| | 02:35 | So, now I could go in and adjust my
exposure parameters as I like and do the
| | 02:41 | rest of my HDR process.
| | 02:42 | Hit OK, go into Photoshop, and then I
want to touch up the little bits that
| | 02:46 | it didn't quite get.
| | 02:47 | So that's ghost removal in
the HDR Merge in Photoshop.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Ghosting and HDR Efex| 00:00 | HDR Efex has a ghost removal
mechanism built-in for removing those ghosty
| | 00:06 | artifacts that can occur when something
moves between frames in a bracketed set.
| | 00:10 | It's pretty easy to use.
| | 00:12 | It's only somewhat effective.
| | 00:15 | I am going to launch into a merge of
the bracketed set here in HDR Efex,
| | 00:20 | and when I get my Merge dialog, which
lets me choose which images to merge,
| | 00:24 | that's already filled out,
| | 00:25 | I have Ghost Reduction Method.
| | 00:26 | You've got a couple of choices here.
| | 00:28 | Adaptive or Global.
| | 00:29 | We will leave it on Adaptive, but
set the strength up really high.
| | 00:33 | Hit OK and that's going to work here.
| | 00:36 | As for how much strength you should
use and what the trade-offs are, use too
| | 00:40 | much strength, you can start
introducing other artifacts.
| | 00:43 | So you don't want to go
any higher than you have to.
| | 00:45 | As for Adaptive or Global, it
really depends on how spread out your
| | 00:49 | ghosting problems are.
| | 00:50 | So you may just have to experiment and
the experimenting can be a little slow
| | 00:53 | because you have to do a full merge every time.
| | 00:56 | But as you use it more and more, you
will probably start to recognize, oh,
| | 01:00 | last time when I had this kind of
similar ghosting problem, these were the
| | 01:04 | settings that worked.
| | 01:05 | So, here we go into the software and
you can see that didn't work very well.
| | 01:11 | I had ghosting around his head, I am
looking down there at the loop, and let's
| | 01:16 | just go ahead and zoom in.
| | 01:17 | I had ghosting around all of their heads.
| | 01:18 | Let's cancel out of there and start the
merge again and this time change it to
| | 01:27 | Global and kick the strength up real high.
| | 01:29 | Say OK and let it go through another one.
| | 01:32 | Now if this does not end up working,
we can use merging in Photoshop and turn
| | 01:38 | on its ghost removal and do the
trick that I showed you before.
| | 01:42 | And then with that document open in
Photoshop, just go into HDR Efex on
| | 01:46 | that document and it won't do its
merge. You will just be able to go right
| | 01:49 | in the tone mapping.
| | 01:53 | And there opens up and here I render.
Things are little better, although he
| | 01:59 | still got a ghostly ear and up here,
fixed the ghosting on his head, but left a
| | 02:05 | strange green line moving through him.
| | 02:08 | I got a couple of options here.
| | 02:09 | I could try to retouch a lot of these problems.
| | 02:12 | That's an easy cloning to get rid of that.
| | 02:16 | This kid's face really didn't fair
very well and there will be a lot of
| | 02:20 | retouching to do throughout this image.
| | 02:22 | You know I am going to just call
this a fail, I think, and do what I
| | 02:26 | just described earlier.
| | 02:27 | A little bit of ghosting here and
some what appeared to be weird ghosts and
| | 02:31 | halos around him.
| | 02:33 | I think this is a case where I
have to do my merge in Photoshop,
| | 02:36 | let it take care of the ghosting,
and then open the results in HDR Efex.
| | 02:40 | Sometimes this will work.
| | 02:41 | Sometimes it won't.
| | 02:41 | Fortunately you have an out if you've
got some other ghost removal tools at your disposal.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Ghosting and Photomatix| 00:00 | Photomatix has excellent deghosting tools.
| | 00:04 | Deghosting is the process of removing
those semi-transparent ghosty artifacts that
| | 00:09 | occur in a final HDR merge when
something in your scene moved between frames.
| | 00:15 | And we already did a Deghosting demo of
these three images using Photoshop and
| | 00:19 | we're about to do the
same demo using Photomatix.
| | 00:21 | If you didn't see the Photoshop version,
let me just show you the images real quick.
| | 00:26 | I'm shooting these kids and they had the nerve
to move between frames, can you believe that?
| | 00:30 | I went back when I was a kid and someone
who was shooting a bracketed set of me,
| | 00:33 | I knew enough not to move. But with
these kids these days, I just don't get it.
| | 00:37 | Anyway, you can see his arms are
flapping around there and his head is turning,
| | 00:40 | and what that means is when I merge I
am going to see ghosty arms and heads,
| | 00:44 | and I don't want that. So let's go to it.
| | 00:46 | I'm going to select these three images, drop
them on to Photomatix, just like I normally would.
| | 00:51 | Tell it to merge for HDR processing.
These are the images I want to work with,
| | 00:55 | and here I'm in my
Preprocessing Options. I want to align.
| | 00:58 | I want to reduce noise.
| | 00:59 | I also want to remove ghosts.
| | 01:01 | I have two options, Automatically or
with Selective Deghosting, which they
| | 01:06 | list as recommended.
| | 01:07 | I definitely recommend this also.
| | 01:10 | Sometimes you get lucky with
Automatic and it works, but the selective
| | 01:13 | deghosting tool is so easy to use.
| | 01:15 | There's no reason not to just
do this somewhat manual process.
| | 01:19 | So I hit the Preprocess button and it
goes through a good amount of the HDR
| | 01:23 | merging process that it would normally
have to do, even if I was not Deghosting.
| | 01:27 | It's reducing noise. It's aligning.
| | 01:30 | When it's done with that, there's
going to be an intermediate step where
| | 01:33 | I'm going to have the chance to drive the
deghosting feature before it does its final merge.
| | 01:40 | And here it is, this is the
Selective Deghosting dialog box.
| | 01:44 | Right off the bat, notice there's
very good help information over here.
| | 01:48 | A link to an HTML tutorial, a link to a
video tutorial. You can look at those or
| | 01:53 | you can just listen to me, and I've also got
some written instructions here. It's pretty easy.
| | 01:57 | First let's take a look at the
ghosting problem. Look at this kid.
| | 02:01 | He's got a little bit of an extra head,
he's got a ghosting arm, he's got an extra foot,
| | 02:05 | he's had better days.
| | 02:07 | These two kids though while there
are not obvious ghosting problems around
| | 02:11 | them, but they are still
suffering from some ghosting issues.
| | 02:14 | Their faces are a little bit out of focus
because there are actually three versions.
| | 02:19 | They moved very slightly. There are
basically three versions of these two kids
| | 02:22 | just stacked on top of each other.
| | 02:23 | So I need to deghost all of three.
| | 02:25 | Let's start with this one,
which is very obvious.
| | 02:27 | All I do is click and start dragging
with my mouse and as I do, I leave this
| | 02:31 | little bit dotted line, so I'm just
circling this kid and as you'll notice I'm
| | 02:35 | not being particularly picky or careful.
| | 02:38 | What I'm doing with this process is
just clueing Photomatix into where the
| | 02:41 | ghosting problem is.
| | 02:43 | Once I've circled him, I then Ctrl+
Click or right-click if I'm using a
| | 02:48 | two-button mouse or using Windows.
| | 02:50 | And I get this popup menu.
| | 02:51 | I can mark selection as ghosted area.
| | 02:53 | When I do that, Photomatix now knows this is
an area it needs to consider for deghosting.
| | 02:59 | Now I could go ahead and circle the
other two and head off to do my final processing,
| | 03:04 | but I'm curious to know if this is
really working, if I'm getting a good deghosting.
| | 03:07 | So I'm going to preview
Deghosting by clicking this button.
| | 03:10 | It's going to think for a
minute, and then bang, there it is.
| | 03:12 | Look, his extra head's gone.
| | 03:13 | His arms are sharp.
| | 03:15 | His extra foot has gone.
| | 03:16 | The pattern on his shirt has sharpened up,
because there was some overlap there.
| | 03:19 | That was leading to some ghosting
effects that were basically just making
| | 03:23 | for a soft focus.
| | 03:24 | I'm going to return to Selection mode,
so that I can move on to the other kids
| | 03:27 | because I'm satisfied with that one.
| | 03:29 | If I did not like the way he turned out,
I could simply right-click within this
| | 03:34 | area over here and I'll just show you
I can right-click right here, we're
| | 03:39 | going to mark this as a ghosted area,
and now I'm going to remove selection.
| | 03:44 | That takes it off and now I can start
over and I promise you I won't make that
| | 03:47 | mistake again. I will finish
this deghosting lasso here.
| | 03:52 | Now I don't know if you noticed, but if
I just let and go off the mouse button,
| | 03:56 | it automatically closes it so I don't have
to go all the way back up to the top again.
| | 04:01 | Again, I'm circling this kind of roughly.
| | 04:03 | Mark selection as ghosted. Watch him
very closely right in here as I click the
| | 04:08 | Preview deghosting button.
| | 04:10 | And there, kis his face just
sharpened up. That one maybe a little
| | 04:12 | harder for you to see in the small window size
that this video will ultimately be presented.
| | 04:18 | Circling the last one here and notice
I'm now overlapping with the first one
| | 04:22 | and that simply doesn't matter.
Photomatix is smart enough to figure out which is
| | 04:26 | which and how to separate all this stuff.
| | 04:28 | So circle him, right-click,
and Mark selection as ghosted.
| | 04:33 | You know, I trust that it's working well.
| | 04:34 | I'm now going to bother
previewing. I'm ready to just hit OK.
| | 04:38 | Before I do that, let's take a look at
these two controls down here. I can zoom
| | 04:41 | in to try and get a better view.
| | 04:42 | If I don't know where my ghosting is,
this is a great way to get a quicker or
| | 04:46 | a more detailed look.
| | 04:47 | I have a Brightness control here.
| | 04:49 | As you've probably already discovered
with some of your HDR merge, it is very
| | 04:52 | often they come out of the
merging process very dark.
| | 04:56 | That can make it difficult to
see if you have a ghosting problem.
| | 05:00 | So I can crank the brightness up
just to make my image easier to see.
| | 05:04 | This is not a setting that will
impact my final merge in any way.
| | 05:08 | It's just a pre-visualization tool to
make it easier for me to see any ghosting
| | 05:13 | problems that I might have.
| | 05:13 | So I'm going to hit OK and now
it's extracting ghosting information.
| | 05:18 | It's merging into HDR.
| | 05:20 | Basically what it's doing, is it's
doing its normal HDR merge process and then
| | 05:24 | taking that extra deghosted stuff
and layering that back on, blending it
| | 05:28 | together, making sure that
I have a very pretty image.
| | 05:31 | There's the 32-bit version and then
it immediately tone maps it into this.
| | 05:36 | And let's just zoom in here and sure
enough, look there. He doesn't have a
| | 05:40 | ghosting problem, he's very sharp, he
has a little bit of a chromatic aberration problem.
| | 05:43 | There are some purple
fringing in here, some green fringing there.
| | 05:46 | I can take that out in Photoshop.
| | 05:48 | It sure looks good.
| | 05:50 | If you dig around in this image though,
what you will find is down here we
| | 05:54 | have a noise problem.
| | 05:55 | I can take care of that in post processing.
I'm not going to worry about that now.
| | 05:59 | This is zooming in pretty close, so I'm
not going worry too much about whether
| | 06:03 | that noise is even a problem until I
do a print and see if it actually is an
| | 06:07 | issue that needs to be fixed.
| | 06:09 | So that's deghosting in
Photomatix. Play with it.
| | 06:13 | Actually try and contrive some tests
that force a ghosting problem, so that you
| | 06:17 | can see how much you can correct it.
| | 06:18 | Because once you know how much
deghosting latitude you have, you might find that
| | 06:23 | there are just more HDR subject matter
out there for you. If you know, wow,
| | 06:28 | this thing is moving quite a bit, but I got
confidence that I'll be able to deghost it,
| | 06:31 | suddenly you've got a wealth of
new HDR material you can shoot.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Batch processing in Photomatix| 00:00 | As you may have already discovered
there's one kind of downside to working with
| | 00:04 | HDR, which is you may be coming
back with three times the data that you
| | 00:08 | normally would or five times or seven
times depending on how many images you're
| | 00:12 | shooting per scene and assuming that
you're shooting every scene HDR, which of
| | 00:16 | course you won't be doing, but still,
if you're working on some HDR images when
| | 00:21 | you're out there, there is very good
chance you're going to come back with a lot
| | 00:23 | of data that needs to be processed.
| | 00:25 | Fortunately Photomatix has some
excellent batch processing tools that make
| | 00:30 | it easy to go through a whole
folder of bracketed sets and come up with
| | 00:34 | merged images, all without you having to do
anything once you've started the batch process.
| | 00:39 | You can get to the Batch Processing
controls under the Automate menu up here
| | 00:43 | or over here in Workflow Shortcut you'll see
Batch Bracketed Photos, Batch Single Photos.
| | 00:48 | So let's take a look at the process
of Batch Processing Bracketed Photos.
| | 00:53 | So let's assume that I've come back
with a bunch of bracketed sets. I have not
| | 00:57 | renamed my images, so they still have
all of the original camera names. They are
| | 01:01 | all organized in a folder somewhere.
| | 01:02 | I can use this dialog box to manage the
automatic merging of all of those images.
| | 01:09 | This might look a little bit
intimidating, but I promise you for the most part
| | 01:12 | there is not a single control in this
dialog box that you have not already seen.
| | 01:16 | However, the order that they put
things in this dialog box is a little weird.
| | 01:20 | They start with processing and then
you go to picking your source image.
| | 01:23 | So let's start down here in the lower
left corner where we are going to take our
| | 01:26 | first step, which is to pick
the images that we want to merge.
| | 01:29 | I can choose to work on an entire
folder or just on individual files.
| | 01:33 | Personally, I find it easier to
just pick a folder full of images.
| | 01:37 | So I'm going to go out here to the
desktop to my Exercise Files folder and I'm
| | 01:41 | just going to pick Chapter 6
here and say Select Folder.
| | 01:45 | And sure enough it's loaded in all
of the images from that folder.
| | 01:49 | Now I want to look through here and
make sure that they are all just RAW images,
| | 01:53 | that I don't have any JPEG or
TIFF images or individual shots.
| | 01:57 | If I did I could select them and click
Remove to get rid of just those images
| | 02:03 | and winnow this down to
simply the bracketed sets.
| | 02:06 | I can also filter by different file
types to make it easier to find images that
| | 02:11 | maybe don't belong in here.
| | 02:12 | I can also tell it whether I want to
recursively go through and process any
| | 02:18 | subfolders that are in this folder.
| | 02:19 | So we're just going to stick with this.
We're going to process this whole set of images.
| | 02:23 | Now I was shooting three shot brackets,
so it's pretty safe to assume that
| | 02:27 | 69, 70, and 71 are one set.
| | 02:30 | 72, 73, 74 are second set. I would
want to double check that in Bridge or
| | 02:34 | where my browser is and make sure that
those are the correct sequences and if
| | 02:39 | there's a stray image in there I would
want to get that out of there so that
| | 02:43 | my sets don't get mixed up.
| | 02:45 | So having picked my source images, I'm
ready to save what I have done with them
| | 02:49 | and that's the process section up here.
| | 02:52 | Obviously there is your bracketed
sets. I need them merged. I could do that
| | 02:55 | either by the full-on tone-mapped
merging 32-bit HDR files, or I could do the
| | 03:02 | Exposure Fusion stuff, or I could do
all of these to each bracketed set. I can
| | 03:07 | do multiple HDR processes at the same time.
| | 03:10 | So let's say that we're going to do
just the normal merge of a bracketed set
| | 03:14 | into a final 32-bit HDR file.
| | 03:17 | So, I check this and then I go over
here to settings and I get a whole
| | 03:20 | another mess of options.
| | 03:21 | Lot of these you've already seen.
The odd one out here is going to be Force
| | 03:25 | Exposure Values spacing
to, and it defaults to 2.
| | 03:30 | I shot my three set images as a
shot as metered, a shot underexposed by
| | 03:34 | one stop, a shot overexposed by one
stop. That means my entire bracketed set has
| | 03:40 | an exposure value range of 2 stops.
| | 03:43 | So I've kind of done this step. I
don't need to force exposure values.
| | 03:47 | If I was shooting maybe some sets,
underexposed two thirds, overexposed two thirds,
| | 03:53 | and other sets underexposed one
-and-a-half, and so on and so forth, I
| | 03:55 | could tell it to force them all to
this particular exposure value range.
| | 03:59 | If you're shooting properly, for the most
part you won't need to worry about this.
| | 04:02 | Ghosting artifacts, I can turn that on
or off. Obviously I don't get the manual
| | 04:06 | ghosting control, as this
is going to be all automatic.
| | 04:09 | I can tell it to reduce
noise, chromatic aberrations.
| | 04:11 | If I was working with JPEG or TIFF
files, I would want to check this box.
| | 04:17 | Because they are RAW files, I
don't need to worry about that.
| | 04:19 | Then I have got white balance controls.
| | 04:22 | You've seen all these controls before.
| | 04:23 | You haven't seen this one. When source
images are in TIFF format, process strip by strip.
| | 04:29 | This is nothing you really need to
know about, other than that this can
| | 04:34 | help speed up the process if you
don't have a lot of RAM and you're working
| | 04:37 | with really big files.
| | 04:38 | That's the only time you
need to worry about that.
| | 04:40 | So I'm going to say I want to reduce
noise and I'm not worried about any
| | 04:44 | of these other things.
| | 04:46 | So I'm going to say OK.
| | 04:48 | Now if I wanted, I could also do an
Exposure Fusion on all of these just simply
| | 04:52 | by checking these boxes and
configuring their settings and these are all the
| | 04:56 | settings that you've learned about already.
| | 04:58 | I am not going to do those.
| | 04:59 | I just want normal merging.
| | 05:01 | So I've merged these, but all that's
going to do is get me a 32-bit file.
| | 05:04 | I now want to tone map them, so I
need to turn on one of my tone mapping
| | 05:07 | options, and again, these are just the
same things that you normally find in
| | 05:11 | Photomatix, the settings, and
these are all of the same parameters.
| | 05:15 | So I can go through here and configure
this the way I want or what's probably
| | 05:19 | better is if I defined a preset.
| | 05:20 | I can pick that from here.
| | 05:22 | Now you need to think a little bit
about this, about whether this entire batch
| | 05:25 | of images can be tone mapped the same
way, maybe that your landscape images can
| | 05:30 | deal with one type of tone mapping,
while some images that you shot indoors need
| | 05:34 | a different type of tone mapping.
| | 05:35 | In that case you're going to need to
divide your batch in two different batches
| | 05:39 | and process them separately
with the appropriate tone mapping.
| | 05:41 | Obviously, that's not rocket science
to figure out. I just want to remind you
| | 05:45 | that you need to think about whether
one set of tone mapping options can work
| | 05:49 | for the entire set you're going to process.
| | 05:51 | Again I could check other options down here.
| | 05:54 | Now what I need to do is tell it how
many images are in my bracketed set.
| | 05:58 | It defaults to three.
| | 06:00 | I can change it to any of these or I
can even tell it that all of these are
| | 06:03 | one big bracketed set.
| | 06:04 | I'm going to set it to 3 and what
that means is it's going to say 1, 2, 3,
| | 06:07 | this is a bracketed set.
| | 06:08 | 1, 2, 3, this is a bracketed set, and
that's how it's going to merge things.
| | 06:14 | I can hit this Advanced button, which
gets me a whole new set of options and
| | 06:19 | what these do is try to automatically
detect what a bracketed set of image is.
| | 06:25 | This works pretty well and
it's great if you tend to mix it up.
| | 06:28 | If you sometime shoot three, if you
sometime shoot five. So what I can say
| | 06:31 | as well, I know that I was always
shooting at least three, I was never
| | 06:34 | shooting more than seven.
| | 06:36 | If I wanted, I could even say they
might have an even number of frames and
| | 06:39 | then I'm defining an amount of time, the
maximum time between two successive bracketed frames.
| | 06:45 | Typically if you're shooting a
bracketed set, if you're doing it the way that
| | 06:48 | we've been discussing here, you're working
with the burst or drive mode on your camera.
| | 06:53 | So there's probably not going to be
more than a second between different frames
| | 06:58 | in your bracketed set. You could even go
smaller than that, but if I put this on
| | 07:01 | 1 second, I know that any two images
that was shot more than a second apart are
| | 07:07 | not going to be part of the same
bracketed set, and typically you should have
| | 07:10 | said, you stop and you think, maybe
you review your results, well, boom!
| | 07:13 | There, you already passed 1
second, then you shoot another set.
| | 07:16 | So this work as a good filter for
filtering out your different bracketed sets.
| | 07:20 | Alternatively, instead of having it
automatically detect the number of bracketed frames,
| | 07:23 | I can say select only some of
the frames that are in each bracketed set.
| | 07:28 | So if I have specified over here to
select five images, I could say of those
| | 07:34 | five images, process only the first,
third, and last frames, and I can hold down
| | 07:41 | the Command key on the Mac or
Ctrl on Windows to select these.
| | 07:45 | What this is saying is yeah, I shot
the set of five bracketed images, but I
| | 07:48 | don't needed to be that granular, I kind
of want to speed up my processing time,
| | 07:51 | so take only these three images.
This is going to be metered.
| | 07:54 | Maybe I was set to one third apart or
something, so this is going to be metered
| | 07:57 | two thirds, one of third.
| | 08:00 | You known to be honest, I've never
used this feature, but it's still there if
| | 08:03 | you change your mind later about, I
shot of big bracketed set, I only want to
| | 08:07 | process the small one.
| | 08:08 | So these are just some advanced
options, we don't need those here.
| | 08:11 | I'm just going to put this
back on to select 3 at a time.
| | 08:13 | Finally down here, the missing component
from some of the settings that we were
| | 08:17 | looking at earlier up here, these are
a lot of preprocessing options that you
| | 08:22 | work with when you're working manually.
For some reason they pulled a line out
| | 08:25 | and stuck it down here by itself.
| | 08:27 | So I can tell it to Align images.
