From the course: Learning HDR Efex Pro 2.0

Evaluating the before and after - HDR Efex Pro Tutorial

From the course: Learning HDR Efex Pro 2.0

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Evaluating the before and after

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As you continue to adjust the settings for your images in HDR Efex Pro, preparing the final interpretation of your image, it can be very helpful to evaluate a before and after view, in other words, the image before you applied any of your HDR adjustments versus the image after you've applied those adjustments. And there are several ways that you can go about that within HDR Efex Pro. The first is the simple Compare View. Now, by default, of course, you're viewing the image with the adjustments applied to it. You're seeing what the photo looks like with all of the adjustments that you've created for the image. But if you want to quickly switch to the before version of the image, you can simply click the Compare button. You need to hold the button down in order to continue viewing the before version of the image because as soon as you release the mouse, you'll be viewing the after version of the image. So, you can click and release, click and release in order to switch between the before version of the image with no adjustments applied and the after version of the image with those adjustments applied. We also have the option for a split view, and that's the second of the three buttons here. I'll go ahead and click the split view button, and you can see I now have a divider for the image, a vertical divider, but I can switch that to a horizontal divider, if I'd like, just by clicking the arrow button associated with that divider, and I can switch back and forth between horizontal or vertical split view. In the vertical split view, of course, the left side of the image is the before version, and the right side of the image is the after version. And in the vertical split view, the top of the image is the before and the bottom is the after. We can also adjust the position of this split. I can simply point to the red line and click and drag to change the position of that split view. So if I want to, sort of, go back and forth between the before and after views in the image, I can drag that vertical bar left and right or the horizontal bar up and down. We also have a side-by-side view and that's the third option. And if I click that button, then I can view two images up and down, or, clicking the button in the center of the images, I can switch to a side-by-side view left and right. With side-by-side, we'll be viewing the before version on the left and the after version on the right. Whereas with the top and bottom view, the top image is the before version and the bottom image is the after version. In most cases, I tend to work in the single image view, just holding the compare button when I want to see the before version, but, I do appreciate that we have several options for viewing a before and after version of our image while we're working in HD Efex Pro.

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