Single-shot HDR

Tone mapping is a very powerful tool.…It can cherry-pick the very best tones from a multitude of images to create a new final image.…Now obviously the more image data that it has to work with, the better the…chance is that the tone mapping software will be able to find a good source tone…for every little pixel in your image.…As you've seen an image with higher bit depth can have a broader selection of…tones than an image with a lower bit depth.…JPEG images always have 8-bits per pixel, while RAW files typically have 10…to 14 bits per pixel.…So it's usually better to shoot RAW images for your HDR work, for the greater Bit Depth.…

If you worked with RAW, then you know that the same RAW file can be processed in different ways.…You can change white balance, alter contrast, increase or decrease the exposure.…Perhaps you see where I'm going with this.…To make an HDR, we need at least three images with bracketed exposures, but can…you create just that from a RAW file? Sort of.…You can take a RAW file, process it normally, save that, then lower the…