I've got my usual Crop option and then my
| | 08:31 | different aligning algorithms that I can use.
| | 08:34 | So now I'm all configured.
| | 08:35 | Now when I run the batch, these are the
settings that are going to be used. As it's running,
| | 08:38 | it is going to show me a preview over here.
| | 08:40 | Now once it's merged, then it needs to
do something with them, and that's what
| | 08:43 | these Destination controls are for.
| | 08:45 | I can say take your processed results
and just stick them in the Source folder.
| | 08:49 | Wherever the source images came
from, stick the results there.
| | 08:52 | Or I can say, nay, put them in this
other folder that I'm going to specify.
| | 08:56 | I can tell it the format
that I wanted to save that in.
| | 08:59 | If I'm saving JPEG, I also
get a JPEG quality option.
| | 09:03 | In addition to saving out a finished
TIFF image, by default it is going to save
| | 09:07 | out the 32-bit HDR file and I can save
that out as an EXR. So it's automatically
| | 09:14 | saving the EXR file, along with the
finished results, so that I've got my merged
| | 09:19 | 32-bit data file and a tone mapped version.
| | 09:22 | If I don't like the tone mapped version
that comes out of the batch process, I
| | 09:25 | still got the EXR version
which has already been merged.
| | 09:27 | That saves me the time of
having to reemerge again later.
| | 09:30 | If I want I can say, actually dump the
32-bit file, all I want is the process
| | 09:36 | tone mapped TIFF file.
| | 09:38 | Finally, I get Naming options.
| | 09:40 | these are just ways of specifying how
I want the resulting file names named.
| | 09:45 | So that's the batch
processing of bracketed sets.
| | 09:49 | There might be other times when I
want to batch process single photos.
| | 09:53 | In movie 5_4 "Merging in Photoshop,
processing elsewhere," we looked at the
| | 09:57 | option of doing your merge in
Photoshop, because Photoshop's align features
| | 10:01 | are so good, and then processing in Photomatix,
and we did that by writing out an EXR file.
| | 10:07 | So maybe I've now built-up a big folder of
EXR files, and I just want to process those.
| | 10:13 | That's what I can do here, batch tone mapping.
| | 10:15 | I can select the folder that I want to
use, configure my tone mapping options,
| | 10:19 | tell it where to spit out the file, and
say Run. This gives me a way of doing my
| | 10:23 | merging in Photoshop and tone mapping over here.
| | 10:26 | The downside of that approach is there's
not anyway to batch process the merging
| | 10:31 | of HDR files in Photoshop.
| | 10:32 | So you don't get a fully automated
workflow there, simply because of
| | 10:37 | Photoshop limitations.
| | 10:38 | That's batch processing in Photomatix.
| | 10:40 | It can be a great timesaver, you can
start this stuff up, go to lunch, go to bed,
| | 10:44 | go watch some lynda videos,
whatever you like to do in your spare time and
| | 10:48 | let your computer crunch away on these files.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Additional Retouching and FinishingReducing noise and correcting chromatic aberrations| 00:00 | Earlier I mentioned that it's not always
possible to get to an absolute complete
| | 00:06 | finished image in your HDR merging
software, no matter what that software is.
| | 00:11 | So while you can get your merge done,
get your deghosting done, get your tone
| | 00:16 | mapping the way that you want it, very
often there are still things that will
| | 00:19 | need to be done in your image editor.
| | 00:21 | And in this chapter we are look at what
those things might be, both correcting
| | 00:26 | problems in an image and aesthetic
changes to the image to finish it and
| | 00:30 | complete it and make it
into a nice final product.
| | 00:33 | We are going to start in this
movie by looking at noise reduction and
| | 00:36 | the elimination of chromatic aberrations.
| | 00:38 | So we are well in the realm
of simple mechanical fixes.
| | 00:43 | Just things that need to be done
regardless of what your aesthetic is.
| | 00:46 | You should have worked
with these images earlier.
| | 00:49 | These were the boys that
had the ghosting problem.
| | 00:52 | I have merged this image and deghosted
it Photomatix, which we did in movie 05_11.
| | 00:57 | If you didn't do that, go back and do it
now and get all the way here to the tone
| | 01:01 | mapping process. Then you can
pick up with what I'm about to do.
| | 01:05 | I am going to zoom in here on
his face, close to his face anyway.
| | 01:11 | This magenta fringe here, this green
fringe here, goes all the way around his ears.
| | 01:15 | This is chromatic aberration.
| | 01:17 | Normally it's an optical problem in
your lens or an optical characteristic of
| | 01:21 | your lens if you don't want to
think that your lens has problems.
| | 01:23 | It stems from a lens being unable to perfectly
focus all wavelengths of light to the same point.
| | 01:30 | If you would've looked at any of the
individual frames that went into this HDR,
| | 01:34 | you would not have seen
this chromatic aberration.
| | 01:36 | Sometimes the merging and tone
mapping process brings this out.
| | 01:41 | So we are going to need to take care of that.
| | 01:43 | We also, if you look up in the
clouds, you see a noise problem, the
| | 01:47 | speckle patterns here.
| | 01:49 | Before we go on there is something
that I am afraid I have to tell you
| | 01:52 | about Photomatix. I probably should've
mentioned it earlier but I will bring it up now.
| | 01:56 | This preview that we are seeing here,
this nice finished tone mapped image which
| | 02:00 | is showing us the effects of our adjustments,
| | 02:03 | it's not necessarily what our
final image is going to look like.
| | 02:07 | To get this preview going in a
reasonable amount of time the developers have to
| | 02:12 | take some shortcuts.
| | 02:13 | So there's a good chance that our
brightness levels are going to be
| | 02:16 | different when we finish.
| | 02:17 | There's also a good chance that our noise
levels are going to be different when we finish.
| | 02:21 | So this is at best an approximation
and that can be a little frustrating and
| | 02:25 | it's another reason that we don't want
to get a complete finished image here
| | 02:30 | with Photomatix's controls, because we
simply can't preview it in real time to
| | 02:34 | see that finished image.
| | 02:35 | So something you are
going to learn to workaround.
| | 02:38 | Next step of course is to get my Tone
Mapping settings set to where they should be,
| | 02:41 | so I am going to fiddle with
those a little bit and where I start with
| | 02:44 | that is the way that I would start with any
image editing. I am going to look at the histogram.
| | 02:48 | I have a weak black point, I have no
black point and very few dark tones, and
| | 02:52 | that's why that has this washed-out look.
| | 02:54 | That's highlight clipping.
| | 02:56 | So I am going to go in here first right
of the bat and just get my black point
| | 02:59 | far more aggressive and that
immediately puts some punch back in the image.
| | 03:04 | I'm not going to play the black
point like I would in a normal image edit
| | 03:08 | because my preview is not actually I am
going to leave myself a little head room.
| | 03:12 | So I want to be sure that I'm not
getting anywhere close to clipping in case
| | 03:16 | this image comes out darker than the expecting.
| | 03:18 | So I am just ballparking the black
point and saying that yeah I would like
| | 03:21 | the contrast there.
| | 03:23 | White point I've got some headroom
here. I have got a little latitude. I could
| | 03:26 | push the whites brighter. I don't want
to overexpose anything and also it's a
| | 03:30 | cloudy day. This image
doesn't need to be too bright.
| | 03:33 | So I am going to leave that there. So
I usually start by just getting my tone
| | 03:36 | ballparked so that I can simply see if
I'm liking the image. If it's got the
| | 03:41 | tonality that I think I want.
| | 03:43 | Now I can start working
more on the HDR type effects.
| | 03:46 | Remember the bulk of the HDR look is
going to come from your Strength slider and
| | 03:50 | your Smoothing controls. Remember
too that you have got more smoothly and
| | 03:53 | controls than just this smoothing slider.
You have got this Micro-smoothing and
| | 03:58 | these other controls down here.
| | 03:59 | Micro-contrast is going to add more HDR
crunchiness to it and Color Saturation
| | 04:04 | is going to add that abed up HDR look,
but Strengthen and Smoothing are really
| | 04:08 | where the bulk of stuff happens.
| | 04:09 | And a lot of times it helps to hit the
extremes of these sliders just to figure
| | 04:14 | out what kind of effect you are getting.
| | 04:17 | Now somewhere in here I think about what
do I want? Do I want a real HDR look or
| | 04:22 | do I want something that
looks little more realistic?
| | 04:25 | The sky is very dramatic, but I
don't want it to upstage the kids here.
| | 04:29 | So I am going to go for more of a
realistic look than a really surreal HDR kind
| | 04:35 | of look, so we are not seeing the whole
image. There is not much else down here
| | 04:38 | that I mean to worry about. It is
just grass so I am going to leave that.
| | 04:41 | So I am going to back off on the
Strength a little bit and that's going to
| | 04:45 | serve to calm the sky down a little
bit and put the lighting back to be a
| | 04:48 | little more realistic.
| | 04:50 | It should be brighter behind them because
the sky though cloudy is still pretty bright.
| | 04:54 | Now when I did that I lost a little bit
of that black point correction that I had.
| | 04:59 | The slider didn't move.
| | 05:00 | It's just my blacks got shifted some.
| | 05:02 | I am going to put back there, which
brings the sky back a little bit into more of an
| | 05:06 | HDR zone, then I am going to back off on
that, so working at a balance of these.
| | 05:10 | Let's take a look at smoothness. I am
going to pull this all the way up here.
| | 05:14 | I am going to look at all the way
down here. Remember this is smoothing out
| | 05:18 | the transitions between all of the tiny
little bits of contrast change that have been made.
| | 05:23 | So I want to go for a more realistic
look, which I feel like is more on this end
| | 05:27 | of the spectrum, and the reason I'm
saying that is again over here I'm seeing
| | 05:32 | more brightness behind them, more
shadows in front of them. Here I get more of a
| | 05:37 | perfectly even flat exposure across the frame.
| | 05:40 | This now looks like it's
been artificially brightened.
| | 05:44 | So I'm going to go back over here. Again
with some images it's okay to have that
| | 05:49 | fake processed look but these are
three guys standing by the side of the road.
| | 05:54 | I want to keep that as realistic as possible.
| | 05:57 | So I am going to put that somewhere in there.
| | 05:59 | Just for curiosity I am going to turn
on the other Smoothing mode and just
| | 06:05 | see if I like any of these better.
And this is pretty close to what I had
| | 06:11 | manually so I am just going to stick
with my dialed in smoothing controls.
| | 06:17 | I want to just take a look at some of
the Micro-smoothing and see if it makes
| | 06:22 | any difference. Because this image
doesn't have a lot of fine detail, I don't
| | 06:25 | it's going to and it doesn't so
I am going to leave that there.
| | 06:30 | Now I am looking at is going um, you know
the contrast still isn't right, still
| | 06:33 | looks a little washed-out. I am going to
fix that in Photoshop. I don't know what
| | 06:36 | the contrast really is so I am
simply not going to worry about.
| | 06:40 | Temperature, shooting in shade is always
going to - if you are working with Auto
| | 06:44 | White balance - leave a somewhat cool
image I am going to try and warm this up
| | 06:48 | just a little bit, not a lot, because it
was cloudy, there wasn't a lot of color,
| | 06:54 | but I do like the extra warmth.
| | 06:57 | Saturation I'm not going to play that
much with. Just to give you an idea what
| | 07:01 | it would look like I can amp up the
colors a lot and if I did that I would
| | 07:05 | probably back off on the Temperature.
| | 07:08 | But again I'm not going for the
hyperrealistic HDR thing so I am going to pull
| | 07:14 | Saturation back and go with the
warming that I had dialed in and I may play
| | 07:21 | with saturation further.
| | 07:22 | So I'm probably going to leave it there for now.
| | 07:25 | I am going to zoom in here and show
you that really bad noise problem in here
| | 07:28 | that's going to have to be dealt with.
| | 07:29 | Once I have got this the way that I
think I want it, I hit the big old Process
| | 07:33 | button that's sitting right over here.
| | 07:36 | And that's going to sit there and
actually do my tone mapping process and then
| | 07:39 | it's going to show me the result.
Don't panic when you see the result.
| | 07:43 | The reason I say that is the result looks soft.
| | 07:46 | it doesn't really look like what I had before.
| | 07:49 | So at this point I'm really not sure
what I'm going to end up with. Let's get it
| | 07:52 | into Photoshop and take a look for real.
| | 07:55 | I'm going to save this back into the
folder for the source images were and what
| | 08:02 | Photomatix has done is kept my original
name and had it tone mapped at the end.
| | 08:07 | I am just going to save this out as a 16
-bit tiff file. I want 16 bits because
| | 08:11 | that's going to give me a lot of
editability and once that's done I am going to
| | 08:15 | go open the image in Photoshop.
| | 08:17 | So now in my folder where the
original image is, here's my tone mapped
| | 08:22 | version. If I wanted I could just grab
all of these together and stack them.
| | 08:26 | So now I have my tone mapped HDR
with all of its original source files
| | 08:30 | sitting underneath it.
| | 08:32 | Open this up in Photoshop. In Bridge
I can do that just by double-clicking.
| | 08:35 | Now let's take a look at what we got.
| | 08:38 | And it came out a little warmer than
I thought. It's kind of yellow but I am
| | 08:41 | going to worry about that.
| | 08:42 | It still looks soft.
| | 08:43 | But when I zoom in I find that
actually I have got pretty good detail.
| | 08:48 | The noise isn't a great. There's still
some noise in here. Chromatic Aberrations
| | 08:55 | are a drag so let's hit those first.
| | 08:57 | I can fix Chromatic Aberrations on any type
of image. All of the edits that we are
| | 09:01 | looking at here are not
things that you do only to HDR.
| | 09:04 | This point we are out of the HDR
processing realm. We are just doing normal
| | 09:08 | Photoshop stuff. Anything you're seeing
here you could do to any type of image.
| | 09:11 | Filter > Lens Correction. Chromatic
Aberration is normally a lens artifact, so
| | 09:17 | it gets addressed in Lens Correction filter.
| | 09:20 | Auto Correction. I don't want any auto
correction stuff going on. I am going to
| | 09:24 | turn this off. I will go over here to
the Custom control. Now to fix Chromatic
| | 09:28 | Aberration I need to be able to see it
so I am going to zoom in here to 100% and
| | 09:34 | take a look at these fringy things here.
| | 09:37 | Chromatic Aberration sliders over here.
Fix Red/Cyan Fringe, Fix Green/Magenta
| | 09:41 | Fringe, Fix Blue/Yellow Fringe, I have a
green/magenta fringe. I want less of it
| | 09:48 | so I am going to dial this down.
| | 09:50 | Now you may think would you
ever want more and dial it up?
| | 09:53 | No but there are some times where
the fix works by sliding the slider to
| | 09:57 | other direction don't worry about
understanding it, just try moving the
| | 10:00 | sliders in either direction.
| | 10:02 | What Photoshop is doing here is moving
individual color channels around so that
| | 10:07 | they fall back in to registration.
It's doing it in a very intelligent way now.
| | 10:12 | Sometimes when I fix Chromatic
Aberration here I might be introducing it over on
| | 10:17 | one of the edges of the image.
| | 10:19 | Look over here on the edge. I am not
worried about this because it's outside the photo.
| | 10:22 | You can see that I picked up a
bunch of red fringe. That's because the red
| | 10:26 | that was hanging our off of his
left side has been shoved to the right.
| | 10:30 | And it's fallen out the
other side of the image in a way.
| | 10:33 | So I am looking pretty good here.
| | 10:34 | That's taken care of the
chromatic aberration problem.
| | 10:36 | I am going to hit OK.
| | 10:40 | Let's think about noise.
| | 10:42 | Bad noise down here, some color noise
in the skin tones, and a little bit of
| | 10:49 | noise up in the sky. Nothing that bad.
| | 10:51 | Thing to remember about noise is you
shouldn't worry too much about it until you
| | 10:55 | see your final output. If your final
output is 640x480 image we are posting on
| | 10:59 | the web go ahead and make that
image and see how bad the noise is.
| | 11:03 | This is a 21 megapixel image. These
individual pixels are very, very, very
| | 11:08 | small when print it so that may not be
an issue, but this is pretty bad noise I
| | 11:11 | want to take a look at.
| | 11:12 | I am going to go to Filter > Noise >
Reduce Noise and that's going to pop up
| | 11:18 | this Noise Reduction dialog box and wow!
| | 11:21 | It's done a pretty good job already.
| | 11:23 | This preview can be panned about and
zoomed and if I click and hold the mouse
| | 11:27 | button I see the original image, so
that's my original noisy image. I am going to
| | 11:32 | let go of the mouse button and there's
my corrected version and I got to tell you,
| | 11:36 | I don't think this needs much more.
| | 11:38 | These controls over here, the Strength of the
Noise Reduction, how much to preserve detail.
| | 11:43 | Noise Reduction works by going in and
applying a lot of very selective blurs.
| | 11:48 | So you're always possibly
sacrificing detail for the sake of less noise.
| | 11:53 | So that's why these are grouped
together. We want to balance them.
| | 11:56 | That means we want to apply only as
much Noise Reduction as we have to, because
| | 12:01 | that will potentially help preserve our
details. So I am going to dial this down
| | 12:04 | a little bit and see if it still
works and it looks like it does.
| | 12:10 | So let's not add any stronger noise
reduction then we have to, but maybe we need
| | 12:16 | to go back up a little bit. Yeah,
let's clean that up a little bit more.
| | 12:19 | There are two kinds of noise. There are
these simple speckle patterns that are
| | 12:23 | luminance noise and then there are the
colored splotchy patterns that are color noise.
| | 12:27 | So we have separate controls for those
and the defaults are really doing good job.
| | 12:34 | I am going to leave the sharpen details
where they are at because I think this
| | 12:36 | is looking very good. Hit OK, let it process
the image, which it should do pretty quickly.
| | 12:41 | And I've taken care of and
chromatic aberration and my noise.
| | 12:45 | This image needs a lot more work. Right
now we're just looking at just the noise
| | 12:49 | and the chromatic aberration. Because of
the chromatic aberration adjustment,
| | 12:53 | my image is no longer perfectly squared
to its original canvas size. If I go up here
| | 12:59 | to the top you can see that I picked
up some transparent pixels. At some point
| | 13:02 | I want to crop that out.
| | 13:04 | So save this image, I am just going to
do a normal save because this was already
| | 13:08 | a tiff file and if you are wondering
where that Layer box came from, when I did
| | 13:14 | the chromatic aberration fix
it floated my background layer.
| | 13:17 | So it's no big deal.
| | 13:18 | Save that image and now back here in
the Bridge my tone mapped tiff file now
| | 13:23 | updates to show the corrected noise
and chromatic aberration trouble.
| | 13:27 | This image needs some more work but
at least we fixed those crucial purely
| | 13:31 | technical mechanical details.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finishing an image| 00:00 | I want to continue with the image of the
three boys that we worked on in the last movie.
| | 00:07 | I am just going to open up
the version that we had saved.
| | 00:09 | This is the one where we've already
done noise reduction and fixed the
| | 00:13 | chromatic aberrations.
| | 00:14 | So I am going to open it up again in
Photoshop. You should have saved version of
| | 00:18 | this from last time.
| | 00:20 | If you're not familiar with what I
just did there, the way the windows just
| | 00:23 | popped up, in Photoshop you can zoom in
and out of an image with Command+Plus and
| | 00:27 | Command+Minus and if you hit Command+0 it blows
the image up to fit as large as it can on screen.
| | 00:34 | If you are using Windows you'll be using
the Ctrl key instead of the Command key.
| | 00:38 | So a lot of times during these tutorials
you are going to see this kind of thing
| | 00:41 | happening and I am just using
Command+Plus, Command+Minus and Command+0.
| | 00:45 | I am going to hide Bridge just to
keep things from getting confusing here.
| | 00:50 | So let's think about what else
needs to be done with this image.
| | 00:54 | We've done a lot to it already.
| | 00:55 | We took three source images, mergef
them into an HDR, into a 32-bit image, then
| | 00:59 | tone mapped that image, then
brought it in here and removed chromatic
| | 01:03 | aberrations, reduced noise.
| | 01:06 | In the tone mapping process we did a lot of
tonal adjustments and made a lot of decisions.
| | 01:10 | What else go we need to do?
| | 01:11 | Well, I can just start from scratch at
this point. Look at this image just as
| | 01:16 | if it was something I had taken out my
camera and tried to figure out what it might need.
| | 01:20 | And as I would do with an image that
I've taken right out of my camera I want to
| | 01:24 | look at the histogram.
| | 01:26 | And I go up here to Window > Histogram
and when I see this little exclamation mark
| | 01:32 | over here that means that the
histogram is not completely accurate.
| | 01:35 | I am going to click on it to tell
it to generate a real histogram.
| | 01:39 | And this is showing a three channel
histogram, separate superimposed histograms
| | 01:43 | with the red, green, and blue channels.
| | 01:45 | I am really just
interested in tone at this point.
| | 01:47 | I am not worried about color. I just want
to see if my tone is as good as it could be.
| | 01:52 | So I am going to switch over here to Expanded
view and change this histogram to Luminosity.
| | 01:57 | Tell it to update again and just as I
was thinking, the image looks a little low
| | 02:03 | contrast and sure enough I don't have a
strong black. I don't really have strong whites.
| | 02:07 | The bulk of my data isn't just this
little bit of my histogram right here, so I
| | 02:11 | am going to start with tonal adjustment.
| | 02:12 | We always do tonal adjustments to an
image before color adjustments because
| | 02:17 | corrections in tone can very often fix color.
| | 02:21 | I have added a Levels adjustment layer.
| | 02:24 | If you didn't see what I did there I
went down to this menu at the bottom of the
| | 02:28 | Layers palette and chose Levels.
| | 02:30 | And it added this Levels adjustment layer
here and I see my Levels adjustment up here.
| | 02:36 | Because Levels includes a histogram, I am
going to close up my Histogram palette there.
| | 02:41 | So I need a stronger black point, I am
just going to move this over here and you
| | 02:45 | can see that I am clipping well into the black.
| | 02:47 | I am eyeballing this to see where I want it.
| | 02:50 | I don't want to lose too much detail in
here so I am going to back off a little bit.
| | 02:53 | I am ultimately going to print this
image and all images darken up when I print,
| | 02:58 | so I am going to
kind of keep that in mind.
| | 03:01 | I could move my white point
but I don't know that I need to.
| | 03:06 | Yes the image gets a little brighter.
| | 03:08 | I don't want the sky to get any brighter
than it needs to, so I am just going to
| | 03:11 | leave that right about there.
| | 03:13 | Otherwise I am feeling pretty
good about where the tone is.
| | 03:15 | I think I want to maybe brighten their
faces a little bit, but that's going to
| | 03:19 | be a separate action.
| | 03:21 | So with tone where it is, if I look at
this image what's bothering me about it
| | 03:25 | now is this grass is really green.
| | 03:29 | This is where I am starting to get into some
of that HDR thing that I don't know that I want.
| | 03:34 | It's looking a little hyper-realistic.
| | 03:36 | It's looking like someone opened this
image and hit the Saturation slider much
| | 03:40 | more than I would like.
| | 03:41 | So I want to desaturate these greens.
| | 03:43 | I don't know that I need to
desaturate the whole image.
| | 03:45 | I like there is some warmth in their skin tone.
| | 03:47 | I am not minding the orange
shorts and the yellow shirt here.
| | 03:50 | I like those colors. It's just
the grass looks like AstroTurf.
| | 03:54 | So I am going to go back here to my
Layers palette, go down here to the new
| | 03:58 | adjustment layer, and
add a Hue/Saturation layer.
| | 04:01 | I can see my Hue/Saturation controls.
| | 04:04 | If I drag Saturation the left
I desaturate the entire image.
| | 04:09 | I am kind of liking that actually
now that I see it but I want to try
| | 04:12 | desaturating just the green, because I
want to see what happens if we leave
| | 04:15 | these where they were.
| | 04:16 | So I am going to undo that, which I did
that by hitting Command+Z or Ctrl+Z.
| | 04:20 | What I would like to do is have a localized
de-saturation that only hits the green tones.
| | 04:25 | The easiest way to do that is to click
on this thing right here, this little
| | 04:30 | finger, and come down here and
click on some of the green in my image.
| | 04:34 | So I am just going to find kind of a mid-
tone green right there and when I click
| | 04:37 | and my cursor turns into that little
finger thing, the same one we saw up
| | 04:40 | there in the pallet.
| | 04:41 | I am going to drag to the left to desaturate.
| | 04:43 | And now I am desaturating only the grass.
| | 04:47 | The orange shorts and the yellow shirt are
staying the same and I will put that about right there.
| | 04:52 | That's looking a little more realistic.
| | 04:54 | I'll undo that for you,
| | 04:57 | so you can see before and all I am doing is
hiding this Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.
| | 05:01 | That's before, that's after.
| | 05:05 | Think for a minute about why that
looks more realistic. Is that just because
| | 05:09 | when I see really saturated color,
I think image editing?
| | 05:13 | Not necessarily, although that is part of
it, but also when there's more light you
| | 05:18 | usually get more color saturation.
| | 05:20 | With grass when there is more light,
it normally looks brighter because all the
| | 05:23 | time you see light shining from behind it and
it's semi opaque and so it really lights up.
| | 05:28 | This is a completely cloudy day.
