7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
1/39
HDR TUTORIAL
EVERYTHING YOU NEEDTO KNOW ABOUT HDR
PHOTOGRAPHY
By Trey Ratcliff
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
2/39
WHAT IS HDR?
HDR is short for High Dynamic Range. It is a post-processing method
of taking either one image or a series ofimages, combining them, andadjusting the contrast ratios to do things that are virtually impossible
with a single aperture and shutter speed. I would say that about 75% of
my images use the technique, and if you are new to it, then you may
notice a slightly different look and feel to my photographs. You should
also probably note thatHDR is a very broad categorization, and I really
hate categorization. My process starts with using basic HDRtechniques, but then there are many more steps to help the photos look
more lets say evocative.
I can talk a little bit more about the philosophy behind the photography
style here for a quick moment. Youmight consider that the way the
human brain keeps track of imagery is not the same way your computer
keeps track of picture files. There is not one aperture, shutter speed,
etc. In fact, sometimes when you are in a beautifulplace or with special
people and you take photos have you ever noticed when you get
back and show them topeople you have to say, Well, you really had to
be there. Even great photographers with amazing cameras canonly
very rarely grab the scene exactly as they saw it. Cameras, by theirbasic-machine-nature, are very good at capturing images, lines,
shadows, shapes but they are not good at capturing a scene the way
the mind remembers and maps it. When you are actually there on the
scene, your eye travels back and forth, letting in more light in some
areas, less light in others, and you create a patchwork-quilt of the
scene. Furthermore, youwill tie in many emotions and feelings into the
imagery as well, and those get associated right there beside thescene.
Now, you will find that as you explore the HDR process, that photos canstart to evoke those deepmemories and emotions in a more tangible
way. Its really a wonderful way of tricking your brain intoexperiencing
much more than a normal photograph.
I will post a few interesting HDR photographs that I have taken that
people seem to like. This first image below is the first HDR photograph
ever to hang in the Smithsonian Institution in D.C. I think this goes to
show howmainstream and accepted HDR can be, if the technique is
properly applied.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
3/39
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
4/39
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
5/39
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
6/39
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
7/39
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
8/39
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
9/39
The photo well be working on today
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
10/39
STEP 1: GET YOUR TOOLS READY
Below is a picture of my desktop before I launch all of these apps.
Speaking of which, Macs are great, and myMacs CPU does not melt
it handles all this stuff with reckless aplomb. I used to be
flummoxed by Macs and find Mac-people distasteful, but Im a
changed man. These things are great! Okay, I digressed way too
early in this tutorial.
By the way, all the steps in the tutorial are the same, whether or notyou are using Mac or Windows.
SOFTWARE I USE (IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE):
Photomatix Pro (required) Save money by using the codeSTUCKINCUSTOMS grab it from the Photomatix website(theres also a free trial version that leaves a watermark).
Photoshop (recommended) You can also use Photoshop
Elements, although I do not recommend it in my PhotoshopReview because it does not allow other robust plugins. Now, if you
follow the tutorial to the final steps, you will see that I suggest
using Photoshop to clean up problems from Photomatix above.
So, it is notabsolutely necessary, but it is recommended.
Noiseware Professional (optional) I have tried a multitude of
noise reduction software packages.Youll notice that the HDR
process can create a bit of noise, to say the least. I use Noiseware
Professional.
http://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/Photomatixhttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/Buy_Photoshop_Elementshttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/Buy_Photoshop_Elementshttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/photoshop-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/photoshop-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/photoshop-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/photoshop-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/photoshop-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/Buy_Photoshop_Elementshttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/Buy_Photoshop_Elementshttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/Photomatix7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
11/39
Topaz Adjust (optional and awesome) - This product can helpbring some contrast and pop into the final product. I have a Topaz
Adjust Review here on the site if you wantto read more. If you can
afford a little more, I suggest the wholeTopaz Photoshop Bundlesince it comes witha lot of other goodies too!