The grass should look dull.
| | 05:32 | Colors shouldn't look too saturated.
| | 05:35 | So a lot of times the way you
understand where saturation should be is to think
| | 05:38 | about what the lighting in the
situation is and how it should actually look.
| | 05:43 | Less light means less saturation.
| | 05:45 | This is a dark and cloudy day.
| | 05:47 | So I am happy with that.
| | 05:49 | Last thing I want to think about maybe is just
to be sure we get a good view of their faces,
| | 05:54 | I might want to brighten those up. I am
not sure that this edit's going to work or not
| | 05:57 | but I am going to take a Levels
adjustment and add a Levels adjustment layer.
| | 06:02 | We will zoom in here because I want
to see their faces a little better.
| | 06:05 | I am going to brighten them up a
little bit with the mid-tone slider.
| | 06:08 | I am not going to do this with the
white point because if I brighten with the
| | 06:11 | white point I'm also increasing
contrast a little bit and I would rather just
| | 06:15 | have the mid-tones be a touch brighter.
| | 06:19 | Now that's happening to the entire
image, I am not worrying about that.
| | 06:21 | I am just looking at his face and
just keep an eye on his face.
| | 06:26 | This is the original; this
is brightened up a little bit.
| | 06:31 | It is like that I am losing some
of the shadows around his eyes.
| | 06:33 | Again this image is going to go darker
when it prints, so it's better to err on
| | 06:37 | the side and just a touch too light.
| | 06:40 | So the problem is that happens to the
entire image. I wanted to only affect his
| | 06:44 | face so I'm going to use my
layer mask here to take care of that.
| | 06:48 | I am going to zoom back out for a
moment so you can see what's going on.
| | 06:51 | I go up here to the Select menu and choose All.
| | 06:54 | The entire image is selected.
| | 06:56 | Clicking on here to make sure this
highlight is around my layer mask to indicate
| | 07:01 | that it's going to receive the edits.
| | 07:03 | I am going to go up here to Edit and choose
Fill and tell it to fill it black. Hit OK.
| | 07:10 | That fills my layer mask with black.
| | 07:12 | So now nothing in the image is getting
that lightning effect of my adjustment layer.
| | 07:18 | Select > Deselect.
| | 07:19 | Now I am going to zoom back in and I am
going to grab a paintbrush, make sure I
| | 07:25 | have white paint, and then I set my
brush size to be about the size of his face,
| | 07:29 | which it is, and I am just going to paint
on there a little bit and you can see his
| | 07:33 | face brightening up.
| | 07:34 | If I look at my mask you see it
punched a little hole in the mask that's
| | 07:37 | allowing the brightening to come through.
| | 07:39 | I painted only on the top of his face
here because it makes sense that the
| | 07:44 | lower part of his cheeks and his lower lip
would be in shadow and so would be a little darker.
| | 07:50 | Sometimes we follow what makes sense
lighting-wise and sometimes we are cheap
| | 07:53 | like I am doing right now, which is I am
going to lighten up sockets of his eyes
| | 07:57 | a little bit because the
eyes are very important.
| | 08:00 | Fortunately there's still the total
relationships of his eye sockets are still
| | 08:04 | correct, the upper part is still
darker than the lower part, but overall the
| | 08:07 | whole thing is brighter.
| | 08:09 | So just to get it a before-and-after
look here. That's before, watch his face.
| | 08:17 | That's after.
| | 08:19 | Before, watch his face. That's after.
| | 08:24 | So I think that's probably about
all I want to do to this image.
| | 08:27 | I would want to size it, sharpen it,
and do a test print and check out my
| | 08:32 | notes and if they needed any
refinement, come back because I've done everything
| | 08:35 | is adjustment layers.
| | 08:37 | I can very easily tweak these
adjustments and get them correct.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Handling HDR images that are "flat"| 00:00 | As we've been discussing throughout
this course, one of the great things about
| | 00:03 | HDR, in fact the reason to use HDR,
is that it can give you good exposure
| | 00:09 | throughout the full tonal range of your image.
| | 00:11 | One of the problems you're going to
run into with HDR though is that it gives
| | 00:15 | you good exposure throughout the full
tonal range of your image and we're going
| | 00:18 | to see in this lesson why that can be a problem.
| | 00:21 | Go to the Chapter 6 folder and
grab images 319, 320, and 321 and merge
| | 00:27 | them using Photoshop.
| | 00:28 | These images were shot handheld and
Photoshop is going to do a better job of
| | 00:33 | giving us a good merge than
will Photomatix or HDR Efex.
| | 00:37 | And I know that because I've tried it in all
three and this is the one where it works the best.
| | 00:42 | When it's done aligning the images, we
end up here in our Tone Mapping dialog box.
| | 00:47 | Now we're going to do our
tone mapping in Photomatix.
| | 00:50 | What I want to do here is spit out a 32-bit
image, so I make sure the Mode is set to 32.
| | 00:54 | I also want to remove ghosts.
| | 00:57 | You may think this is a shot of
the fence, there's nothing moving.
| | 01:00 | Well, it was a very windy day and the grass is
tall enough that the grass is blowing around.
| | 01:04 | Watch this area right here as I check
the Remove ghosts box, and you'll see
| | 01:12 | some stuff disappeared.
| | 01:14 | So there were some little ghosty bits
in there that might have been smearing up
| | 01:17 | the grass and costing us some detail.
| | 01:19 | If I switch to one of the other images
to make it the primary image, you should
| | 01:23 | see something shift around
and then here's the third image.
| | 01:29 | I think I'm going to go with the second
one because I like that it's got just a
| | 01:34 | little bit more highlighted in this area.
| | 01:35 | So I'm going to take the second image,
make sure I'm set on 32-bit, and hit OK
| | 01:40 | and let it create a 32-bit file.
| | 01:42 | And when it's done, I end up here.
| | 01:45 | Right away, you notice the
sky is completely blown out.
| | 01:47 | I'm not worried about that at all,
because this is a 32-bit file. There's a
| | 01:51 | whole of the data in there,
but the monitor can't display it.
| | 01:55 | It doesn't have the dynamic range to
display all the stuff that we've got in here,
| | 01:59 | so I'm not going to worry about that.
| | 02:00 | I need to save this out as an EXR
file that we're going to take in to
| | 02:04 | Photomatix and tone map.
| | 02:05 | But to do that, I'm going to jump
over here to Bridge and I'm going to copy
| | 02:10 | the file name of this image. Not the
extension, just the name because I want
| | 02:15 | all of the components of this HDR to stay
grouped together in the folder where they're stored.
| | 02:20 | So I'm going to have these three source
images, the EXR image that I'm using to
| | 02:24 | get into Photomatix, and then my final
tone-mapped image, so there's going to be
| | 02:28 | a lot of little components here.
| | 02:29 | I'm going to say File > Save As.
| | 02:33 | I'm writing it into the same folder.
I'm just going to paste the name in there
| | 02:37 | and I'm going to change my format to OpenEXR.
| | 02:42 | So it writes out a 32-bit file into that folder.
| | 02:44 | I'm going to close that because we're
done here in Photoshop for the moment.
| | 02:48 | And if I look back here in Bridge, I
see that I still have my three source
| | 02:52 | images along with this EXR image.
| | 02:55 | I'm going to go ahead and stack those.
| | 02:57 | Stacks > Group as Stack.
| | 02:59 | So now they're all kind of staying
together in this little logical container.
| | 03:03 | Now remember, stacks are just a Bridge
function. I don't see anything change
| | 03:07 | out in my file manager.
| | 03:09 | So let's take this EXR image
and pull it into Photomatix.
| | 03:13 | It will open it up and it's going to
look just like it did in Photoshop.
| | 03:16 | I still have all this overexposed
highlights because this is just the RAW 32-bit
| | 03:21 | image which my monitor can't display.
| | 03:22 | I need to tone-map it to
start seeing better details.
| | 03:26 | So I hit the Tone Mapping button,
Photomatix gives me an initial tone map, and
| | 03:31 | I'm going to close the Presets.
| | 03:33 | We're really not going to use the
presets in this course just because
| | 03:36 | they're easy enough to use.
| | 03:37 | you click on them and your image changes.
| | 03:39 | We want to learn how to
use the sliders over here.
| | 03:41 | Presets are a great way of quickly
getting a look on an image and they're
| | 03:44 | worth playing around with, but in the
meantime, let's go over here and do this by hand.
| | 03:50 | Start by hitting the Reset Default button.
| | 03:52 | I want to make sure we all
have the same settings here.
| | 03:55 | This is where Photomatix will begin.
| | 03:57 | Photomatix always pulls in the last
settings that you used even if you were
| | 04:01 | working on a different image.
| | 04:03 | Take a quick look at the Histogram,
we see that I don't have any blacks.
| | 04:06 | All my tones are clustered here in the center.
| | 04:08 | And sure enough, this
image has a contrast problem.
| | 04:10 | It has very low contrast.
| | 04:11 | We've also got some clipped highlights here.
| | 04:14 | Let's try and take care of those
highlights first, which I'm going to do with
| | 04:17 | my white point slider.
| | 04:18 | And the reason I'm going to do those
first is that if I can't get those the way
| | 04:22 | that I like them, I'm
probably going to abandon this image.
| | 04:25 | So it would be a drag to do a bunch of
work on this image and then find out that
| | 04:28 | it's ruined by these overexposed highlights.
| | 04:31 | So let's try and fix those first.
| | 04:32 | I'm moving to tone down the whites.
| | 04:35 | And looking there, there is detail in there.
| | 04:37 | This is the magic of a 32-bit data space.
| | 04:41 | This is why we shoot HDR.
| | 04:42 | It has pulled a whole lot
of detail back into there.
| | 04:45 | That looks much nicer.
| | 04:46 | Now let's think about the contrast problem.
| | 04:48 | This is all washed out down in here.
| | 04:50 | It's just it's blah. The whole image has
this gray haze over it, beyond the fact
| | 04:54 | that half of the image is gray.
| | 04:56 | There's just this lack of punch
here that's the result of low contrast.
| | 05:01 | So normally the way I would address
contrast is I'd go in here to the black
| | 05:04 | point and I'd crank it up, and right
away I'm getting nicer detail in here.
| | 05:09 | The image is dark overall, but I at
least getting some contrast back in here.
| | 05:13 | But there's a problem with this, and
that is these clouds right here. They're
| | 05:17 | already really, really dark.
| | 05:19 | They're almost
unrealistically dark, but not quite.
| | 05:23 | But what this means is I don't want
to darken my image too much, because if
| | 05:26 | these things turn black or if the
bottoms of these clouds turn black, it's going
| | 05:29 | to start looking really weird.
| | 05:31 | And that's what happens as I pull my
black point in. Look these things are just
| | 05:35 | really getting ridiculously dark.
| | 05:36 | Even the worse tornado weather
doesn't give you that kind of stuff.
| | 05:39 | I'll leave the green point slider for those.
| | 05:42 | So I can't do anything there.
| | 05:45 | Let's fiddle about with the Strength a
little bit and we're probably going to
| | 05:48 | see that increase in Strength is
also darkening up those clouds.
| | 05:53 | So I've got a bit of a problem here in
that any of the controls that I have over
| | 05:57 | here whether they're simple toning
controls or my more HDR effect type controls,
| | 06:03 | they're going to darken these clouds
up to a point that I don't like and
| | 06:06 | possibly also darken the
bottoms of these clouds.
| | 06:08 | I need to be able to
make a localized adjustment.
| | 06:10 | I need to be able to locally
adjust contrast throughout this image.
| | 06:15 | And Photomatix does not have any local controls.
| | 06:18 | So I think this is a case where I'm
just not going to be able to do too much to
| | 06:21 | this image in Photomatix. I'm going
to have to take it on into Photoshop.
| | 06:26 | So I'm going to do that right now.
| | 06:27 | I'm going to double-check that I'm okay with
the detail that's in here. I'm ready to go.
| | 06:32 | I'm going to hit the Process button.
| | 06:34 | Now this is what I was saying.
| | 06:35 | A lot of times the problem with
HDR is you get very even exposure
| | 06:39 | through everything.
| | 06:40 | And that's what we've got here.
| | 06:41 | We've got good exposure here, we've got good
exposure here, and the whole image looks flat.
| | 06:46 | So we need to find a way to unflatten it.
| | 06:50 | I'm going to up here to File and choose
Save As and I'm going to say I'm going
| | 06:54 | to save this into my same Chapter 6 folder.
| | 06:59 | It's got the original name that
I started with, but it's appended
| | 07:02 | tone-mapped, which is good.
| | 07:03 | I'm saving it as a 16-bit TIFF file.
| | 07:06 | It's good that it's good that it's
named it that way, because that means it's
| | 07:09 | going to appear in my directory
right alongside my other images.
| | 07:13 | So I'm going to just drop that right
there into the stack and rearrange these so
| | 07:18 | they're on the front.
| | 07:20 | Now let's open this up in
Photoshop and see what we can do here.
| | 07:24 | First thing we need to do is we need
to fix the contrast in the foreground.
| | 07:27 | I'm going to do that with
a Levels adjustment layer.
| | 07:30 | So I add a Levels adjustment layer down here
and I'm going to go in and fix my black point.
| | 07:37 | Now I screw up the sky when I do this
but I'm not going to worry about that
| | 07:40 | because I'm going to apply a mask
that's going to fix this. I'm also going to
| | 07:44 | increase my white point.
| | 07:45 | And right away, the foreground
is looking much better looking.
| | 07:50 | it's looking really weird in that
HDR kind of way, but that's okay.
| | 07:53 | I've shot these images in HDR and
I'm possibly willing to go for that.
| | 07:56 | Some of this weirdness is because of the
smeariness of the grass moving between shots.
| | 08:02 | The ghosting worked pretty well, but
it's still a little bit soft in here
| | 08:06 | because there was so much movement.
| | 08:08 | So I'm not going to worry about that.
| | 08:09 | That's just part of the
stylized HDR thing. Oh, look!
| | 08:13 | My overexposure came back
and my clouds are black. Augh!
| | 08:18 | That's just because of my Levels adjustment.
| | 08:20 | I don't need to worry about that.
My original okay clouds are still there.
| | 08:23 | So what I need to do now is mask the
image so that the clouds are protected.
| | 08:28 | A lot of different ways of doing this.
| | 08:29 | I'm going to do it with the Gradient tool.
| | 08:32 | I'm going to set my Gradient tool there.
| | 08:36 | Where I start clicking it is going
to put white into the mask and where
| | 08:41 | I stop, it's going to put black and it's
going to create a smooth gradient in between.
| | 08:44 | So if I drag like this, I get this effect.
| | 08:48 | Look what's happened here in my mask.
| | 08:50 | I've got white down here, a very quick ramp
from white to black, and then black up here.
| | 08:55 | So this part of my image is getting the
Levels adjustment, this part is not, and
| | 09:00 | there's a smooth transition in between.
| | 09:03 | Here is before, here is after.
| | 09:05 | And now you can see that yes, my edit did
spill into the sky a little bit, but that's fine.
| | 09:11 | The transition zone from
the sky to the foreground.
| | 09:14 | It's okay if that's a little hazy.
| | 09:16 | So that's pretty much
fixed up the image right there.
| | 09:18 | It might be nice though to try and get a
little more depth into the image, maybe
| | 09:22 | by brightening up the foreground a little more.
| | 09:25 | So I'm going to add another
levels adjustment and I'm going to.
| | 09:30 | You can see that I still don't have
a strong white point in this image.
| | 09:33 | I'm going to pull this up here. Again, I'm
ignoring the sky. I'm watching this bit in here.
| | 09:37 | And we've got a cool thing happening
here. We've got these white bits up
| | 09:42 | against these darker bits.
| | 09:43 | So exaggerating that some more is
maybe going to give us some depth.
| | 09:47 | Normally as things recede into the
distance, they should start to appear darker.
| | 09:52 | So if we can lighten the foreground
more than we lighten the background,
| | 09:55 | we're possibly going to create
a greater sense of depth.
| | 09:58 | I want to fill my mask with black
now because I don't want this Levels
| | 10:02 | adjustment applied anywhere to this image
because I want to be able to brush it in by hand.
| | 10:06 | So with my mask selected I'm going to
choose Fill, fill with black, and now I'm
| | 10:11 | now in pretty good shape there.
| | 10:13 | I'm going to grab a
paintbrush and some white paint, okay.
| | 10:18 | And I'm going to get a nice big brush.
| | 10:20 | I'm using the bracket keys to
make the brush bigger and smaller.
| | 10:24 | And I'm going to just brush some
brightness in here under these bits of grass
| | 10:30 | that are already bright. Before, after.
| | 10:34 | That punches things up quite a bit.
| | 10:36 | And this still makes sense.
| | 10:38 | One of the things about a sky that's
all broken up like this is you get bits of
| | 10:42 | bright light in different places.
| | 10:44 | In fact, it might even make sense to
stick a little back there somewhere just
| | 10:49 | to show that we're getting dappled light
hitting the ground in lots of different places.
| | 10:52 | Just as an experiment, I'm going to
say if I can get even a little more depth
| | 10:55 | and darken the horizon back here.
| | 10:59 | So I'm going to add another Levels
adjustment and this time I'm going to darken things.
| | 11:04 | I'm not going to darken with the black
point, because that'll go a little too far.
| | 11:07 | I'm going to darken with the Midpoint slider.
| | 11:10 | Now what I would like is a gradient
mask that would go from my foreground into
| | 11:15 | this darkening, but I
don't want to darken the sky.
| | 11:17 | So I want to go from my foreground into a
darkening and then back out into not masked at all.
| | 11:23 | In other words, I want to go from
black in my mask in the foreground, because
| | 11:28 | that will protect the foreground from
the effect, into white up here because
| | 11:33 | that will allow the effect through, and
back to black up here because that will
| | 11:37 | again deactivate my mask.
| | 11:39 | So I'm back to the Gradient tool.
| | 11:42 | I can pick what kind of gradient I want and
I've got a lot of different presets up here.
| | 11:46 | I've got a full palette of
lots of different gradients.
| | 11:49 | But I've also got just these buttons over here.
| | 11:51 | This is a Straight Linear Gradient
from foreground color to background color,
| | 11:54 | This is a Radial Gradient.
| | 11:56 | It'll do a circular thing.
| | 11:58 | This is a weird Angle Gradient, and
this is a Reflected Gradient, so it mirrors
| | 12:04 | on both sides your foreground and
background color. So I'm going to pick that.
| | 12:08 | I've got white as my foreground color
and black as my background, and now I'm
| | 12:12 | going to click here and drag
up to about there. That worked!
| | 12:17 | Here is before, here is after. Before, after.
| | 12:22 | So by darkening the horizon line, now
I'm really getting a strong sense of
| | 12:27 | depth in this image. Here it is after.
| | 12:29 | It looks flat. The foreground
is all perfectly evenly exposed.
| | 12:33 | Part of our ability to perceive
depth is something called depth queuing.
| | 12:37 | As you look through more atmosphere, things
get defocused more and they appear darker.
| | 12:43 | When everything is perfectly exposed,
we lose some of that depth queuing.
| | 12:48 | So by adding this little bit of the darkness,
I'm making the horizon look farther away.
| | 12:53 | This is very often something
you need to do to your HDR images.
| | 12:56 | I don't mean specifically put a
gradient right there in your image. I just mean
| | 13:00 | think about what's farther away,
what's closer, what should be lighter, and
| | 13:05 | what should be darker.
| | 13:06 | So now I'm going to just save this
image. We may come back to it later.
| | 13:11 | I'm going to save it.
| | 13:12 | It's warning me that including
layers will increase file size.
| | 13:16 | That's what it does when you're
saving a layer TIFF. That's fine.
| | 13:18 | We've got lots of storage.
| | 13:20 | So save that away and when you go back
to Bridge, you should see an update here.
| | 13:25 | So thinking about depth is a
critical step of your HDR post-processing.
| | 13:30 | You want to be sure that you're not
getting that flattening effect that comes
| | 13:34 | from even exposure across your image.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining HDR and LDR| 00:00 | There are times when I just love what
HDR techniques do to one part of my image,
| | 00:06 | and really hate what they do
to another part of my image.
| | 00:09 | There is a way out of this problem though.
| | 00:11 | You can keep the HDR image and
composite it with one of the original
| | 00:16 | source files that you use to make that
HDR. You'll get a result that has HDR in
| | 00:22 | some parts of the image and just
regular R in other parts of the image, so you
| | 00:27 | get some original source file mixed
with a nice HDR result, and that's what
| | 00:30 | we're going to do in this movie.
| | 00:32 | Go to the Exercise Files folder into the
Chapter 6 folder and grab images 9933,
| | 00:37 | 9934, and 9935 and do an HDR Merge in Photoshop.
| | 00:46 | When you get to here, be sure that
you're set for a 32-bit image and go ahead
| | 00:50 | and check Remove ghosts.
| | 00:51 | There was some wind blowing and my
hand was a little shaky when I took this shot,
| | 00:54 | so I think it's probably not a bad
idea to have the ghost removal turned on.
| | 01:00 | And when you're all done, you'll
have this, a 32-bit file in Photoshop.
| | 01:05 | And it'll look pretty lousy.
| | 01:07 | We've got blown-out highlights, we've got
just overall tonal weirdness. Don't worry.
| | 01:11 | Remember, this is simply that our
monitor is not capable of displaying the full
| | 01:16 | range of tones contained in
this very data-rich 32-bit image.
| | 01:20 | So we're going to do a Save As
here. Write it out as an EXR file.
| | 01:25 | I want to use the same file name as one
of my source images, so I'm just going
| | 01:29 | back to Bridge and copying that, going
over to Photoshop, pasting that in, and
| | 01:32 | I'm going to save it back into the same folder.
| | 01:35 | This allows me to keep the EXR file in
the same place as all my other images.
| | 01:40 | I'm going to close that up, and if we
come back here, we see 9933.cr2, my RAW file,
| | 01:44 | and here's 9933.exr,
the file we just made.
| | 01:48 | If your EXR file is not showing up in
Bridge next to one of your originals,
| | 01:53 | if it's way down at the end of your list,
go up to View > Sort and make sure you're
| | 01:58 | set for Ascending Order > By Filename.
| | 02:01 | Now take the EXR file into Photomatix
and it will look just like it did in
| | 02:06 | Photoshop, because again, it's our
monitor that's the problem here.
| | 02:09 | Hit the Tone Mapping button and we're off.
| | 02:12 | we now have a nice tone-mapped HDR image.
| | 02:14 | So let's see what we've got here.
| | 02:16 | First of all, my histogram shows all
the data clumped up in the middle, so I'm
| | 02:19 | going to have contrast
problems that I got to deal with.
| | 02:21 | Next thing I notice is that the merging
and tone-mapping process has revealed a
| | 02:26 | sensor dust storm that apparently blew
through my camera at some point, so I'm
| | 02:30 | going to have to take care of all of that.
| | 02:31 | Now obviously, I cannot do that in
Photomatix. I have to do that in Photoshop.
| | 02:36 | I think I'd be able to take care of this,
| | 02:38 | no problem. It's not a deal-breaker.
| | 02:39 | Let's look at the image here.
| | 02:41 | When I shot this image obviously one of
the things that was really striking me
| | 02:44 | was the really dramatic sky, and that's
why I chose to do this as an HDR image.
| | 02:49 | I knew I'd be able to keep a lot
of really cool stuff in the sky.
| | 02:53 | What I really wanted to happen was for
the sun to open up over my head and light
| | 02:57 | up this little village bit right here.
| | 02:59 | And that just didn't happen.
| | 03:00 | I've got this beautiful light shining
on some parts, but I don't have it here.
| | 03:03 | So the foreground is a little blah.
| | 03:05 | It needs something and I'm not sure what it is.
| | 03:08 | But I know for sure that I want good
strong HDR techniques on the sky, so let's
| | 03:12 | get started with those.
| | 03:13 | I'm going to go ahead and hit the
Reset button for a couple of reasons.
| | 03:16 | One, I just want to be sure that
you're working from the same starting point
| | 03:20 | that I am, but also I want to know
where the default settings are for most of
| | 03:25 | these sliders because they're
usually put in a fairly safe place, meaning
| | 03:29 | they're not set to an area where I'm going
to be possibly more prone to noise or halo.
| | 03:34 | So I just feel like it's a nice safe
starting point for me to start working.
| | 03:37 | So I want more of that HDR thing in the
sky. I'm going to increase my Strength
| | 03:42 | slider, being careful to keep an eye out for
noise, and then I'm getting some in the sky.
| | 03:48 | However, I shot this image with a Canon
5D Mark II which has over 20 megapixels
| | 03:54 | worth of data in it.
| | 03:55 | So individual pixels of noise,
I'm not too worried about.
| | 03:58 | They are probably not going to show up in print.
| | 04:00 | I still want to keep an eye on it,
keep it as low as I think I can get away with,
| | 04:03 | and I will then check the
noise with a test print and see if it's
| | 04:06 | something I need to take action about.
| | 04:09 | Again, I'm going just for detail in the sky,
so I'm going to increase my Detail Contrast.
| | 04:13 | Now that's serving to darken the image.
| | 04:15 | In this case that's a good thing because
again, my tones were all clumped in the center.
| | 04:19 | Already they're starting to spread out some.
| | 04:21 | What I really need though is a good
strong black point adjustment, so I'm
| | 04:24 | going to do that next.
| | 04:25 | Notice that I'm not necessarily
following the sliders in order.
| | 04:30 | Increasing contrast in the image is
going to increase my sense of detail.
| | 04:34 | Actually not just my sense of detail.
| | 04:35 | It's actually going to increase detail.
| | 04:37 | I guess we can argue philosophically
whether my sense of detail and actual
| | 04:40 | detail are really two different things.
| | 04:41 | But by increasing the Black Point, I'm
going to increase contrast in the image,
| | 04:45 | and that's going to help the sky some.
| | 04:48 | So I'm going to try putting that to there.
| | 04:50 | You can see I clipped the blacks.
| | 04:51 | I don't care too much.
| | 04:52 | However, this bit here is starting to
get a little too black, so I'm going to
| | 04:58 | back off on the Black Point.
| | 04:59 | Notice that I'm ignoring the
foreground right now. I'm just trying to get
| | 05:02 | the sky where I want it.
| | 05:03 | And even as I back off from here, this
part is still staying very, very dark.
| | 05:07 | So I'm going to hit the Smooth
Highlights and see if... there we go!
| | 05:11 | I can get that a little bit more
smoothed out so that I don't have such contrast.
| | 05:16 | I think the sky might still need
some additional contrast adjustment.
| | 05:19 | I'm going to do that in Photoshop
because there I will be able to use some
| | 05:22 | masking tools to constrain it, but
the sky is looking pretty nice. I like
| | 05:26 | where that's going.
| | 05:27 | Lighting adjustments are
worth playing with a little bit.
| | 05:29 | I'm going to back off here because as
I do, I think I'm going to get a little
| | 05:32 | more play in the sky that I'm
going to like, so that's looking good.
| | 05:36 | Now I'm liking the sky where it is.
Let's think about the foreground.
| | 05:40 | The foreground really has that HDR-y look to it.
| | 05:44 | It doesn't quite look real.
| | 05:46 | It's kind of flattened out and
it looks a little bit painterly.
| | 05:49 | I wish that I could give you some more
specific parameters that I'm thinking of
| | 05:54 | about why it's painterly, but
that's the best I can come up with.
| | 05:57 | It just doesn't look photographic.
| | 05:59 | Sometimes that really works to your advantage.
| | 06:02 | You could argue that maybe the sky
doesn't quite look photographic, but the sky
| | 06:05 | is not bugging me. This part is.
| | 06:07 | I would like this to look more
realistic, more like a photo.
| | 06:10 | So I think maybe we're
done with the HDR step here.
| | 06:13 | I've got the sky looking like I want.
| | 06:16 | There's not going to be anything I can
do HDR-wise while it's here other than to back
| | 06:20 | off of the HDR Efex to get
this looking more realistic.
| | 06:23 | And if I do that, I'm going to
lose the nice sky that I've got.
| | 06:26 | So I'm going to process this.
| | 06:29 | And when it's done, I have my tone-
mapped image. I'm now going to go out and
| | 06:33 | save this as a 16-bit TIFF file back into
the same folder as my original source images.
| | 06:40 | So I hit Save and you should've seen
something change down here in Bridge.
| | 06:44 | Let's close this up and go look.
| | 06:45 | Now I've got 9933 tone-mapped TIFF.
| | 06:48 | That's the file we just made.
| | 06:50 | I've got my 9933, 9934, and
9935 RAW files and my 9933.exr.
| | 06:55 | These are all of the
components that are going into my HDR.
| | 06:57 | So I'm going to select them all,
click on this one down here, I'm going to
| | 07:01 | Shift+Click on this one up here to
select all of them, and then I'm going to hit
| | 07:04 | Command+G for Group.
| | 07:07 | I can also get that up here under
the Stacks menu, Group as Stack.
| | 07:10 | So now all of these images are in a stack.
| | 07:12 | What's nice about this is that the only
image that I see right now in Bridge is
| | 07:17 | my final tone-mapped image that I'm working on.
| | 07:19 | But if I need to start over or go back,
I can just open up the stack and there
| | 07:23 | are all the components.
| | 07:24 | So let's get the tone-mapped version
open in Photoshop and now we're ready to
| | 07:28 | get to work on finishing the image.
| | 07:30 | I'm going to start that by taking out
the sensor dust, which I'm going to do
| | 07:34 | with the Spot Healing Brush.
| | 07:36 | It's very simple tool for
removing spotty stuff like this.
| | 07:39 | I just click and the spot goes away.
| | 07:42 | I can change my brush size using
the Left and Right Bracket keys.
| | 07:46 | I really just want to brush to be just
bigger than the spot of dust that I'm removing.
| | 07:50 | I'm taking the sensor dust out first
because if I can't remove the sensor dust,
| | 07:55 | then I may decide that
the image is a lost cause.
| | 07:58 | The Spot Healing Brush works by
copying data from around the brush into the
| | 08:05 | inside of the brush and then it does
some blending stuff to smooth it all out.
| | 08:09 | Now up here these kind of streaky bits
of dust, Spot Healing Brush isn't working
| | 08:13 | quite so immediately with those because
it's partly copying the dust from around
| | 08:18 | the brush back inside the brush, so
I'm just duplicating a lot of dust.
| | 08:22 | So I'm going to grab the Clone Stamp
tool, which I did by hitting S, and that's
| | 08:27 | this tool right here, and I'm
just going to clone some of this out.
| | 08:31 | One of the nice things about working
with clouds is that they're random and
| | 08:36 | fractal-y and you don't have to be real
perfect and precise with your cloning.
| | 08:40 | Clouds are a little bit random and so they
respond very well to this kind of touchup.
| | 08:45 | If I inadvertently leave a little
black bit, it's just going to look like a
| | 08:48 | little black bit of cloud.
| | 08:50 | So even if you're normally not
comfortable with retouching-- see here I'm
| | 08:54 | actually brightening up part of this
cloud but it's still all just looking like
| | 08:58 | a big puffy cloud bit.
| | 09:00 | Even if you're not normally
comfortable with cloning, cloning clouds is a
| | 09:04 | really easy thing to do.
| | 09:05 | So I think that's looking pretty clean,
and there might be some more dust in
| | 09:07 | there and there might be more that
reveals itself as we start doing contrast
| | 09:10 | adjustments which you've seen how that works.
| | 09:12 | I might tidy the image up on my own later.
| | 09:15 | So first thing I'm going to do here
is do exactly what I would do with any
| | 09:19 | normal postproduction process.
| | 09:20 | And I start by looking at my
histogram to try to get some analysis of the
| | 09:24 | image and figure out what might need to be done.
| | 09:26 | Still in a low contrast situation.
| | 09:28 | All of my tones are
gathered up here in the middle.
| | 09:30 | I do not have a good strong black
anywhere in the image and my whites are
| | 09:34 | a little weak also.
| | 09:36 | So I'm going to start by adding a Levels
adjustment and strengthening my Black Point. Aha!
| | 09:41 | Now we're getting some good
contrast throughout the image.
| | 09:44 | Again, our idea here is we're going
to replace this foreground, so I'm not
| | 09:47 | worrying too much about it. I'm
looking at the sky and I'm looking at these
| | 09:50 | mountains and things.
| | 09:51 | And I'm going to go ahead and
brighten this up, maybe to about there.
| | 09:55 | Now we can see in my final histogram,
| | 09:57 | I'm going to click this exclamation
mark to get it to resample, the bulk of my
| | 10:01 | tones are still gathered in the middle.
| | 10:02 | But look at the image.
| | 10:03 | It's mostly gray clouds
and hazy midtone green value.
| | 10:07 | So it makes sense that there is a lot
of data here in the middle, but I do have
| | 10:10 | some nice brighter highlights now.
| | 10:12 | I'm worried about clipping some of this.
| | 10:14 | Obviously, I've clipped the sky and my
Black Point adjustment has compromised
| | 10:18 | with the lower parts in my clouds a little bit.
| | 10:20 | So I'm going to do just a little bit of quick
masking here by painting into the layer mask.
| | 10:25 | We don't really have time to go into all
of the theory and practice of layer masking.
| | 10:30 | There are so many videos here in the lynda
Library that you can learn the stuff from.
| | 10:34 | What I'm trying to do now is protect the
darker areas of the clouds in the image
| | 10:38 | so that they don't go completely black.
| | 10:40 | And so this is just a basic tonal
adjustment that's going to put my overall
| | 10:44 | contrast in a better place, that's going
to give me a print with more punch, and
| | 10:48 | that's looking pretty good.
| | 10:49 | Now the foreground, I don't like it.
| | 10:52 | So what I'm going to do, we
already know what I'm going to do.
| | 10:54 | I'm going to go back here to Bridge
and grab one of my original images.
| | 10:57 | Let's go with the one
that's just nice basic exposure.
| | 11:00 | I've got this one, I have the
underexposed one, and I have the overexposed one.
| | 11:04 | Hmm. Actually maybe the
overexposed one is a good way to go.
| | 11:08 | In Bridge, I'm going to hold down the
Command or Ctrl+T on Windows to select
| | 11:11 | these two images, go over to Filmstrip
mode, and I can see them side-by-side.
| | 11:15 | This one is a little brighter than this
one, but you know, I could still get to
| | 11:19 | this one from this one.
| | 11:20 | I think I'm just going to
stick with the basic exposure one.
| | 11:22 | Open it up in Photoshop and
I can do a little work here.
| | 11:27 | I'm going to ignore the sky and just watch
the foreground while I make a few adjustments.
| | 11:33 | I think I'm going to desaturate it a
little bit because our HDR image is not
| | 11:37 | supersaturated, so I think it might not be
a bad idea to kind of match the color there.
| | 11:41 | Open that. And now I've got this
image open and I've got my HDR image.
| | 11:45 | I need them in the same document, so
I'm going to hit Command+A to select all.
| | 11:48 | Then I'm going to copy, with
Command+C. Ctrl+C if you're on Windows.
| | 11:53 | I'm going to go back over here and paste.
| | 11:57 | So what I've got here is a layer that
contains my original Camera RAW image and
| | 12:02 | behind it, I've got my HDR image.
| | 12:04 | Note what happens if I turn off the
visibility on my original camera image.
| | 12:09 | I can see that they're not properly aligned.
| | 12:12 | They're not registered, so I need to
get them in exactly the same space.
| | 12:15 | I need to do what the HDR process
did, which was align these images.
| | 12:20 | Fortunately, Adobe has pulled out
that alignment stuff and given you
| | 12:24 | discrete access to it.
| | 12:25 | So I'm going to select this layer and
this layer, and I did that by holding down
| | 12:29 | the Command or Ctrl key and clicking on them.
| | 12:32 | And then I'm going to go
to Edit > Auto-Align Layers.
| | 12:36 | That's going to align the layers
automatically, as you might expect.
| | 12:39 | I'm going to set Projection to Auto.
| | 12:41 | That's going to tell Photoshop to just
decide what it thinks is best, and now it's done.
| | 12:46 | Notice what's happened.
| | 12:47 | It was a subtle thing, but suddenly
I've got this extra space around my image.
| | 12:50 | It has translated the upper layer,
meaning it has moved it left and right, but
| | 12:55 | it's also rotated it some.
| | 12:56 | And now if I click off the visibility on
Layer 1, I see that they're perfectly aligned.
| | 13:02 | Now we're ready to really
start getting somewhere here.
| | 13:05 | I want the upper layer.
| | 13:06 | This is the village layer.
| | 13:08 | In fact, let's just label it so
that I don't get confused here.
| | 13:10 | I'm going to double-click there and call
that village, and I'm going to call this sky.
| | 13:14 | It's going to be easier if I put the
village behind the sky because it's the sky
| | 13:18 | that I'm really wanting to preserve.
| | 13:20 | So what I'm going to do now is blend
these two layers together using a layer mask.
| | 13:25 | With the sky layer selected, I'm going
to choose Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All.
| | 13:32 | That gives me a layer mask
down here that's completely empty.
| | 13:36 | It's full of white, meaning
I'm seeing this entire layer.
| | 13:39 | No part of it is masked.
| | 13:40 | What I would like to do now is create a
mask that slowly masks off or gradually
| | 13:45 | masks off the bottom part of the sky layer.
| | 13:47 | So I'm going to take my Gradient tool,
I'm going to make sure that I've got
| | 13:51 | black and white, and I'm going to
drag from about here, holding down the
| | 13:55 | Shift key, to about here.
| | 13:57 | I'm holding down the Shift key
because that constrains my drag to 45
| | 14:00 | degree angle, so it's a way that I can be
sure of getting a perfectly vertical gradient.
| | 14:05 | When I let go, there we go!
| | 14:07 | Look at my layer mask here and you can
see that it goes from white through a
| | 14:11 | gentle gradient into black.
| | 14:13 | So I'm seeing HDR sky up here, slowly
revealing down to the foreground down below.
| | 14:19 | I think I missed a little bit though.
| | 14:21 | I need a longer gradient.
| | 14:23 | The transition here is too sudden.
| | 14:24 | The tops of these
mountains are still a little HDRy.
| | 14:27 | So I'm going to click up here and down
to here, and this is just going to pave
| | 14:31 | over that last gradient
that I did with the new one.
| | 14:34 | That's looking better.
| | 14:35 | That's looking a little more realistic.
| | 14:37 | It's great that I've got this hazy fog-
filled valley back here because this kind
| | 14:40 | of hazy, blendy, somewhat HDR, somewhat
normal look just looks like a shelf of
| | 14:45 | clouds sitting over the mountain.
| | 14:46 | So now we're getting somewhere.
| | 14:47 | I've got HDR sky. I've
got normal R foreground.
| | 14:51 | Now I can think about what needs
to be done with the foreground.
| | 14:53 | It's still a little bit dark and it's
still a little bit flat, so I'm going to
| | 14:57 | click on village and add a new
adjustment layer down here, a new Levels
| | 15:01 | adjustment layer, and that's going to
let me do some basic tonal adjustments.
| | 15:05 | I couldn't get these quite right in
Bridge because I need the tonality of this
| | 15:09 | layer to match the feel of my sky layer.
| | 15:13 | So I think that's looking pretty good.
| | 15:14 | It's got a correct level of saturation.
| | 15:16 | And remember, tonal
adjustments can affect saturation.
| | 15:18 | I'd basically brightened it up and
lowered the contrast a little bit and that's
| | 15:21 | desaturated it a little more. I like that.
| | 15:24 | But it still looks a little flat.
| | 15:26 | And like I said, what I wanted
ideally was for a hole in the sky to open up
| | 15:29 | right over the village and give me some nice
dramatic lighting on here, and I didn't get that.
| | 15:33 | There is a chance that if I had stood
around and waited that would have happened.
| | 15:36 | The sky was moving and changing very quickly.
| | 15:38 | But I loved this white cloud up
against these darker background clouds, so I
| | 15:42 | didn't want to risk losing that.
| | 15:44 | I can though cheat a bunch of the
light in this image, so let's click on the
| | 15:50 | village layer, add a new Levels adjustment
layer, and I'm going to brighten the image.
| | 15:56 | I'm going to move my white point
and that's going to bright the image.
| | 15:59 | I'm washing out all this stuff.
| | 16:00 | I don't actually know right now what is
the correct Levels adjustment because I
| | 16:04 | don't want this Levels
adjustment applied to the whole image.
| | 16:07 | I want it selectively masked in.
| | 16:10 | So I need to get a mask built
before I can figure out exactly what the
| | 16:13 | adjustment is that I need.
| | 16:15 | With the adjustment layer selected, I'm
going to go up to Edit > Fill and tell
| | 16:20 | it to fill with black.
| | 16:22 | There are lots of other ways of doing this fill.
| | 16:24 | There are keyboard shortcuts you can use.
| | 16:27 | Now I'm going to take my Paintbrush and
some white paint, make my brush smaller
| | 16:31 | with the left bracket, and start
painting into the image in the areas that I
| | 16:36 | want to look like they are getting more
light, the areas that I want to look lit up.
| | 16:42 | And pretty much all I'm doing here is
following the areas that are already lit up.
| | 16:48 | This side of these buildings is
brighter than the other side, so I'm
| | 16:51 | just exaggerating that.
| | 16:53 | Basically, it's really a
paint by number situation.
| | 16:55 | I don't even have to think of that much.
| | 16:56 | And I can get a big improvement in the lighting.
| | 16:59 | Now I've got some masking
information there, so I'm going to go back and
| | 17:01 | reconsider my Levels settings because I
think maybe these are a little too bright.
| | 17:06 | I'm going to back off tiny bit
there, put it more about there.
| | 17:10 | Because it's obvious that there's not a
lot of bright sunlight shining into the
| | 17:13 | image, so I don't want it to look too fake.
| | 17:15 | But there are more places that I can brush.
| | 17:17 | Again, I'm just looking for highlights.
| | 17:19 | Tops of these trees here can be
brighter, mostly on the right side.
| | 17:23 | I'm assuming a lighting
source that's coming from up here.
| | 17:25 | I can hit the top of this little
mount of dirt or hay or whatever it is.
| | 17:30 | I'm going to hit some of
the highlights on this grass.
| | 17:33 | What all of this serves to do is
to make the image look a little
| | 17:37 | more three-dimensional.
| | 17:38 | It gives it some depth.
| | 17:40 | By the way, that compass thing that
you're seeing flash up from time-to-time,
| | 17:43 | that's because I'm using a trackpad and
occasionally. I'm hitting two fingers on
| | 17:45 | the trackpad and it's making that happen.
| | 17:47 | That's just a Mac OS thing.