What else do I use? I use many tools and have a blast with
them all. If you want other amazing pieces ofsoftware that I use,
then I suggest you see my Nik Review and my onOne Plugin
Review. Both are great!
My clean desktop before the storm.... tools ready... excited to make some art!
http://www.stuckincustoms.com/topaz-adjust-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/topaz-adjust-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/get_Topazhttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/nik-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/onone-plugin/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/onone-plugin/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/onone-plugin/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/onone-plugin/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/nik-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/get_Topazhttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/topaz-adjust-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/topaz-adjust-review/7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
12/39
STEP 2: GET SOME EQUIPMENT ON THE SLY SO YOUR
SPOUSE DOESNOT ASK TOO MANY QUESTIONS
To create an HDR image, you need is a camera that can either:
Shoot in Auto-bracketing mode or Auto-exposure mode
or, shoot in RAW (You can also create an HDR image out of asingle RAW photo)
Although you can make a decent HDR from a single RAW file, I
recommend using a camera that hasautobracketing. Autobracketing
is the ability for your camera to take at least 3 pictures right after one
another, each at different exposures. Sometimes its called
Exposure Bracketing. If you are hunting around the menus on your
camera now, just look for the words Autobracketing and perhaps
some numbers like -2, 0, +2. If youhave a DSLR camera, then you
probably already have this ability.
What equipment do I have? People always ask me this, assuming,
Wow you must have a nice camera! Well, Ido have nice cameras
(Nikon D3X and D3S as backup), but many of my best pictures were
taken earlier with alesser Nikons. Im also not what I would consider
a hardcore hardware guy I use equipment to bend nature tomy will,
and I can do the same sort of work with just about any equipment.
Ive now got much higher-end equipment because I can now see the
subtleties somehow I can justify spending a lot of money for minorimprovements in the shots. I justify many sketchy things in my life, but
so do you, so why not add cameraequipment to the heap of latent
guilt?
I started with a Nikon D70. I then went on to the D2X before getting
the D3X that now fills my life like a sweetsong. In addition, I use four
lenses. Again for details on the lenses, visit theHDR Camera section.
As for tripods, I have a giant one with a silky smooth rotating fat
head. I used to have a tiny tripod, but it was too shaky. You gotta
have a solid tripod. What? You dont want to carry around a tripod?
Comon if you are goingout to shoot beautiful pictures, you better
http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-camera/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-camera/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-camera/7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
13/39
get serious. Also, if you have it over your shoulder or carry it in anaggressive way, it makes an effective weapon. As you can see, I go
all over the world, often into sketchy areas, anda big tripod is often
an effective deterrent. I carry it so much, I am very good at flipping itaround and whipping it around my body like ninja nunchaku.
The after shoot
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
14/39
The before shoot
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
15/39
The Details at 100%. One surprising thing about HDR is its consistent ability to provide nice details
at the pixel-by-pixel scale.
STEP 3 LOOK AT THE WORLD IN HDR
It is key to choose good HDR candidates. What I look for are extremelevels in light in a given scene.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
16/39
SEEING THE WORLD AFRESH
Consider those situations where there is extreme light and extreme
dark, and how you are able to see it when youare there in real life,but you just know if you take a photo of it that it wont come out right.
Also, you normallywould not dare to take a photo looking directly into
the sun, right? Well with HDR you can It will open up a new world
to you and the more HDR photography you shoot and process, the
more you will learn to appreciatelight and the world we live in.
In the last several years, I have taken note of how I see the world
versus the way others see the world. Its one of those age-old
questions: Is green to me the same as green to you? Maybe you justuse the word green, but youactually see what I call yellow! Well, this
question also applies to HDR. Personally, I see the world in HDR,
andthat is how I record my memories. I find these photos entirely
pleasing to admire. Now, I notice that about 80%of other people also
feel the same way. This seems very consistent across audiences
when I speak at universities, photo clubs, seminars, and the like.
And, if you have read this far, then surely you see the world like me,
and you are excited that you have finally found a window into the
truth and future of recording imagery for the rest ofyour life.