Don't worry about what that means.
| | 17:51 | I think maybe this grass
I've gotten a little too bright.
| | 17:53 | Now when you're masking, black areas
are getting no levels adjustment, white
| | 17:59 | areas are getting the full levels adjustment.
| | 18:01 | If I paint with gray, I get an
attenuated levels adjustment.
| | 18:05 | So I can paint with gray in here and
that's going to darken up these areas that
| | 18:08 | I've painted, but not darken them
all the way back to where they were.
| | 18:12 | In other words, I'm getting some of the
levels adjustment in there, not all of it.
| | 18:15 | That's looking pretty good!
| | 18:16 | Let's take a look at what we've done here.
| | 18:17 | I'm going to hide this Levels adjustment
layer, turn it back on, and you can see
| | 18:21 | that I've just painted some nice
highlighting in that makes the foreground a
| | 18:24 | little more interesting.
| | 18:26 | Every image needs a foreground and a
background, so I've got a nice strong
| | 18:29 | foreground, I've got a nice strong
background, but I've also got this
| | 18:33 | middle ground back here.
| | 18:34 | These hills over here.
| | 18:36 | I like the idea of darkening them,
because we've got this beautiful lit-up spot
| | 18:40 | back here, and that
might look more lit-up. Ooh!
| | 18:43 | You know, I need to mask that off right there.
| | 18:44 | It's getting too much levels
adjustment and it's blowing out.
| | 18:47 | I'm going to go back to this Levels
adjustment layer here, grab my black paint
| | 18:52 | to protect this area, and I'm just
going to paint over this and I start getting
| | 18:57 | some detail back there.
| | 18:58 | That may be too much restoration,
so I'm going to go to some gray.
| | 19:02 | Don't worry that I didn't see this before.
| | 19:05 | That doesn't matter.
| | 19:07 | Very often editing works this way.
| | 19:10 | You work through your image, making
adjustments as you need them, going back and
| | 19:14 | forth from one tool to another,
responding to the image as it changes, and
| | 19:19 | simply getting done what needs to be done.
| | 19:21 | I also see that I have revealed at some point
this big dust spot that'll have to be taken out.
| | 19:26 | This is a perfectly normal
editing workflow. Well, normal for me.
| | 19:30 | There are people who can see
exactly every edit before they go, but if
| | 19:33 | you're finding yourself fumbling
through it, don't worry, just as long as
| | 19:36 | the final image works out.
| | 19:37 | As I was saying, I would like these to
be darker because I think it would frame
| | 19:41 | the foreground a little bit better.
| | 19:42 | It would reveal the bright
background a little more.
| | 19:45 | So we're going to do just what
we've already been doing here.
| | 19:47 | We're going to go to Levels and
we're going to darken the image.
| | 19:50 | Now I could darken the image with a
black point adjustment, but that makes these
| | 19:54 | bits more contrasty.
| | 19:56 | And as they become more contrasty,
they look like they've got less atmosphere
| | 20:00 | in front of them, and I don't like that
because they should be receding into the distance.
| | 20:04 | I could do it with a mid-point adjustment.
| | 20:07 | That's not bad, but I think a better way is to
simply dial down the white on the Output slider.
| | 20:12 | That's going to just give me a
more realistic subtle darkening.
| | 20:17 | Now I need to fill my mask with black,
Command+A to select the entire mask,
| | 20:21 | Command+Delete to fill it with black,
and that adjustment that I just defined is
| | 20:25 | now completely masked.
| | 20:27 | I'm going to grab my brush, make it
bigger, make sure that I have white paint
| | 20:32 | here which I do, and I can just start
painting darker into these hills here.
| | 20:37 | I'm not going to be too careful with
this mask right now because I don't really
| | 20:42 | know if this effect is going to work, I
don't know if I have my Levels settings
| | 20:45 | where I need them, and I don't know if
I actually do want these things darker.
| | 20:48 | So I'm going to just quickly rough
this in to see what I think it is.
| | 20:53 | One problem with darkening it is
while it maybe sets it off more from the
| | 20:57 | background, I'm afraid it might make
it blend in more to the foreground.
| | 21:01 | I'm going to back off on
the darkening a little bit.
| | 21:03 | Let's take a look at before,
after, back off a little bit more.
| | 21:08 | I'm trying to go for kind of three
planes of depth in the image here.
| | 21:12 | So now I've got foreground that's
slightly darker, middle ground, and
| | 21:16 | this lit-up background.
| | 21:17 | I think I like that.
| | 21:19 | So now I would go in and refine my mask.
| | 21:24 | And that again is just about
carefully painting, making sure that I'm
| | 21:28 | not darkening the background,
making sure that I'm not spilling over
| | 21:31 | onto my foreground.
| | 21:32 | And this is another case where you can kind
of get away with murder with your mask here.
| | 21:36 | I don't have to perfectly trace around
every leaf on this tree because if there
| | 21:40 | are areas that go a little bit darker,
that'll possibly just look like shadow.
| | 21:44 | If the top of these roofs get a little
bit darker, they look like darker bricks.
| | 21:48 | So this is not a gnarly masking job,
so if you're not real comfortable with
| | 21:52 | masking, don't worry.
| | 21:54 | I'm going to leave this where it is.
| | 21:55 | I like that that area is lit up.
| | 21:57 | I think this is looking pretty good.
| | 21:58 | Last thing I might consider is a vignette.
| | 22:00 | I'm going to duplicate my background
layer, go up to Filter > Lens Correction.
| | 22:07 | I want this to be a slightly subtle vignette.
| | 22:10 | I go over to the Custom tab and
dial in a little bit of darkness about
| | 22:14 | right there. Hit OK.
| | 22:16 | One thing about this preview in Lens
Correction is it's not showing the effects
| | 22:19 | of adjustment layer.
| | 22:20 | So this darkening that I've applied
may actually be darker than it was in the
| | 22:24 | preview because I've got a Levels
adjustments on here. Before, after.
| | 22:28 | I like the way that protects the
corners a little bit, gets my focus here
| | 22:31 | more in the middle.
| | 22:32 | It's probably a little more touchup that
needs to be done but that's the process
| | 22:36 | of taking an HDR image and an LDR image,
Low Dynamic Range or Normal Dynamic Range,
| | 22:41 | and combining them.
| | 22:42 | I've kept my nice HDR sky.
| | 22:45 | I've got a more realistic
normal dynamic range foreground.
| | 22:48 | I'm probably going to want to play at
some point with adjusting the opacity of
| | 22:53 | my sky because that lets me
play with more or less HDR effect.
| | 22:57 | So it may be that I like it a little
bit more in there because it doesn't
| | 23:00 | look so blatantly HDR.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selective editing with HDR Efex Pro| 00:00 | One of the great things about Nik HDR
Efex Pro are its selective editing tools,
| | 00:06 | which are really fantastic, and we
haven't had a chance to look at them yet so
| | 00:08 | we're going to do that in this movie.
| | 00:10 | Even if you are not and do not plan to
be a regular HDR Efex user, work through
| | 00:16 | this movie with us anyway because
we're going to talk about a lot of kind of
| | 00:20 | aesthetics of editing and some
other things that apply to any editing tools
| | 00:23 | that you choose to use.
| | 00:25 | Grab 1413, 1414, and 1415
and merge them in Photoshop.
| | 00:29 | We're merging in Photoshop because HDR
Efex can't get a good registration of
| | 00:33 | these because I moved a lot between images.
| | 00:38 | Open up here and we get our normal
merge. We want to be sure we're in 32 Bit.
| | 00:42 | I want you to notice something.
| | 00:45 | Up here we get this weird purple artifact.
| | 00:48 | It took me a while to figure out what it is.
| | 00:50 | It turns out it's actually a ghosting artifact.
| | 00:53 | If I turn on Remove ghosts, it goes away.
| | 00:57 | So if you're seeing something like that
in your highlights when you're merging
| | 01:00 | an image, there is a chance it's
a ghost, so just take that out.
| | 01:03 | I do want to think about which image I
want to use, because as you can see I
| | 01:07 | shifted my perspective around a little bit.
| | 01:10 | So I think either the first one or the
last one. I will go with the first one.
| | 01:14 | We want to be sure we're 32 bit. We're
set to Remove ghosts. I am going to hit
| | 01:18 | OK and let it build the file.
| | 01:19 | Here is my finished 32
bit file. It's overexposed.
| | 01:23 | I am not worrying about that
because this is a 32 bit image.
| | 01:26 | I know there is data in there.
| | 01:27 | I am going to hide Bridge to get it out
of our way, and open this up in HDR Efex.
| | 01:35 | It thinks for a moment and here's our image.
| | 01:37 | It ha already done an initial tone
mapping and it ha done a very good job.
| | 01:42 | As is usually the case, HDR Efex gives you
an initial hit on an image that's almost
| | 01:46 | always better looking than anything
that you will get initially out of
| | 01:50 | Photomatix or Photoshop's own tone mapping.
| | 01:53 | So the first thing I want to think
about is well, what do I want to do with
| | 01:56 | this image? Do I have a goal, or
am I just going to start exploring?
| | 02:00 | What had attracted me to this
originally was I thought, well, there is cool
| | 02:03 | texture and color on here that might
play up real fun in an HDR kind of way.
| | 02:08 | So I am going to start with my
Tone Compression slider and compress a
| | 02:14 | broader range of tones down into a
smaller space, which is already picking
| | 02:18 | me up some texture.
| | 02:20 | I was thinking texture and detail.
| | 02:22 | Let me zoom in a little bit here
| | 02:24 | since what I am focusing on here is the
mailbox. So I am going to increase the
| | 02:30 | Structure, which is a type of sharpening.
| | 02:31 | I don't want to take it so far that it
looks like I am applying a lot of sharpening.
| | 02:36 | I am also going to increase Contrast,
because contrast usually gives you an
| | 02:39 | improvement in texture.
| | 02:41 | Now, what I haven't done yet
is fiddled with HDR Method.
| | 02:44 | We're on Natural right now.
| | 02:46 | Well, I don't want Natural.
I want something over the top.
| | 02:49 | They don't unfortunately have an Over
the Top method, but since we're going for
| | 02:53 | detail let's think about Crisp maybe
and again, when you first pick one of these,
| | 02:58 | you are not going
to see anything right away.
| | 02:59 | I am going to turn up the Method.
| | 03:00 | You can have a better idea about what
these do just as you use them more.
| | 03:07 | Ooh!Now, we're getting somewhere.
| | 03:09 | Boy, that's almost ugly.
| | 03:11 | That's not what we want.
| | 03:13 | Dingy? I kind of like Dingy actually.
| | 03:17 | It really blackens things up
a little bit, which I like.
| | 03:20 | So we're getting some good texture
on there now. Let's zoom back out.
| | 03:23 | But it's starting to get kind of a
Xerox sort of look, so maybe I am not
| | 03:27 | so crazy about Dingy.
| | 03:29 | I am going to turn the Dingy
slider down. I am going to lower the
| | 03:31 | Method Strength on Dingy. And I don't know.
| | 03:33 | It's still looking a little
too much like an edited image.
| | 03:37 | I am going to go back to
Crisp or maybe even Clean.
| | 03:42 | Clean is a little bit brighter.
| | 03:43 | I might fiddle with those some more later.
| | 03:48 | I feel like as my problem right now
with the image is, as I have said over and
| | 03:52 | over throughout this course, your job
as a photographer is to let the viewer
| | 03:56 | know what the subject is, and while a
big mailbox at a dramatic rakish angle
| | 04:01 | right in the middle of the frame is
pretty hard to miss as the subject,
| | 04:04 | it sure is having to
compete with that background.
| | 04:06 | There is a whole lot of stuff going on
in this image and it's very easy for the
| | 04:09 | viewer to just get lost.
| | 04:11 | So I would like to tone the background
down somehow and I think I could do that
| | 04:16 | tonally by darkening the background,
but I think a better way to go is actually
| | 04:20 | to desaturate some of the
color in the background.
| | 04:22 | I don't want it to go away completely,
but I would like to minimize it some.
| | 04:26 | The background is predominantly green.
| | 04:28 | There is a very easy way to make a
selective adjustment in HDR Efex Pro.
| | 04:32 | Over here in the Selective Adjustments section
I have this thing that says Add a Control Point.
| | 04:36 | So I am going to click with this
control point tool on something in the image
| | 04:40 | that's green, so right there,
and I get this weird contraption.
| | 04:44 | These are all little sliders and this
Ex, Co, Sa, these are so many names for
| | 04:48 | the sliders. Exposure, Contrast, Saturation.
| | 04:51 | And this slider up here is an Area of Effect.
| | 04:53 | So I am going to drag that out and
I am going to lower the Saturation.
| | 04:59 | And as I do that, things within this
circle, and it's also rolled off a little
| | 05:04 | bit outside of the circle, things in that
circle that are green are losing their saturation.
| | 05:08 | And the reason I know it are things that
are green is because I place this point
| | 05:12 | right here on something that's green.
| | 05:14 | If I pick up this control point and
move it onto this yellow thing, my green
| | 05:18 | pops back and the yellow now gets desaturated.
| | 05:21 | So this is serving to be just
a targeted green desaturator.
| | 05:25 | If I hold down the Option key, I can drag
a copy of my targeted green desaturator.
| | 05:33 | That's a technical term that I will try
not to use again. And I can put it over
| | 05:37 | here to copy that exact control
point onto another bit of green.
| | 05:44 | I am just trying to find
the right shade of green.
| | 05:48 | I am going to drag this out to be bigger
and I am just going to start dragging
| | 05:52 | copies of this thing around, because
as I do I am reducing that garish green
| | 05:59 | that's in the background and it seems
to me that that's helping to make the
| | 06:05 | mailbox stand out a little bit more.
| | 06:07 | It's not having to
compete with all of that green.
| | 06:09 | If I want, I can actually select
multiple control points by holding down the
| | 06:13 | Shift key and clicking on them, or I
can click-and-drag a rectangular marquee
| | 06:18 | around them, and now I can
edit them all at the same time.
| | 06:21 | I can click-and-drag the Saturation.
| | 06:23 | It sets the Saturation to
be the same on all of them.
| | 06:26 | It's not making a relative adjustment.
| | 06:28 | It's making an absolute adjustment.
| | 06:30 | But I think that that's going to
actually work for me. So that's helped.
| | 06:33 | I have managed to really pull the color back.
| | 06:36 | These control point tools are
just a spectacular way of making
| | 06:39 | localized adjustments.
| | 06:40 | Let's try another one here.
| | 06:42 | I like the red flag that's ticking up
off of the mailbox, but it's competing
| | 06:45 | with this red pole back here.
| | 06:47 | I wish I had been paying attention to
that when I was shooting and framed it so
| | 06:50 | that there was a little more separation.
| | 06:52 | I was really focused on getting the
shape of the mailbox something in particular
| | 06:56 | and just wasn't paying attention.
| | 06:58 | But what if this thing here wasn't
so red and then it wouldn't compete so
| | 07:01 | directly with this thing here?
| | 07:03 | So I am going to take a control point
and I am going to drop it right on there
| | 07:07 | and I am going to drag it out so that it
covers the whole pole or whatever it is
| | 07:10 | and I am just going to
desaturate that. And that's cool!
| | 07:15 | That has desaturated that thing.
| | 07:16 | I am going to pull it down here so
that I don't have to make this so big.
| | 07:20 | So it desaturated that pole.
| | 07:22 | Unfortunately, it also desaturated this,
so now they are still the same color.
| | 07:27 | But if I take another control point
and drop it on this thing, all my color
| | 07:32 | popped back in here.
| | 07:34 | This control point is now serving
to lock down the color on this flag, the mailbox flag.
| | 07:41 | So if I wanted I could even
amp up that one a little bit.
| | 07:44 | Here's a little arrow down here. I can
click on that and I get more controls.
| | 07:48 | They're all the same
controls that I have over here.
| | 07:50 | I get Structure, Blacks, Whites,
Warmth, and Method Strength.
| | 07:56 | So if I wanted, I could put in a
localized increase of HDR Method.
| | 08:02 | So let's say I wanted more
texture on the front of the mailbox.
| | 08:05 | I can drop this on here, and I am
dragging the circle real big, and you may
| | 08:10 | think, well, doesn't that mean you're also
going to increase or edit things over here?
| | 08:14 | No, because it's including, remember,
it's color sample right here, so it knows
| | 08:19 | that it's going to ignore
a bunch of stuff out here.
| | 08:20 | I am going to increase Method Strength
or maybe decrease Method Strength and now
| | 08:24 | I am going to increase it.
| | 08:26 | Anyway, you can see that I am
affecting only the front of the mailbox here.
| | 08:30 | I am not sure that I like that edit
though. I think what I may do instead is
| | 08:32 | just a contrast
adjustment and add some structure.
| | 08:36 | Now we're getting some real
localized texture right on the front of that.
| | 08:41 | So that's working well.
| | 08:43 | So this is localized editing in HDR Efex.
| | 08:47 | The same thought process that I've gone
through here, you could go through this
| | 08:50 | same thought process in Photoshop.
| | 08:52 | You could have realized that the
green was competing with the mailbox and
| | 08:55 | toned it down by putting in a Hue/
Saturation adjustment layer and painting the mask in.
| | 09:00 | This is much, much faster to do but I
do want you to think about that thought
| | 09:04 | process and the general idea, just
always having that idea, what can I do to
| | 09:10 | make my subject clearer and clearer and clearer?
| | 09:12 | Let's do one more thing here in HDR Efex.
| | 09:17 | It has such a nice vignette tool and
that might be a way of downplaying the
| | 09:21 | background even further and
letting the mailbox really pop out.
| | 09:25 | These same controls are available in
Nik's Black and White Conversion tool,
| | 09:29 | Silver Efex, in Viveza,
which is a color editing tool.
| | 09:33 | Once you get used to control points,
| | 09:34 | it's hard to give them up, because it's
a way of making localized edits without
| | 09:38 | ever having to hand cut any masks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| HDR that doesn't look like HDR| 00:00 | As I've mentioned throughout this
course, HDR can sometimes be overdone.
| | 00:05 | In fact HDR has almost become something
of an adjective. People will describe an
| | 00:09 | image is looking very HDR or really HDR-ish.
| | 00:14 | That has led some people to think that
they just don't like HDR and so they stay
| | 00:17 | away from these techniques, because
either they don't like the look of HDR or
| | 00:21 | they don't mind it but they don't want
their images to obviously look processed
| | 00:24 | or to be thrown into that HDR category.
| | 00:28 | I want to show you now that it is
possible to use HDR techniques to create an
| | 00:31 | image that doesn't look so obviously HDR.
| | 00:35 | So even if you don't think that you're
really into HDR, having HDR techniques in
| | 00:39 | your toolbox is still a good thing
because there will be times when you can use
| | 00:43 | them in a subtle way that gets you a
better image than you would get without them
| | 00:48 | but without taking you into that HDR realm.
| | 00:50 | We're going to create an image that
looks very dramatic but not necessarily in
| | 00:54 | that kind of overdone, texture-y, HDR way.
| | 00:58 | Image 9927.exr, I have gone ahead and
done a merge of three images for you and
| | 01:03 | just given you this EXR file, so
I'll open this up in Photoshop.
| | 01:06 | We're actually going to do this one in
HDR Efex because we're going to do a lot
| | 01:13 | of selective editing and
that's a really easy place to do it.
| | 01:15 | Everything we're going to do
could be done in Photoshop.
| | 01:18 | So if you don't have HDR Efex, grab
the free demo from the niksoftware
| | 01:22 | website and install it.
| | 01:23 | So we've got some dramatic
lighting. We've got some sheep.
| | 01:26 | We've got a farmhouse type situation here.
| | 01:30 | This is a 32-bit image, so I am
not worried about this overexposure.
| | 01:33 | There is data in there.
| | 01:34 | We've got a bad lens flare.
| | 01:36 | We're going to take that out
at the very end of our process.
| | 01:39 | I am going to go to Filter >
Nik Software > HDR Efex Pro.
| | 01:43 | It's going to load the image and tone-
map it and now you can see a little more
| | 01:47 | of why I chose to shoot this as HDR.
Really cool cloud detail up here.
| | 01:53 | But overall the image is
just a little hohum somehow.
| | 01:57 | Your eye doesn't really know where to go.
| | 01:58 | Again, always holding that idea of
what's the subject, what's the subject?
| | 02:02 | I don't know, is it this bit up here?
| | 02:04 | Is it this bit down there?
| | 02:05 | Is it somewhere in between?
| | 02:06 | We need to give the viewer some help here.
| | 02:08 | It would be great to focus attention
somewhere, but I would also really like to
| | 02:13 | play up with the drama of the light
shining right down onto this area.
| | 02:17 | I am going to start with a big vignette.
| | 02:18 | I am not even going to worry about
adjusting any of my tone-mapping parameters
| | 02:24 | yet because I think I am just
going to hide a bunch of this image.
| | 02:27 | So I want to figure out what's even
going to be visible before I worry
| | 02:29 | about refining anything.
| | 02:31 | In HDR Efex it's very easy to add a
vignette with the Vignette controls down here.
| | 02:36 | I am going to add a big one.
| | 02:37 | Something we haven't looked at yet
in these controls is if I pop up the
| | 02:40 | details, I get a lot of nice
parameters for refining the size, darkness, and
| | 02:47 | shape of my vignette.
| | 02:49 | Amount just controls how much darkening.
Transition changes the width of the
| | 02:54 | transitions on between the dark part of the
vignette, and basically the hole in the vignette.
| | 03:00 | Size lets me control the size of the
hole of the vignette and I can make the
| | 03:05 | vignette even more circular or more rectangular.
| | 03:08 | This image is such a tall image I am
going to go a little more rectangular.
| | 03:12 | Already it's starting to take shape.
| | 03:14 | We're really getting focus into this
area here, but it still needs some work.
| | 03:20 | I don't know that I need to do too much
to my tone-mapping because I am liking
| | 03:24 | what's happening up here.
| | 03:25 | I'd like to lose some of this though.
| | 03:27 | So I think I am going to even go to
this vignette and I am going to darken
| | 03:36 | a lot and I am really pulling in,
make this, there we go, make this much
| | 03:47 | more about this area.
| | 03:48 | Now this is looking good.
This has gone awfully dark.
| | 03:51 | So I am going to do a localized adjustment.
| | 03:54 | All of these localized adjustments,
even the vignetting, this is all stuff I
| | 03:57 | could be doing in Photoshop after
I had done an initial tone mapping.
| | 04:01 | I just wanted you to get another look
at how cool the Nik localized editing
| | 04:05 | tools are and also it's really nice
being able to do these and my tone-mapping
| | 04:10 | at the same time. As I said I didn't
want to mess with any tone-mapping settings
| | 04:14 | until I've gotten my vignette in place.
| | 04:16 | So this is just a really nice
interactive environment where I can be
| | 04:19 | tone-mapping and what would traditionally be
my post tone-mapping editing at the same time.
| | 04:25 | You're going to hate me, but now I am
thinking the vignette is too strong, so
| | 04:28 | I am going to go back and adjust it.
| | 04:30 | But this serves only to prove the point
I was just making, that it is very, very
| | 04:35 | nice to be able to do all of this in
the same environment, because when I decide
| | 04:43 | that I don't like something I've done,
I can more easily go back and fix it.
| | 04:48 | And if you're wondering, well, what didn't
I like about it, is I was just starting to decide
| | 04:51 | it's just too black around the edges.
| | 04:53 | So this is looking a little better.
| | 04:55 | I would like to darken that a little
more, so I am going to actually try
| | 04:57 | dropping a control point on here,
sliding that up, and dragging that down a little bit.
| | 05:05 | So now I've got more of a kind of
uneven vignette, but that's okay and that's
| | 05:10 | probably a little more punch to
that area. So that's looking good.
| | 05:14 | I still can't get these quite where I
want them and I think part of my problem
| | 05:18 | is I am not liking how green
it's getting as I brighten stuff up.
| | 05:22 | So what I have done here is I've
selected both control points and I am dragging
| | 05:25 | the Exposure slider on
either one to adjust both of them.
| | 05:29 | I am going to desaturate the green
a little bit. And that didn't do much.
| | 05:35 | I think I may have to wait and do
my desaturation later in Photoshop.
| | 05:38 | I am liking that but there is
something else I want to do.
| | 05:42 | I really like how bright
these things are, these rooftops.
| | 05:46 | They're really catching the light.
| | 05:47 | Setting those off against the dark of
the buildings would be very nice, and
| | 05:50 | honestly that's something I am going to
have an easier time doing in Photoshop.
| | 05:54 | We've also got a lot of retouching to do in
Photoshop to get rid of these lens flares.
| | 05:58 | So I may almost be done here.
| | 06:01 | Let's now finally go play with our HDR
controls a little bit and see what we can
| | 06:06 | do to this stuff up here.
| | 06:08 | Right now it's going to affect the
entire image, but this is the bit that I am
| | 06:10 | really wondering about.
| | 06:11 | If I increase Structure, and that's
getting a little too contrasty. I lost some
| | 06:16 | of the nice filigree that I had in there.
| | 06:19 | Let's turn up the method on the HDR.
And then that's getting too contrasty.
| | 06:22 | So I think it maybe Tone Compression.
| | 06:30 | That's going to take some of these
bright bits and grab more of the tone that
| | 06:34 | we have at our disposal in that big
32-bit space and start filling in the
| | 06:37 | bright bits with it.
| | 06:39 | Tone Compression takes, as I dial it
up, more tones get dialed into my image.
| | 06:45 | So I am losing brightness
but I am getting more detail.
| | 06:48 | I think I like that better.
| | 06:50 | That looks pretty good. I could sit
here and tweak these sliders all day long,
| | 06:53 | but I am going to hit OK and head on
over to Photoshop to finish up the rest of
| | 06:59 | these edits, and here's my adjusted image.
| | 07:02 | Notice that it's gone from a
16-bit down to a 32-bit image.
| | 07:05 | It made the edits though back into my
original EXR file which I'd rather not write over.
| | 07:11 | So since I've noticed that right now,
I am going to go ahead right now and do a
| | 07:15 | Save As and save it as
Photoshop format with the same filename.
| | 07:20 | So that will preserve my EXR file and
you can see back here in Bridge I've
| | 07:25 | still got EXR and my PSD.
| | 07:27 | I am going to hide Bridge now just so it
unclutters our screen a little bit and zoom in.
| | 07:34 | So some other things that we needed to do.
| | 07:36 | We need to take out the lens flares.
| | 07:37 | Let's go ahead and do that.
| | 07:39 | Because again, as I have been saying
with these other edits like this, I kind of
| | 07:43 | want to do that early because if I
can't fix it, it may mean the image is lost.
| | 07:48 | I had checked that out ahead of time, so
this is not a total gamble here. I knew-- whoa!
| | 07:55 | That didn't work very well. Just
duplicated wrong part of the image.
| | 08:03 | Notice that with clouds I don't have
to be perfect with my edits, because
| | 08:06 | they are kind of random.
| | 08:07 | If you're not clear on how to use the
Clone tool don't worry. There are plenty
| | 08:11 | of places in the lynda library
where you can learn how to clone.
| | 08:16 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 08:17 | I don't think that's too noticeable.
| | 08:18 | I need to get rid of that one which I am
just going to do with the Spot Healing Brush.
| | 08:22 | Get rid of that, and this is a flare right here.
| | 08:28 | There is very rarely just
one bit of flare in an image.
| | 08:34 | If you find a strange circle in an
image somewhere that's plainly a lens flare,
| | 08:38 | you need to go look for other weird
discoloring, usually in a line but not necessarily.
| | 08:44 | So we've taken care of that. Let's
get rid of some of the sensor dust.
| | 08:47 | I promise you, my sensor is not
always dirty like this. I do clean it.
| | 08:52 | We've got some up here.
| | 08:53 | Very often edits will bring up,
particularly contrast edits, will bring up sensor
| | 08:57 | dust that you didn't know was there before.
| | 09:00 | I want to darken up these
buildings and brighten up their roofs.
| | 09:02 | But I think I am going to
deal with the green bit first.
| | 09:06 | We're back to a problem that I said
earlier, which is this should not be
| | 09:09 | supersaturated green I don't
think, because it's a cloudy day out.
| | 09:14 | So I am going to drop a Hue/Saturation
adjustment layer on here and tone this down.
| | 09:19 | I am liking that better.
| | 09:22 | It needs to be brighter.
| | 09:23 | I am going to dial up the lightness but
if I do that, I start losing contrast in
| | 09:28 | a way that I don't like.
| | 09:29 | So we'll brighten this back
up with the Levels adjustment.
| | 09:34 | I possibly could have finessed and
tweaked and fiddled in HDR Efex a little more
| | 09:39 | to get this the way that I want it.
| | 09:41 | But I often tend to mix
and match my editing tools.
| | 09:45 | I will do some of my adjustment in HDR
Efex with the wonderful control point tools
| | 09:49 | and either re-touch them more,
add more using my normal Photoshop methods
| | 09:55 | like I am doing here.
| | 09:57 | So this lets me paint some brightness in
there, which I like. Let's darken these buildings.
| | 10:04 | The light is back there way in the distance.
| | 10:06 | So the sides of these buildings should
be in shadow, which actually they already are,
| | 10:09 | so let's exaggerate that some more
by darkening up. I am not going to use
| | 10:14 | the black point because I don't want those to
go away completely. I just want to darken them.
| | 10:17 | Yes, my whole image is getting darker.
I don't care about that because I am
| | 10:20 | going to Select All. Hit Delete to
fill my mask with black and I will grab a
| | 10:27 | white paintbrush to fill this in.
| | 10:30 | I am zipping through that technique
because we've been doing it so much in this
| | 10:35 | course that I am figuring you've
seen some of the explanation already.
| | 10:39 | So I am just darkening up these areas
and now I'm going to really make this
| | 10:44 | pop even more as I
brighten up these reflections,
| | 10:47 | these are metal roofs, so it makes sense
that they'd be really popping, and here
| | 10:51 | I am going to use the white point.
| | 10:53 | I don't care if the metal
roofs go into over-exposure.
| | 10:56 | That will look like nice
real metal specular highlights.
| | 11:02 | And there we go.
| | 11:04 | Now, we're getting something that says
subject very clearly. And as long as I
| | 11:10 | have this mask that's all set up to
brighten things I think I am going to hit
| | 11:13 | these sheep or goats or whatever they
are, I am going to hit the farm animals
| | 11:17 | with some brightening.
| | 11:20 | It's just that time of day when you've
got to go out and brighten the farm animals.
| | 11:24 | That might be a little much.
| | 11:25 | I am going to leave that one in the dark.
| | 11:29 | So this is an image that you might
not necessarily look at and go, oh, HDR,
| | 11:34 | and one of the reasons you wouldn't think HDR
is because it's still got so much shadow in it.
| | 11:40 | Very often, HDR images as we've
discussed and looked at are perfectly exposed
| | 11:44 | all the way through and we've
screwed up the exposure on so much of this.
| | 11:48 | This is way too dark.
| | 11:50 | This has gone almost a complete
black. There is no detail on these.
| | 11:54 | That's absolutely counter to
what an HDR image normally is.
| | 11:59 | So I know I keep doing this, I edit
the image, I get to the conclusion, and I
| | 12:03 | see something else.
| | 12:04 | I just want to put out that as we
print this and work on it some more.
| | 12:07 | It may be that this highlight that I
painted in here is a little too bright, so I
| | 12:11 | might back off on that, and this is your
chance to see why we work in adjustment layers.
| | 12:15 | I have got all my
edits in discrete containers.
| | 12:19 | And again making that darker, just
editing this independent of the rest of the
| | 12:23 | image is something that sets
it apart from a normal HDR.
| | 12:27 | So if you think you don't like the
HDR look, if you're resistant to HDR
| | 12:31 | technology, well you are wrong.
| | 12:33 | You should learn it anyway because there
are times when you can use it to a more
| | 12:37 | subtle effect to create an image
that could not be created without it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tone mapping troubles to watch for| 00:00 | If you're interested in HDR, I'm
assuming this because you're a somewhat
| | 00:03 | experienced photographer.
| | 00:05 | And as a somewhat experienced
photographer, there should be some postproduction
| | 00:09 | habits that you already have.
| | 00:11 | Things that you just do without even
thinking once you get into your image editor.
| | 00:15 | For example, worrying about overexposed
highlights, checking to be sure you got
| | 00:18 | the detail that you want in your
shadows, paying attention to the overall
| | 00:22 | contrast in your image and
making sure that it's correct.
| | 00:25 | If you're working in color, checking
out your white balance, making sure your
| | 00:28 | image doesn't have any color cast problems.
| | 00:30 | All of these things are the normal
work of a good photographer and they all
| | 00:35 | apply to HDR images also.
| | 00:37 | But HDR images have their own set of
additional concerns on top of those
| | 00:43 | normal photographic concerns, and we're
going to look at those real quick in this movie.
| | 00:46 | Before we do though I want to show you
an image that we're going to be looking
| | 00:49 | at in a minute in terms
of some HDR issues it has.
| | 00:51 | But first I want you to take a look at this.
| | 00:53 | I shot this image of moving subject
matter as in HDR with the intention of it
| | 00:59 | ending up all blurred and smeared like this.
| | 01:01 | I intentionally waited until there was
movement in the frame and I purposely did
| | 01:06 | not turn on any anti-ghosting features
in my merging software, because I knew
| | 01:10 | that sometimes it's cool the
way that HDR does produce ghosts.
| | 01:14 | So this is something else you can play
with, when you're out looking for HDR subject
| | 01:17 | matter. Here's another example.
| | 01:20 | Again, shooting this with the idea that
it would be merged and ghostwritten by
| | 01:25 | the time that I was done.
| | 01:25 | So, that's something you want to
experiment with. Let's go back to this image though.
| | 01:29 | I liked all those movements down here,
what really bugs me in this image is up
| | 01:34 | here these power-lines.
| | 01:35 | These are what are powering the streetcar.
| | 01:37 | They've got this weird kind of halo
around them. Notice how they look like
| | 01:40 | they're actually kind of pushed into
the clouds. It's because there are dark and
| | 01:45 | light lines on either side.
| | 01:47 | You can also see a little bit
of haloing around this building.
| | 01:49 | Haloing is something you really want
to keep an eye on in your HDR Merges.
| | 01:54 | Now I'm going to be honest with you,
haloing is not nearly the problem that it
| | 01:58 | used to be if you're using the latest
version of a modern piece of HDR software.
| | 02:03 | Doing this same merge that produced
this image in the latest version of
| | 02:07 | Photomatix won't produce these halos.
| | 02:09 | If you're using older software, there's a
better chance that you're going to see haloing.
| | 02:14 | Also, if you push the settings too far
in the HDR software you're using, you
| | 02:18 | might get some halos.
| | 02:19 | The point here with this
lesson is watch for these.
| | 02:23 | If you're starting to see a halo
developed, you need to back off your settings.
| | 02:26 | Also haloing really varies
from one image to another.
| | 02:29 | I want to show you another example of
haloing, and again, honestly I had trouble
| | 02:33 | finding halo examples with the latest
Photomatix, because it's very, very good.
| | 02:38 | This is a much older version of Photomatix.
| | 02:41 | This is version 2-point-something, and
this is a more typical form of haloing
| | 02:45 | that you're going to see.
| | 02:47 | Notice around these posts, there is
just this lighter halo, this white
| | 02:52 | fuzzy area around it.
| | 02:53 | This is one of the first things
that you'll notice in bad HDR here.
| | 02:57 | You can see it over here.
| | 02:58 | It's just every area of sudden contrast
change gets this bit bright halo around it
| | 03:03 | and you just really don't want that.
| | 03:05 | Let me get zoomed in into a little bit
more. You can really see that in there.
| | 03:09 | So watch out for halos
when you're doing your merge.
| | 03:12 | If you want to try to get them under
control in Photomatix that's going to be
| | 03:15 | the smoothing controls that we looked
at earlier and you had several of them
| | 03:19 | that we can work with.
| | 03:20 | But again, hopefully, if you're using
good modern HDR software, you're not going
| | 03:23 | have to worry too much about that.
| | 03:25 | I want to talk about color and detail.
| | 03:28 | Here is an image that looks really HDR-y.
| | 03:31 | It's got all its detail in it.
| | 03:33 | It's got all this color.
| | 03:34 | These greens are really saturated,
these yellows are really saturated, the sky
| | 03:38 | is really saturated.
| | 03:39 | Here is another example, lots and
lots of detail and color throughout.
| | 03:44 | And this is an image that you'd
probably immediately recognize as an HDR for
| | 03:49 | those very reasons. Lots of detail, lots
of color, lots of really good exposure.
| | 03:54 | It's also what makes these images look
inherently unrealistic, because the fact
| | 03:58 | is our eyes do not see the world
this way, particularly in a landscape.
| | 04:02 | Largely because of atmosphere.
| | 04:05 | These colors out here should not be
as saturated as these colors up here,
| | 04:09 | because there's a lot more atmospheric
haze even on a clear day between me and
| | 04:13 | these distant objects, compared
to me and these close-up objects.
| | 04:16 | So when you're looking for how to
improve your HDR images, if you're feeling
| | 04:21 | like, boy, this looks too manipulated
and HDR-y, then you want to think about
| | 04:25 | backing off on your color saturation,
backing off on your detail, because
| | 04:29 | something else that's happening is
I'm getting lots and lots of detail, even
| | 04:33 | in things far away.
| | 04:35 | And in the real world again, haze and
poor eyesight and lots of other things
| | 04:40 | compromise my ability to see
detail in things that are far away.
| | 04:43 | So I'm going to want to play with my
microcontrast and detail controls in my
| | 04:48 | HDR merging software.
| | 04:49 | I'm using those terms in a somewhat
generic way. Depending on what software
| | 04:53 | you're using, those will be called
different things, but there will be controls
| | 04:56 | and a good piece of HDR processing
software to handle all of those things.
| | 05:01 | One last bit, let's go back to this image.
There is something else in this image
| | 05:05 | that is actually just outright wrong,
and by wrong I mean something that doesn't
| | 05:10 | occur in the real world, and that is in
bright sunlight the bottom of the cloud
| | 05:15 | being completely black.
| | 05:16 | That just doesn't happen.
| | 05:18 | And this was shot in Oklahoma where you
get weird weather and weird clouds and
| | 05:21 | sometimes the sky turns green, but you
never get dark black on the bottom, so
| | 05:26 | that something you want to look out for.
| | 05:28 | And in Photomatix, you're going to be
able to control that. I mentioned this
| | 05:30 | earlier, again with highlight smoothing.
| | 05:32 | You're going to be able to reduce the
amount of contrast in the highlights
| | 05:36 | between the lightest and darkest place.
| | 05:38 | So keep an eye out for those three
things as you're assessing your HDR images:
| | 05:43 | halos, black bottoms on clouds,
and the overall amount of color and
| | 05:49 | detail you have in your image.
| | 05:50 | A lot of times in classes I know that
students get frustrated by is there is so
| | 05:55 | much I can do in my image editor, I
don't know what I should do, I don't know if
| | 05:58 | I should add this feature, I don't
know if I should add that effect, I don't
| | 06:00 | know if I should push an edit this far.
| | 06:03 | It can be overwhelming, and it can
lead you to just feeling stuck and lost.
| | 06:06 | One great way to put some limits on
the huge amount of possibilities in your
| | 06:11 | image editor is to understand that
sometimes if you push an edit to a
| | 06:14 | certain point, you end up with visible
artifacts, where things that simply don't look real.
| | 06:18 | For example, in this image I know I
need to back off on this darkening.
| | 06:22 | I need to back off on some of the color
adjustments, I need to back off in the amount of detail.
| | 06:26 | While it may sound limiting to say I
have to back off on these things, sometimes
| | 06:30 | it can be very liberating to know that
if I keep an eye out for halos, color,
| | 06:34 | and detail problems, it's going to help
me have fewer options and that's going
| | 06:38 | to make it a little bit easier to not
get overwhelmed by the tremendous amount
| | 06:43 | of image-editing power that I have.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Why use HDR for black-and-white images?| 00:00 | HDR is a great tool for
the black-and-white shooter.
| | 00:04 | Now that may sound a little
counterintuitive, because very often when we think
| | 00:08 | of HDR images, the first thing we
think of are those big juicy HDR colors.
| | 00:13 | So what good could HDR possibly
do for the black-and-white shooter?
| | 00:17 | I'm going to show you three reasons why
if you like to shoot black-and-white
| | 00:21 | you're going to want to consider
learning HDR techniques, and beginning to
| | 00:24 | practice with them and work them more
into your black-and-white vocabulary.
| | 00:28 | The first, if you like to
shoot landscapes, is clouds.
| | 00:32 | HDR makes the most beautiful clouds
you're going ever hope to have in a photo,
| | 00:36 | and you get all this wonderful
detail, all this fine texture.
| | 00:40 | So if you're a black-and-white landscape
shooter having HDR at your disposal,
| | 00:44 | it is going to let you add
much more drama to your skies.
| | 00:47 | The reason that skies look so good in
HDR is that HDR is great at bringing out
| | 00:53 | lots of fine detail in an image, and
this is the second reason that as a
| | 00:57 | black-and-white shooter you
want to learn some HDR techniques.
| | 01:01 | Black-and-white photography is very
often largely about detail and about the
| | 01:05 | really fine sharp textures
that you can get out of an image.
| | 01:09 | And with the HDR techniques, you can
really, really pull a lot of texture out of
| | 01:13 | a scene, so it works right into a
traditional black-and-white vocabulary.
| | 01:19 | The third reason that you might want
to consider HDR as a black-and-white
| | 01:22 | shooter is that when you're working
with black-and-white, you're working
| | 01:25 | strictly with luminance.
| | 01:27 | You're working just with light and
shadow, just brightness and darkness.
| | 01:31 | Because of the dynamic range limitation
on your camera, it's going to be kind of
| | 01:35 | tricky. Consider a scene like this.
| | 01:37 | What caught my eye here was the vertical
and horizontal trees making this perfect
| | 01:42 | right angle, and the fact that the
vertical tree could be, I knew, rendered in
| | 01:47 | black-and-white as very dark.
| | 01:49 | This would be a nice counterpart to the
very brightly lit horizontal tree, and
| | 01:52 | so I thought, well, this is just an
interesting play of geometry and light.
| | 01:56 | But I also knew it'd only work if
that light horizontal tree was up against
| | 02:01 | something very, very dark which was
that dark hillside, but I needed to be
| | 02:05 | able to preserve this bright sky, so I'm
facing a really critical dynamic range situation.
| | 02:09 | I need to be sure that I keep
detail on the sky, but that I've got the
| | 02:12 | tonality that I want in the
hillside to get it dark enough to make that
| | 02:16 | horizontal tree stand up.
| | 02:18 | It might have been possible to do that
with a single exposure, but if you've
| | 02:22 | ever tried doing black-and-white,
one of the things you know is that it's
| | 02:24 | difficult to see it perfectly in your head.
| | 02:26 | You like some latitude to experiment and play.
| | 02:29 | You're not always sure
where you want your tones.
| | 02:32 | So I knew that if I shot this as an HDR,
I would have enough tonal information
| | 02:37 | to work with that I could really go
to town, trying to figure out how dark
| | 02:40 | should that hillside be, how bright does
the horizontal tree need to be, and can
| | 02:45 | I preserve all that nice detail in my sky.
| | 02:48 | Here's another example. I wasn't sure
when I shot this how much detail I wanted
| | 02:53 | in the hillside. I was pretty sure it
was going to be a black-and-white image,
| | 02:56 | just because it's mostly about the shape
of the contrail, but I wasn't sure if I
| | 03:01 | wanted the hillside to be completely
black or still have some detail in it.
| | 03:04 | I didn't know how much, and so I
thought there is not that much moving in the
| | 03:07 | frame, the plane isn't moving that
quickly. I'll shoot this is an HDR and then
| | 03:11 | I've got lots of tonal information to work with.
| | 03:14 | Another relationship I wasn't sure about
was the dark hillside to the light foreground.
| | 03:19 | Another example, what caught my eye
here was that one rock that's sticking up
| | 03:22 | out of the shadow, and I liked the
receding telephone poles, but I just
| | 03:26 | wasn't sure how ultimately in a black-
and-white image where I would want to
| | 03:31 | place the different tones.
| | 03:32 | So by choosing to shoot this as an HDR,
what I was doing was buying myself a
| | 03:38 | huge amount of tonal information that I
could push and pull, that I could really
| | 03:43 | play with to figure out exactly how I
wanted different tones to be represented.
| | 03:48 | Here's another example. In this
situation I knew I was facing a somewhat
| | 03:52 | high-dynamic range situation, because
I'm standing under this tree and I'm
| | 03:56 | shooting silhouettes into bright sunlight.
| | 03:58 | I wasn't sure how much detail I wanted
beneath the tree, and so by shooting this
| | 04:01 | HDR I had enough tones to work with
that I can really play with the stuff
| | 04:05 | directly beneath the tree I was standing under.
| | 04:08 | Now these last few images, these last
ones we've been looking at, they are not
| | 04:11 | things that you would
necessarily identify as HDR images.
| | 04:15 | This one maybe if you know
how to recognize an HDR sky.
| | 04:18 | So what I'm getting here is not buying
myself some wild out there surreal HDR
| | 04:23 | black-and-white stuff, and of
course you can do that too.
| | 04:26 | What I'm buying myself here is a safety
net and flexibility for when I'm doing
| | 04:30 | my black-and-white editing.
| | 04:31 | I've got all of these tones to work with
and it's giving me a lot of options as
| | 04:35 | I'm doing my black-and-white conversion.
| | 04:38 | So three reasons to be considering HDR
with your black-and-white shooting:
| | 04:43 | the ability to get nice skies, the ability
to capture tremendous amounts of detail,
| | 04:48 | and the ability to capture a huge
tonal range. That gives you a lot of options
| | 04:53 | when you are doing your black-and-white
conversion and toning your final image.
| | 04:57 | In the next movie we're going to look
through the entire process of starting
| | 05:02 | with an HDR merge and turning
it into a black-and-white image.
| | 05:05 | If you don't know much about black-and-
white shooting, if you don't understand
| | 05:08 | black-and-white conversion or if
you're even maybe not comfortable with
| | 05:11 | black-and-white aesthetic, if you
wonder why would I shoot black-and-white when
| | 05:14 | I have a color camera,
| | 05:16 | take a look at my Foundations of
Photography Black-and-White course.
| | 05:19 | It will work you through the entire
background that you need to possibly get a
| | 05:24 | little bit more out of the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Black-and-white HDR| 00:00 | We have already looked at why you might
want to consider HDR techniques for your
| | 00:05 | black-and-white photography.
| | 00:06 | Now we're going to look at how you can
go from a bracketed set of HDR images to
| | 00:12 | a very nice finished black-and-white picture.
| | 00:14 | Go to your Exercise Files folder and
grab images 9685, 86, and 87 out of either
| | 00:21 | the Chapter 5 or Chapter 6 folder and
merge those in Photoshop. Be sure to do a
| | 00:27 | 32-bit merge and be sure that you
turn on Photoshop's deghosting features,
| | 00:31 | because it was a little shaky when I
took this picture and it's got some
| | 00:35 | ghosting problems if you don't activate that.
| | 00:37 | When you're done, save it as an EXR
file, open that up in Photomatix, and tone
| | 00:43 | map it, and you should have something like this.
| | 00:45 | Now if everything that I just said is
total gibberish to you, then you must've
| | 00:49 | skipped some lessons, because we
covered that particular workflow.
| | 00:52 | The workflow of merging in Photoshop
and tone mapping somewhere else earlier
| | 00:56 | in this course. So go back and pick those
up and you'll be available to follow along.
| | 01:00 | What I've got here is a pretty
typical initial tone mapped result.
| | 01:05 | I've got good highlight detail, I've
got nice shadow detail where there are
| | 01:08 | shadows, and I've got an overall
perfectly evenly exposed image.
| | 01:12 | The result as it often is straight
out of tone mapping is an image that's a
| | 01:16 | little blah, kind of flat.
| | 01:17 | I don't have real strong blacks.
| | 01:19 | I don't have real strong whites.
| | 01:20 | The histogram reveals that all of my
tones are clustered in the middle of
| | 01:24 | the tonal range, and that means I
have low contrast image so I'm going to
| | 01:27 | need to punch that up.
| | 01:29 | And I'm also going to need to do all of the
normal HDR type editing that I wanted to do.
| | 01:33 | How HDR-y do I wanted to look,
how much detail do I want?
| | 01:37 | Obviously if this was going to be a
color image I would have some color
| | 01:40 | concerns. I'm not going to
need to worry about those.
| | 01:42 | So where should I start?
| | 01:44 | Very often, if you're just starting
to work on an image or if you've been
| | 01:48 | working on it for a little while and
find yourself stuck, very often it's a good
| | 01:52 | idea to step back from the image, take
a moment, look at it, and think, why in
| | 01:57 | the world did I shoot this
image in the first place?
| | 01:59 | Sometimes you'll get to that point just out
of frustration, going, what was I thinking?
| | 02:04 | I remember when I was here that what
struck me was there was a very dramatic sky
| | 02:08 | and I wanted to capture that, and I
liked these fence posts receding into the
| | 02:12 | distance. I liked it for a couple reasons.
| | 02:14 | I liked this imaginary line here and
this imaginary line here. I think that
| | 02:18 | creates a kind of cool geometry,
and I also knew that if this was a
| | 02:22 | black-and-white image I could take
these dark fence post and be sure that in my
| | 02:26 | black-and-white conversion I was
rendering the grass as something very light
| | 02:29 | and I would have this nice dark
geometry against this white field.
| | 02:33 | So I decided to shoot this is an HDR.
| | 02:35 | Now I chose to do it as an HDR
because I wanted to preserve the cool sky.
| | 02:40 | This total thing that I'm talking about
in here, I could have gotten there with
| | 02:43 | a single image, but I wanted
the big nice textury HDR sky.
| | 02:47 | So with that in mind, I'm going to
start editing, and I'm going to start by
| | 02:50 | trying to get the sky where I want it.
| | 02:51 | I'm going to increase the Strength
slider, because that's going to improve the
| | 02:55 | detail in the sky, make it more textural.
| | 02:58 | I need to be a little careful because
I'm getting some noise up here. You may
| | 03:01 | not be able to see that too well because
this video is presented to you rather small.
| | 03:05 | I'm going to also increased detail contrast.
| | 03:07 | That's going to give me more detail
throughout my image, but right now I'm
| | 03:10 | just looking at the sky.
| | 03:11 | It's also going to darken the image, but
I'm not too worried about that because
| | 03:15 | I needed a stronger black point anyway.
| | 03:18 | I could head to some smoothing controls
down here to try and take care of cloud
| | 03:21 | bottoms that are too dark, but I
don't really have that problem.
| | 03:24 | The image does overall have a contrast
issue, so I'm going to bump the black point.
| | 03:29 | That's going to really punch up
the darker tones in my image and right
| | 03:34 | away the image is more contrasty.
| | 03:36 | I could fiddle with the white point,
but I'm not going to because I'm already
| | 03:40 | writing the edge of overexposure.
I don't want to blow up the sky. I've already
| | 03:45 | lost the detail on this rock., I think
that's going to be okay in the final
| | 03:48 | black-and-white, but I'm going to do
my white point adjustment in Photoshop.
| | 03:52 | I do need a white point adjustment,
because the image is too dark, but I'm going
| | 03:56 | to do in Photoshop, because there I
can use some masking controls to protect
| | 04:00 | these overexposed areas or
almost overexposed areas.
| | 04:04 | Gamma, I'm not going to worry about.
| | 04:05 | Again, that'll add some
brightening, but I'll lose my black point.
| | 04:08 | I'll just do all that tonal stuff in Photoshop.
| | 04:10 | Temperature I don't have to worry
about because I don't care about color.
| | 04:13 | And I'm not going to do anything
with all this smoothing controls.
| | 04:15 | Now if you look very closely at the
image right now, you can possibly see a tiny
| | 04:21 | bit of a halo problem.
| | 04:23 | If I look right in here, there is a
strip that's a little bit darker than
| | 04:27 | right here or right here, and you may think,
well, maybe it was just darker in there.
| | 04:31 | Now that doesn't make sense.
| | 04:33 | I think what I've got here is a very
wide halo around this post and if I look
| | 04:38 | right here in the sky I can really see it.
| | 04:39 | It's light here, it's
dark here, it's light here.
| | 04:42 | It's light here, there's just
some very, very faint haloing.
| | 04:46 | I'm going to try and take care
of that with lighting adjustments.
| | 04:49 | If I slide to the right, my image is
going to kind of flatten out a little bit,
| | 04:55 | but now I see that this bit of
the sky is not darker any more.
| | 04:58 | I have evened that out a little bit.
| | 05:01 | What I need to do is look through
the rest of the image and see if I have
| | 05:04 | created any other halos, and
I don't believe that I have.
| | 05:09 | As I do these edits, I am also
revealing more and more the sensor dust
| | 05:12 | problem that I have here.
| | 05:13 | obviously, I'll take care of that in Photoshop.
| | 05:15 | This is looking a little soft over here.
| | 05:17 | That could have been a ghosting problem.
| | 05:19 | It might also be a depth of field issue.
I'm just not going to worry about it.
| | 05:23 | I don't think it's a deal breaker for the image.
| | 05:24 | So this lighting adjustments control,
which is effectively a smoothing
| | 05:28 | control and as you'll recall, smoothing evens
out the transitions around high contrast areas.
| | 05:34 | That's taken care of this problem, but
it would have been very easy to miss, so
| | 05:37 | I was lucky that I managed to
see these darker bits in here.
| | 05:42 | So I think this is where I wanted HDR wise.
| | 05:44 | I can't finish the image here for two
reasons. There are tonal adjustments that
| | 05:49 | need to be made through masking, and I
need to do my black-and-white conversion.
| | 05:53 | Now if you've played much with color
saturation, you know that you can slide
| | 05:57 | this all the way over here and there you
have a black-and-white image. But we're
| | 06:01 | not going to do that.
| | 06:03 | If you are new to black-and-white
editing, you may not know that there are lots
| | 06:07 | of ways of converting a color image
to black-and-white and we cover all of them--
| | 06:11 | Actually we don't cover all of
them. We cover all of the good ones, and
| | 06:15 | there is really only one or two
in my Foundations of Photography
| | 06:18 | Black-and-White course.
| | 06:19 | If you're new to black-and-white, I
really recommend you go take a look at that
| | 06:23 | course, because it will show you the
techniques that we are about to use and it
| | 06:26 | will also give you a pretty thorough
discussion of black-and-white aesthetics.
| | 06:30 | If you're wondering why we would take
all of this HDR coloring goodness and get
| | 06:34 | rid of it and strip it down to just
grayscale, that course might give you an
| | 06:37 | idea of some of the
explicit power of black-and-white.
| | 06:40 | I'm going to leave color saturation
where it is, because I'll be doing my
| | 06:43 | black-and-white conversion in Photoshop.
| | 06:44 | I think I am done with this,
so I'm going to process.
| | 06:48 | When I do that, it's going to apply my
tone mapping and it's going to give me a
| | 06:53 | slightly different version because
sometimes in Photomatix there are some
| | 06:57 | smoothing differences when it's finally
processed, so I am going to double check
| | 07:00 | these areas in here. I think they look good.
| | 07:03 | So now I'm going to save my image out
as a 16-bit TIFF file. I'm just going to
| | 07:07 | leave the name merged_tonemapped.
| | 07:08 | TIFF 16-bit. I'm putting that out on
the desktop and now I want to open that
| | 07:13 | image in Photoshop where I can
finish up the rest of my edits.
| | 07:17 | I'm going to go down here to Layers
palette and add a Black & White adjustment layer.
| | 07:22 | Again, this is all covered in the black
-and-white course, and right away I've
| | 07:26 | got a black-and-white image.
| | 07:27 | Now you may think, well, I don't know if
that looks any different or better than
| | 07:30 | by just draining the color
saturation out, and that's true.
| | 07:34 | It probably doesn't, but what I've got
here is a tremendous level of control.
| | 07:37 | I'm going to grab my Targeted
Adjustment tool from the Adjustments panel over
| | 07:41 | here and come back here to my image.
| | 07:42 | Now I had mentioned earlier that one of
the things I was kind of pre-visualizing
| | 07:46 | was the idea of these black
posts against white down here.
| | 07:49 | So I'm going to just click here in
the image and drag to the right and
| | 07:54 | everything that's green in my
image is going to get brighter.
| | 07:57 | So now I'm able to brighten up all of
that grass. It's starting actually to look
| | 08:01 | almost like an infrared image, because
infrared images have very bright foliage.
| | 08:06 | Now if I look over here I see that
actually I'm manipulating the yellows slider.
| | 08:09 | Curiously enough this grass
is more yellow than green.
| | 08:12 | So I'm going to back off on that a
little bit, because I don't want to
| | 08:15 | overexpose these areas.
| | 08:17 | Now look right away at my sky.
I've overexposed this with this edit.
| | 08:21 | I'm not going to worry about
that now. We'll fix that later.
| | 08:24 | I want to get my tones in the right
place, and I think this is it. I think I
| | 08:28 | like this light background.
| | 08:31 | I think I may darken these posts up
later. I'm going to turn off my Black &
| | 08:35 | White adjustment layer for a minute so
I can see the original and I see that
| | 08:39 | color wise these posts and this building in
the background are pretty much the same color.
| | 08:44 | So I can't differentiate them
with any of these controls over here.
| | 08:48 | So I think that's where I want
my black-and-white adjustment.
| | 08:51 | So how do I fix this overexposed bit?
| | 08:53 | I can't pull the yellow slider back down
without losing the tonal adjustment on my ground.
| | 08:57 | So instead what I'm going
to do is just mask this off.
| | 09:00 | I'm going to grab the paintbrush and
some black paint and I'm using the left
| | 09:04 | and right bracket keys.
| | 09:05 | In this case the bracket key to get a
bigger brush. I'm selecting my masks down
| | 09:10 | here and I'm just going to paint into here.
| | 09:13 | What this is doing is protecting
this part of the image from that
| | 09:16 | black-and-white conversion, and it was
that black-and-white conversion that was
| | 09:20 | causing the overexposure.
| | 09:21 | Unfortunately, because it's
protecting this image from the black-and-white
| | 09:24 | conversion, it means that I'm basically
painting color back into the image and
| | 09:28 | you may not be able to see this on your
smaller version of the movie there, but
| | 09:32 | the sky has become yellow there.
| | 09:34 | So what I'm now going to do is add
another Black & White adjustment layer, this
| | 09:38 | time to convert the whole thing to black-
and-white, and I'm going to quickly mask
| | 09:42 | that out and get my mask painted in
properly to apply my second black-and-white
| | 09:48 | adjustment to only these
clouds that I'm masking.
| | 09:50 | If all this masking I'm doing is
beyond your skill level, there are plenty of
| | 09:54 | lynda courses that teach you how to do this.
| | 09:56 | I'm afraid that this movie gets a way
too long if we had to explain every
| | 10:00 | little bit of masking.
| | 10:01 | So that's pretty good. I've got the sky
back to where they need to be and I've
| | 10:05 | got my tonal relationships where I want them.
| | 10:08 | I think the next thing I might do is
work a little bit on the posts to get them
| | 10:11 | darker, so I am going to
add a Levels adjustment.
| | 10:16 | Actually let's do this next. I'm going
to simply get my tones, and that's what I
| | 10:20 | should be doing. I am going to
drag my black point over. Ah, look!
| | 10:23 | Right away, my post has
darkened up. That's nice.
| | 10:25 | My sky gets a little richer. I have
overall improved the contrast quite a bit.
| | 10:29 | I might try a white point adjustment
into about there, because that last little
| | 10:34 | bit of white that was getting clipped
out could have made for a dull print and
| | 10:38 | in doing that I've blown out my sky here.
| | 10:41 | So I'm just going to mask that how to
protect it from that Levels adjustment.
| | 10:47 | And we're looking pretty good. I am
going to mask that a little bit out.
| | 10:49 | We've got a nice image here tonally,
and that means I don't need to really
| | 10:52 | darken up the poles. They're
doing pretty well on their own.
| | 10:54 | I might want to lighten up the
building a little bit to separate it from the
| | 10:58 | posts that are in the foreground,
so I'm going to here into a mid point
| | 11:03 | adjustment, maybe even a full-on
black point adjustment, and then quickly
| | 11:08 | paint a mask here to make the fence posts in
front of the buildings stand out a little more.
| | 11:14 | I'm liking that better and I'm not
overexposing the building too much.
| | 11:19 | So as I'm doing this what I'm
getting here is not an image that looks
| | 11:22 | tremendously HDR-y, unless you really know
how to recognize an HDR sky, but thanks
| | 11:27 | to HDR I've been able to preserve this
really luscious sky thing while still
| | 11:32 | using all of my normal black-and-white
conversion and toning techniques to get a
| | 11:37 | black-and-white image.
| | 11:38 | I'm going to take care of this sensor
dust real quick. I just duplicated the
| | 11:40 | background layer and I'm using the Spot
Healing Brush to take out these sensor dusty bits.
| | 11:45 | I duplicated the background layer for
us just because if I make a mistake, I
| | 11:49 | can back out of it.
| | 11:50 | Last thing I want to do is
throw a vignette on that same layer.
| | 11:54 | We've seen how do vignetting in HDR Efex.
| | 11:57 | I can do in Photoshop with the Lens
Correction filter, which you pull right out
| | 12:01 | of the Filter menu, and I can just
come right over here to the Custom tab or
| | 12:04 | Lens Corrections and I
get this Vignette control.
| | 12:07 | Notice that the lens correction
preview does not show the effects of
| | 12:10 | any adjustment layers.
| | 12:12 | That's okay. They will
still be there when I come back.
| | 12:15 | So I'm going to throw in a little
vignette there, hit OK, let it apply, and
| | 12:18 | that's working a lot.
| | 12:19 | So a few more tweaks I might do is I could
go and paint some mask to calm this down.
| | 12:25 | I might darken the post up a little bit
more, but overall this is looking pretty
| | 12:28 | good and that's kind of the thought
process I go through and some simple tools
| | 12:33 | I can use to get from a bracketed HDR
set to a nice black-and-white image.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Panoramic HDR| 00:00 | You might already be familiar with
panoramic stitching, the process of
| | 00:03 | shooting a series of overlapping
images and then using Photoshop or another
| | 00:09 | piece of software to stitch those
into a seamless, perspective-corrected
| | 00:14 | panorama of your scene.
| | 00:16 | You can do that with HDR also.
| | 00:18 | It's a pretty simple process in its conception.
| | 00:21 | It just takes a lot of work as
you've got a lot of files to manage.
| | 00:23 | What I've done here is I have shot
three bracketed sets of HDR images.
| | 00:28 | I'm going to go into Filmstrip mode here so
we can get a bigger view. So here's one set.
| | 00:33 | It's a normal three-shot bracket.
| | 00:35 | Then I panned to the right and you can
see the pan happened right there and I
| | 00:40 | shot three more images.
| | 00:42 | Again, another bracketed set, and
then I panned to the right again and shot
| | 00:46 | another three images.
| | 00:48 | So I can get all of these merged and
stitched into a single seamless panorama.
| | 00:52 | All I have to do is just go through the
normal steps that I would go through for
| | 00:58 | HDR and then stitch the results.
| | 01:01 | So stack those up there
and let's see how this works.
| | 01:04 | I am going to take these, this first
set, and merge them with Photoshop.
| | 01:09 | I am not going to worry about
ghosting because even the vegetation, if it's
| | 01:14 | moving, it's not moving very hard.
| | 01:15 | I need a 32-bit image.
| | 01:17 | So I am just going to say OK.
| | 01:20 | And there's my finished first image.
| | 01:24 | Now I am going to go back to Bridge and
I am going to my second bracketed set,
| | 01:29 | and I am going to merge those the same
way and now with that done, I am ready
| | 01:37 | to go on to my third set of bracketed
images and I am going to merge those.
| | 01:45 | Obviously, going through these one at a
time and merging them is kind of a drag.
| | 01:48 | Yes, I could batch process the
merging in Photomatix. Unfortunately,
| | 01:53 | because these were handheld,
| | 01:55 | I have tested them in Photomatix and
Photomatix does not give me a good merge.
| | 01:59 | So this is the reason in this case for
sure to use a tripod, because if I had
| | 02:04 | been shooting with a tripod, there's
a much better chance that Photomatix's
| | 02:07 | batch processing would work.
| | 02:10 | You know what's really sad
is I had a tripod with me.
| | 02:12 | I was just being lazy.
| | 02:14 | With only three shots, it's not a
big a deal, but if you are shooting a
| | 02:16 | nine-shot panorama or
something, it can get pretty tedious.
| | 02:19 | Here are my three images.
| | 02:21 | So now I am going to save these as EXR
files and I am going to put them back
| | 02:26 | into the Chapter 6 folder and as I have
been doing all along, I want to keep the
| | 02:30 | original file name, which is especially
important now, because I need to know what
| | 02:35 | order these images go in so that I
know what the left or right order is.
| | 02:40 | I'll close that up.
| | 02:42 | I am going to save this one.
| | 02:45 | I always just use the first file name in
the bracketed set. And then finally the
| | 02:51 | last one, which is here.
| | 03:00 | Once those are done, I am now ready
to take my EXR images into Photomatix.
| | 03:06 | Because there are only three, it's
easy enough to just grab all three EXRs.
| | 03:09 | They are each going to open
and I see the full 32-bit image.
| | 03:15 | Now what I need to do is just
tone map each one of these images.
| | 03:19 | I am going to start with the leftmost
one because it's kind of the anchor here.
| | 03:23 | It's got this geographic feature that
kind of curves out and just becomes a big
| | 03:27 | flat bit and it's also
got the most clouds in it.
| | 03:30 | So I am going to start here. I am going
to hit the Tone Mapping button and when
| | 03:35 | Tone Mapping comes up, I see a
default tone mapping with my histogram.
| | 03:39 | Now this is going to be tricky.
| | 03:41 | I am not going to be able to get this
image the way that I want it for reasons
| | 03:45 | that we've encountered before,
largely having to do with the bottom of the clouds.
| | 03:48 | I don't want the clouds to go too dark.
| | 03:50 | Of course, the advantage of HDR over
just doing this as a straight panorama I
| | 03:54 | get these really cool looking clouds.
| | 03:56 | So I do want to fiddle with that.
| | 03:57 | I want to get some nice texture into the cloud.
| | 04:00 | So I am going to play with
Microcontrast, but if I crank the Strength up too much,
| | 04:04 | my cloud start really getting dark.
| | 04:06 | So what I am going to have to do is
get the clouds the way that I want them.
| | 04:11 | the foreground is going to stay washed out.
| | 04:12 | So I'll have to fix that in Photoshop later.
| | 04:14 | So I am just going to put this
in a spot that I think is nice.
| | 04:19 | I am going to try the Gamma slider
because it's going to brighten up some
| | 04:22 | midtowns, which might give me the
latitude that I need to increase Strength.
| | 04:28 | It's still darkening the stuff up.
| | 04:30 | These are going to be the
really problematic ones.
| | 04:31 | Now the other thing I could do is go
ahead and get it right in here and then
| | 04:36 | lighten the clouds in Photoshop later.
| | 04:38 | Honestly, it's six of one and half a
dozen of another, which way I do it.
| | 04:41 | It still going to be a big edit in Photoshop.
| | 04:44 | So I am going to stick about right here.
| | 04:46 | I think I am going to probably lighten
the clouds later. Maybe I'll try one last
| | 04:53 | smoothing change and that does pick me
up a little bit of extra detail in here.
| | 04:58 | Hit the Process button and it's going
to tone map the image, and there it is.
| | 05:03 | So I am ready to save this.
| | 05:05 | Save it as, of course, a 16-bit TIFF
right back into the Exercise folder.
| | 05:11 | And we appended tonemapped there.
| | 05:14 | So I am going to close that
and move on to the next image.
| | 05:17 | If I just hit Command+T, I'll get the
Tone Mapping dialog and what's nice is it
| | 05:23 | comes in with my last used settings.
| | 05:26 | Down here under Presets, I get
Previous, which just means previous conversion.
| | 05:29 | So I know that these are going to be
converted the same way. That's essential.
| | 05:33 | you have to do the exact same tone
mapping to each image, otherwise you could
| | 05:38 | very well end up with visible
seams in your final panorama.
| | 05:41 | So I am going to save that
into the Chapter 6 folder.
| | 05:45 | If they are not processed the same way,
there could be a difference in color,
| | 05:49 | difference in the amount, in the type
of tonality on the clouds, and again,
| | 05:53 | Command+T and Process.
| | 05:58 | And I save this image and now
I've got my three panoramic images.
| | 06:03 | So I am going to close
that up and go back to Bridge.
| | 06:05 | Next thing I want to do
here is get organized. Oops!
| | 06:09 | I just dragged them all
in there. That's no good.
| | 06:11 | All right, 272 is the EXR file that
goes with this batch. 275 is the EXR file
| | 06:18 | that goes with this batch.
| | 06:19 | So you can see I can just
drag images from stack to stack.
| | 06:22 | What I really care about though
are these, the tone mapped versions.
| | 06:26 | So I am going to take that, hold down
the Shift key and select an image in my
| | 06:30 | Stack and then say Group
and it sticks at the end.
| | 06:34 | But there was a shortcut for
getting it at the beginning and it's not.
| | 06:37 | You cannot drag an image on
to the beginning of a stack.
| | 06:40 | you have to drag it into the stack
and then move it to the front or move
| | 06:44 | the front below it.
| | 06:45 | It's a weakness in Bridge's stacking.
| | 06:48 | I am going to close these up as I go
and hopefully you'll see what I am getting
| | 06:51 | at here with them stacked now.
| | 06:53 | I can just close the stacks and
see the images in my panorama.
| | 06:57 | I am going to hit Spacebar to go Full
Screen and we can see that as I pan across it,
| | 07:02 | this is my whole panorama.
| | 07:04 | So now what I need to do is
get these things stitched.
| | 07:07 | I am going to select this image, hold
down the Command key or Ctrl on windows,
| | 07:10 | hit this one and then this one to
select all three, and now I am going to go to
| | 07:15 | Tools > Photoshop > Photomerge.
| | 07:18 | Photomerge is Photoshop's built-in
panoramic stitcher. I am going to leave it
| | 07:22 | on Auto and hit OK.
| | 07:24 | And when it's done, I get this.
| | 07:28 | Now you maybe able to see that
there are some visible seams along here.
| | 07:31 | don't worry about those. They are not real.
| | 07:33 | They are going to go away when I flatten.
| | 07:35 | Photoshop has stuck my individual
components into separate layers and build
| | 07:40 | layer masks to blend them.
| | 07:42 | I don't need access to those individual layers.
| | 07:44 | So I am going to flatten for two reasons.
| | 07:47 | It's going to make my document smaller,
which is going to make things move a
| | 07:51 | little peppier in Photoshop, and
it's going to get rid of those seams.
| | 07:55 | So now what I have got here is just an image.
| | 07:57 | Just a normal 16-bit image.
| | 07:59 | I am not thinking about HDR anymore.
I am not thinking about stitching.
| | 08:02 | I am just thinking about image editing,
like I would on any image in Photoshop.
| | 08:06 | The first thing I can
see that it's not straight.
| | 08:08 | So I am going to straighten it by going
over here to the Eyedropper and clicking
| | 08:12 | and holding and pulling up the Ruler tool.
| | 08:16 | And what I want to do here is drag the
Ruler tool to define what is supposed to
| | 08:21 | be horizontal, which is a little
tricky because I can't see a clear horizon.
| | 08:26 | I think it's probably about there.
| | 08:28 | When I pick the Ruler tool, the control bar
up here changes to show all this ruler stuff.
| | 08:33 | This is the coordinates of where I
clicked and how long the line I dragged was
| | 08:37 | and how much rotation it
had and so on and so forth.
| | 08:40 | And look, a Straighten button.
| | 08:41 | If I click that, it will rotate my
image enough to straighten it out and
| | 08:46 | automatically do a crop.
| | 08:48 | That looks pretty good.
| | 08:49 | It didn't crop it so far as
to get it all squared off.
| | 08:53 | So I have got this empty spot over here,
but I might be able to fix that using a
| | 08:58 | wonderful new technology in
Photoshop CS5, which is Content-Aware Fill.
| | 09:03 | I am going to go Edit > Fill, and make
sure that Use says Content-Aware, hit OK,
| | 09:10 | and it stuck an extra little cloud in there.
| | 09:14 | I am not sure I mind the extra little cloud.
| | 09:16 | I could if I wanted, though, take out
the cloud with the Clone operation,
| | 09:20 | although this is tough because
there is a gradient in this corner.
| | 09:25 | This corner is getting a little bit
darker as we get to the edge of the
| | 09:28 | image, and maybe I like it
better without the cloud.
| | 09:32 | It was just a little too perfectly round,
and I think that probably looks okay.
| | 09:38 | I could smooth out that transition there.
| | 09:40 | Let's try Content-Aware Fill down here.
| | 09:42 | I think this will probably work a little better.
| | 09:44 | All it has to do is generate some bushes.
| | 09:47 | So Fill > Content-Aware. OK.
| | 09:52 | And instant bush. That looks pretty good.
| | 09:55 | What I check for after that is any kind of
visible repetition of patterns and I don't see any.
| | 10:00 | So now my next problem is tonality.
| | 10:02 | It's a low contrast image.
| | 10:03 | It just looks kind of flat.
| | 10:04 | We are going to fix that with an
adjustment layer as you probably expect by now.
| | 10:10 | And look at my Histogram
here, no black to speak of.
| | 10:13 | So I am going to really crank that up and I
would like some nice contrasty pop on here.
| | 10:17 | So I am going to punch that up.
| | 10:19 | I am not worrying at all about my sky
and I am sure by now, you know that's
| | 10:23 | because I am going to just mask it to a
ridiculous degree and I am going to do
| | 10:28 | that with the Gradient tool.
| | 10:30 | I have got a Linear Gradient selected.
| | 10:32 | I have got black and white and do it like that.
| | 10:36 | So that has taken the Levels
adjustment off of my sky left it on here.
| | 10:40 | I am going to disable the layer mask.
| | 10:43 | This looks nice when it's all contrasty,
but it got caught up in my gradient mask.
| | 10:49 | So it's gotten dimmed a little bit,
which actually probably makes sense
| | 10:53 | because it's far away.
| | 10:54 | It should maybe look like it's
receding into the distance, but I want to see
| | 10:57 | what it looks like at full contrast.
| | 10:59 | I am going to just paint some white
into my mask right here to bring it back,
| | 11:03 | because again, it is kind of
that anchor of this whole bit here.
| | 11:07 | So I think I like that better.
| | 11:09 | Earlier, we looked at a technique
wherein I took an HDR sky and composited it
| | 11:14 | with one of the original images to
get in more realistic foreground.
| | 11:17 | We could do that here also and I could
do that by simply taking one image from
| | 11:23 | each one of these brackets and stitching it.
| | 11:27 | I would probably take, in this case,
the overexposed image because it's got a
| | 11:31 | good exposure on the foreground.
| | 11:32 | The thing is I need to take
the same exposure from each set.
| | 11:36 | So I would take this one and this one
and then this one and I would merge those
| | 11:42 | into a panorama and then I could come
back in here, composite them the way we
| | 11:47 | did it earlier, and then do a
gradient mask to blend them together.
| | 11:52 | Really, there is nothing
tricky to creating an HDR panorama.
| | 11:56 | You just create a set of HDRs through to
completion and then stitch them just as
| | 12:00 | if you had shot those images originally.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| HDR time lapse| 00:00 | Time lapse video is the process of
shooting a single frame, waiting a while,
| | 00:06 | shooting another frame, waiting a
while, and so on and so forth and taking all
| | 00:09 | those frames and stitching them
together or sequencing them together into a movie.
| | 00:14 | What you get is a
greatly accelerated sense of time.
| | 00:19 | You can do HDR time lapse by
shooting a bracketed set of frames, waiting
| | 00:24 | a while, shooting another bracketed
set of frames, and so on and so forth
| | 00:28 | at regular intervals.
| | 00:30 | I got this out the front window of
my apartment a few years ago and the
| | 00:35 | process is pretty simple.
| | 00:37 | Once you're setup for it, then there's just a
tremendous amount of processing you have to do.
| | 00:40 | I put my camera on a tripod.
| | 00:42 | I open the window. I knew that there
was going to be a lot of weather blowing
| | 00:45 | through that day because there
had been the previous couple of days.
| | 00:49 | I got an intervalometer for my camera.
| | 00:51 | It's basically a remote control.
| | 00:53 | Like a remote shutter release, but this
particular one also has the ability to
| | 00:59 | program it to take a
picture at regular intervals.
| | 01:02 | So I said, I want you to take a
picture every-- I don't remember what the
| | 01:05 | interval was. I think it was maybe
every 10 minutes for 8 or 9 hours.
| | 01:10 | It also let me tell it how long it
should hold the shutter button down.
| | 01:14 | So I said, press the shutter button
once every 10 minutes for eight hours and
| | 01:20 | each time hold it down for a second.
| | 01:22 | I put my camera in Burst
mode and set auto-bracketing.
| | 01:25 | Did all the things I would
do if I were shooting in HDR.
| | 01:29 | Because it was holding the button down
for a second and because my camera can
| | 01:33 | shoot three frames per second, I was
getting a perfect bracketed set every time.
| | 01:37 | I then took those images into the
computer and batch processed all those
| | 01:41 | bracketed sets and then tone mapped everything.
| | 01:43 | Obviously, what makes this
interesting is the clouds which look great.
| | 01:47 | The foreground, the city, has a number of
different problems, and I think they're
| | 01:53 | largely related to the state
of HDR processing at that time.
| | 01:58 | If you look you'll see a
shimmering on the building elements here.
| | 02:05 | The HDR software was not able to--
and I am sure it's because of the shadows
| | 02:09 | that were going over.
| | 02:10 | We are not able to process the
buildings identically every time, so they
| | 02:15 | get this weird look.
| | 02:16 | I love this smoke thing here.
| | 02:17 | It looks like a piece of cotton flying
around, and the trees are all kind of
| | 02:20 | nervously waving which I
think is also kind of cool.
| | 02:23 | But yeah, there is all this
kind of motion noise in front.
| | 02:28 | I have not tried one of these in a while.
| | 02:29 | I don't know if newer versions are any better.
| | 02:33 | Part of the problem is that the tone
mapping process involves largerly local contrast.
| | 02:39 | So maybe the contrast in here to
determine the tone of the pixel in the center
| | 02:44 | and with the clouds moving over all
that contrast is constantly changing.
| | 02:48 | So it could just be that this is
just not a easy thing to pull off.
| | 02:53 | Some workarounds would be to do in video just
what we have done in some of our still images.
| | 03:00 | I could if I wanted take a single still
image of my foreground, throw that into
| | 03:07 | a video compositing program like
After Effects, and composite that with my
| | 03:12 | wonderfully animated sky and probably
come up with something that would work.
| | 03:17 | That would give me a nicer foreground.
| | 03:19 | Couple of other things to be careful of,
you can see as things go on there are
| | 03:25 | couple of places where there's a bump
in the camera. I set it on a tripod and
| | 03:29 | left for the day, but I have the
window open and it was very, very windy.
| | 03:32 | Obviously, it's why these clouds are
moving through and I think there are few
| | 03:35 | times where a gust of wind knocked the
camera around and gave the camera a bump.
| | 03:39 | And it got worse after dark.
Everything gets really shaky here and this is
| | 03:44 | because of camera shake from the
shutter going up and down and it using a long
| | 03:48 | shutter speed as the sun went down.
| | 03:51 | So you can try turning on the Mirror Lock
-Up feature of your camera, although on
| | 03:55 | mine it actually doesn't help because
it still comes down after each time.
| | 04:00 | So this would be a process of trying to
control exposure a little better, maybe
| | 04:04 | not letting it go to such a long
exposure, turning up the ISO, something like
| | 04:09 | that to try to get a better sharpness in here.
| | 04:13 | So it takes a long time to do the shoot and it
takes a really long time to do the processing.
| | 04:17 | so you want to maybe do some shorter
tests first to test your methodology and
| | 04:21 | make sure that you can get
the results that you want.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Processing the trestle image| 00:00 | If you watched Chapter 3, then you
saw me shoot some HDR images of an
| | 00:04 | old railroad trestle.
| | 00:06 | I went through all the different things
that I shot, I picked up the set that I
| | 00:09 | liked, and I merged them in
Photoshop and created a 32-bit EXR file.
| | 00:14 | That file, image 1426.exr, is sitting
in your Exercise Files Chapter 6 folder.
| | 00:20 | Let's go through the entire process.
| | 00:22 | You've seen the shooting. Now we've merged.
| | 00:24 | I'm now going to take that image
into Photomatix and do my tone mapping.
| | 00:28 | I'm also going to do the same thing in
HDR Efex and then I'm going to take the
| | 00:31 | result into Photoshop and finish it up
so that you'll be able to see the entire
| | 00:35 | start to finish process.
| | 00:36 | So I'm dropping this image on
Photomatix, which will open it, and now I'm
| | 00:41 | hitting the Tone Mapping button, close
out my presets, and as you can see I've
| | 00:45 | got a pretty typical initial
tone mapping HDR result here.
| | 00:49 | The image is a little bit flat.
| | 00:50 | It could use a little contrast.
| | 00:52 | My histogram is looking pretty good though.
| | 00:53 | I've got pretty broad selection of tones.
| | 00:54 | Let's think for a minute
about this image though.
| | 00:57 | It wasn't really a high-dynamic range
situation and by that I mean it did not
| | 01:01 | have really bright highlights that I
was trying to preserve and dark shadows
| | 01:05 | that I was trying to preserve.
| | 01:06 | It was pretty evenly lit.
| | 01:07 | It was something that my camera can
handle pretty well as a single shot.
| | 01:10 | However, as a subject, it's got all of
this texture and all this color on it and
| | 01:15 | the vegetation has all this texture.
| | 01:16 | So we shot this HDR not with the idea
of having this greatly expanded dynamic range,
| | 01:21 | but with the idea of taking
advantage of HDR's potential to create really
| | 01:26 | souped-up, amped-up color and texture.
| | 01:28 | I'm going to hit the Defaults button
here to get this back to normal and
| | 01:32 | let's start in here.
| | 01:33 | I'm going to do something that I
normally don't do on an HDR image, just because
| | 01:37 | I normally don't go for
that big amped-up color look.
| | 01:39 | But for this image I'm going to start
by first out dragging the color saturation
| | 01:43 | slider over to the right to get
a lot more color into my image.
| | 01:46 | Next I'm going to hit the Strength
slider to pull more intermediate tones from
| | 01:50 | my big 32-bit extravaganza.
And that's looking pretty good.
| | 01:54 | I set this as an image where I
want lots of detail and texture.
| | 01:57 | So let's increase Detail Contrast, which is
going to serve to darken the image a little bit.
| | 02:02 | So I'm going to brighten up
just a bit with luminosity.
| | 02:05 | Maybe not quite that much.
| | 02:06 | As soon as I start working these
sliders I'm watching for halos.
| | 02:09 | There is a possibility of halos around
here, around here, around here, basically
| | 02:13 | all around the trestle.
| | 02:15 | Why do I know that?
| | 02:16 | Because halos tend to appear around
very high contrast areas and I have dark
| | 02:20 | edges against bright sky.
| | 02:22 | Sometimes you notice the halo as
an area of lightness in an image.
| | 02:26 | Sometimes you notice it
as a shadow around an edge.
| | 02:29 | Important thing is just keep a look out
for that and try to keep them under control.
| | 02:33 | Also I want to note that before we
deliver these movies to you they get compressed.
| | 02:38 | It's simply a necessary part of the
process of delivering this much media over
| | 02:43 | a narrow bandwidth connection,
and when that compression happens,
| | 02:46 | it very often introduces posterizing.
| | 02:48 | So what you may be seeing on the screen
may be different than what I'm seeing.
| | 02:51 | You may be seeing a really bright, ugly,
posterized halo right there, and you
| | 02:56 | might be wondering why
I'm not panicking about it.
| | 02:58 | It's because that's just the fact
of the video compression and I'm not
| | 03:00 | actually seeing that.
| | 03:01 | A little bit of play with lighting
adjustments to see if that controls my halos
| | 03:06 | at all and I think that that does
improve it in there. I'm going to with the
| | 03:11 | interest of getting more detail
crunch that down a little bit and that's
| | 03:14 | looking pretty good.
| | 03:15 | I'm going to process this now and save
it out and then we're going to do the
| | 03:20 | same image in HDR Efex.
| | 03:23 | I'm opening the EXR file in Photoshop
now and I'm ready to go hit the HDR Efex
| | 03:30 | plug-in, down here under
the Filter Nik Software menu.
| | 03:33 | I'm going to go ahead and blow the
dialog box up to full-screen just to give
| | 03:37 | us a bigger preview.
| | 03:38 | And right off the bat this is looking a
lot like the initial Photomatix merge,
| | 03:43 | although the black levels
are a little bit better.
| | 03:46 | Switch over to the histogram here, you
can see I've got a little bit broader
| | 03:50 | contrast across the range, so HDR
Efex has done a little bit better job of
| | 03:54 | keeping overall contrast correct.
| | 03:56 | So we're going to just
start like we did in Photomatix.
| | 03:58 | I'm going to crank the saturation up
and I'm going to go ahead and bring
| | 04:02 | in some more tones.
| | 04:03 | That's looking pretty good.
| | 04:04 | I'm going to up my blacks a little
bit to get the contrast even a little
| | 04:08 | stronger, and bear in mind, as
I'm improving contrast, I'm also
| | 04:12 | improving saturation.
| | 04:14 | As I darken the darker tones in the
image, they become more saturated. So don't
| | 04:18 | ever forget that there's this
relationship between saturation and contrast.
| | 04:22 | If you get contrast correct, very
often your saturation falls into place.
| | 04:26 | I'm going to warm in this image up a little bit.
| | 04:28 | I'm not really doing that
for any theoretical reason.
| | 04:31 | I just thought it looked a little cool
and you know, that could be my monitor.
| | 04:35 | Although looking at the histogram, qwll, this
big blob of blue out here is really just
| | 04:40 | the sky. So the histogram doesn't
reviewing any actual color casts, so this
| | 04:43 | warming that I'm doing is not a correction.
| | 04:44 | It's just a stylistic choice.
| | 04:46 | I'm going to change my HDR method here,
just because I know for this kind of
| | 04:50 | chunky textury image, I've discovered
before that the grainy method is pretty nice.
| | 04:54 | The types of changes that it's making
you're probably not going to be noticing
| | 04:57 | at your small screen size in this movie.
| | 05:00 | Looks pretty good. I'm going to hit OK
and let's see what else we can do to this
| | 05:04 | in Photoshop once it's
processed. And here it is.
| | 05:08 | It looks pretty good.
| | 05:09 | I don't have any bad halos.
| | 05:11 | I do have some sensor dust though, so
I'm going to just quickly grab the Spot
| | 05:14 | Healing Brush, take my brush size down using
the left bracket key, and take out this dust.
| | 05:20 | This is kind of your ideal sensor dust
situation because it touches out very, very easily.
| | 05:25 | What's not so ideal is how much of
it I have. Plainly it's time to clean
| | 05:29 | the old image sensor.
| | 05:32 | You know this looks pretty good just as is.
| | 05:33 | Let's take a look at the histogram
to make sure our tones are proper.
| | 05:37 | It looks like we could do a little
bit better with our blacks, although not
| | 05:41 | much, and maybe a little
bit better with our whites.
| | 05:43 | There is a little more contrast to be
had in this image and if I get it set right,
| | 05:47 | that's going to give me a
print with a little more punch.
| | 05:50 | So I'm going to just follow the numbers
on this one and go to about right there.
| | 05:54 | That's looking good.
| | 05:55 | I don't yet have that
entirely HDR amped-up color look.
| | 06:00 | I'm going to show you an edit
we haven't looked at before.
| | 06:02 | Down here in the Levels adjustment
panel, I'm going to add a Selective Color
| | 06:07 | adjustment layer and this
is an interesting control.
| | 06:11 | You see here I've got a popup menu
with a range of different colors, Reds,
| | 06:15 | Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues, Magentas,
Whites, Neutrals, and Blacks, and for
| | 06:19 | each of those I can
adjust their component parts.
| | 06:22 | Cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
| | 06:24 | We've got some nice magenta colors in here.
| | 06:26 | It'd be nice to amp those up a little bit.
| | 06:28 | So I'm going to switch down here to
magenta, and I'm going to increase the blacks.
| | 06:32 | Now this may sound a little
counterintuitive. What does increasing black
| | 06:36 | have to do with making my magentas stronger?
| | 06:39 | Well it's going to give the magentas a
deeper tone hopefully, and it has changed.
| | 06:44 | It's made them a tiny bit more purple.
| | 06:45 | I'm going to go in here to
the Reds and do the same thing.
| | 06:49 | Try and deepen the tone of the reds.
| | 06:51 | I might also play with the Yellows
slider a little bit and that's not going to
| | 06:56 | do much to the reds, because
reds are both component colors.
| | 06:59 | So this is giving me just a little bit of
boost and a number of colors within the image.
| | 07:04 | Finally, let's look at the green out here.
| | 07:06 | I really like these weird textures
that have happened on the vegetation and
| | 07:10 | that's partly because the wind was
blowing around and it's also simply just
| | 07:13 | what happens to vegetation very
often when you hit it with the HDR.
| | 07:18 | You pull a lot of texture and that can
really make for some more interesting
| | 07:23 | foliage, so that pumps that up a little bit.
| | 07:26 | So before the selective color, after.
| | 07:29 | It's given me just some deeper tones
here in my reds and greens, a little in the
| | 07:33 | magenta, not as much as I would've liked.
| | 07:35 | Let's try one last thing.
| | 07:36 | The sky is awfully blue.
| | 07:38 | I'm not sure that it isn't too blue,
so I'm going to go to my blues here and
| | 07:42 | lighten up the tone a little bit. Yeah,
I think I like that a little bit better.
| | 07:46 | Lightning the sky helped, but still
the image is kind of really dominated by
| | 07:49 | that sky and I've got all this
nice geometry here and I like this
| | 07:53 | "oops" that's in here.
| | 07:54 | I'd like to really focus in more on that.
| | 07:56 | I'm going to go at my Crop
tool and give this image a crop.
| | 07:59 | Normally I would crop first, just
because I very often have a crop in mind, but
| | 08:04 | I'm just kind of feeling my way through
this image, and it's feeling to me like
| | 08:08 | now that I've got the colors in place
I'm realizing how dominant that blue is.
| | 08:12 | So I think to crop to get rid
of some of that might be nice.
| | 08:14 | I'm sizing this so that this track goes
right out the corner here, and I'm kind
| | 08:18 | of trying to get the oops over
here to anchor the shot a little bit.
| | 08:22 | Our rule of thirds guideline would say
to put it there, but that's kind of how I
| | 08:25 | shot it and that's
obviously not working quite right.
| | 08:29 | So just fiddling a little bit with the
crop here, and when I'm done I get an
| | 08:32 | image that's much more about the geometry
of the bridge with a nice focus on the oops.
| | 08:36 | I'm like in that better.
| | 08:37 | Let's throw in one more thing here. I'm
going to duplicate my Background layer,
| | 08:41 | just in case I don't like this edit
that I'm about to do. I want be able to
| | 08:44 | delete the duplicate layer. Hitting the
Lens Correction, and I'm going to add a
| | 08:49 | vignette to my image.
| | 08:50 | You've seen this in some other
tutorials that we've been doing here that will
| | 08:53 | hopefully pull a little bit more
focus into the center. I like that.
| | 08:56 | It breaks up the flatness of the blue sky.
| | 08:58 | So this is looking pretty good.
| | 08:59 | I'm almost ready to print.
| | 09:00 | The last thing I need to do is zharpen.
| | 09:03 | Now we don't have time for a full-on
sharpening tutorial, so I'm just going to
| | 09:07 | walk through this and if you're not
comfortable with sharpening there are
| | 09:10 | plenty of sharpening
tutorials in the lynda library.
| | 09:13 | All RAW images need to be sharpened even the
ones that have gone through an HDR process.
| | 09:18 | I'm going to Filter > Sharpen > Smart
Sharpen. We don't want any dumb sharpening
| | 09:23 | on our images. And here is
a before, here is an after.
| | 09:27 | I'm not sure how much you'll be able to
see a difference on your small screen or
| | 09:32 | small window rather.
| | 09:33 | I am just going to back these off a
little bit and that's going to pull in a
| | 09:36 | little more texture, a little more
detail, and we always sharpen at 100%.
| | 09:40 | That's looking pretty good. I'm going to
back out, and I think this image is ready to go.
| | 09:44 | So that is a complete walk-through,
again, starting in Chapter 3 when we shot
| | 09:48 | the image, to here our grand finale,
or maybe grand finally, given sometimes
| | 09:54 | how getting these images working is a
little tedious, but this one went pretty easily.
| | 09:58 | There is our finished HDR image.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:01 | With all that you should be ready to
head out on your own and start making some
| | 00:04 | high dynamic range images.
| | 00:06 | As I mentioned at the beginning of
this course, HDR is just one tool that you
| | 00:11 | have in your shooting arsenal.
| | 00:12 | It's great for some images, not for others.
| | 00:15 | One of the trickiest things about
learning it though is learning when it is
| | 00:17 | appropriate, how you can use it to
shape an image, when it might be good for one
| | 00:22 | situation and not another, and like most
things about photographic technique,
| | 00:26 | the only way you're going learn that is practice.
| | 00:29 | So don't forget that HDR is a tool if
you can employ. Get out, try it in lots of
| | 00:34 | different circumstances,
and see what you end up with.
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