Of course, this means 20% of people do not see the world like us. In
fact, they absolutely despise HDR photography. Occasionally, you
will get some old-school people that think post-processing is the work
of thedevil. But, most often, I am convinced they simply dont see the
world like this. They see the world exactly howthe camera spits out
normal images. Thats okay there is no convincing them Hey, we
cant make everyone happy, can we?
A GOOD EXAMPLE OF EXTREME LIGHT LEVELS
Lets work on a photo I did of the Space Shuttle during its final night
on the launch pad. Well go through this guy step by step.
Now, this is a pretty good example of having to re-train your brain
about light levels. Remember, when you are there, on the scene,
your brain can handle it as your eye darts around the scene. Keep
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
17/39
this in mind as you arearound your house, in your neighborhood,
driving around your city you really are taking for granted how your
brain is able to filter the light levels that your camera cannot.
STEP 4 TAKE YOUR AUTOBRACKETED PICTURES AND
PREPARE FORTHE HDR
Set up your camera in Aperture Priority mode. This is important
because you dont want the multiple photos tohave different areas of
blur.
Turn on Autobracketing. If you have 3 pics in the autobracket, set it
up at -2, 0, +2. On my Nikon D3x, I usuallytake 5 pics at -2, -1, 0, 1,
+2. Id prefer just to take 3 pics at -2, 0, and +2, but this camera only
steps by 1. I think you will find this +2 to -2 range satisfactory for 95%
of situations. An exception, for example, would be shooting the
interior of a house that is extremely dark and there are windows
where the outside is extremely bright.
Other best practices:
For 95% of situations, going from +2 to -2 is enough light range.
Shoot in RAW, if you can. J PG is okay, but RAW gives your more
flexibility later in the processing. RAWphotos contain a lot more
light information than a J PEG. Please note that when processing
in Photomatix later, the RAWs are no better than J PEGs.
Use a tripod, unless you have the steady arms of a late-model
Terminator robot.If you dont use a tripod, its not a big problem, because
Photomatix can align the images for you.Below, you can see the five
images from the Space Shuttle.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
18/39
The five images. These were shot with 5different exposures from -2 to +2.
STEP 5 USING PHOTOMATIX PRO
Now it is time to fire up Photomatix and get crunk in the HDR house.
Okay that was stupid. I never would saycrunk in real life so dont
think I am that sort of person.
Photomatix will take your photos and convert them into an HDR
image. You can then tonemap the image and save it as a J PEG. Ill
take you through this process.
You can run Photomatix in a few ways:
To generate an single HDR from some autobraketed shots (most
common for beginners and the bulk of this tutorial)
To do a huge batch of HDRs after you come back from a shootTo
convert a single RAW photo into an HDR
Lets go over the first one in detail. When Photomatix is loaded up,
you just see a menu. Note that I am using Photomatix 4.1 Beta, and
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
19/39
new versions come out all the time. However, later iterations should
still work withinthe margin of error of the following screenshots.
Note: You will see that I have 5 J PGs here. I used Lightroom to
convert the 5 RAWS to 5 J PG. You can usePhotomatix to open up
the RAW photos as well, but Photomatix itself will do the conversion
on its own. It is yourdecision here, but I find (and other do as well)
that converting to J PG before can sometimes to a better job.
After clicking "Load Bracket Photos", choose "Browse" to go find your photos.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
20/39
Choose the photos and then click "Load".
Choose the images you like then click OK. You will then see a
second dialog that is below. Here is an explanationof what is going
on:
Notes:
If you feel like you had some camera shake, choose Align Source
Images If there was movement or ghosting, chose Reduce
ghosting artifacts
This will take you to another screen where you can then select the
area of the photo that has the ghosting. After that, you can select
which component photo to use instead of the ghost.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
21/39
If you shot at a high ISO or anticipate a lot of noise, choseReduce noise
If you have the sort of lens or situation that gives you annoying
chromatic aberrations (those nasty purpleand green outlines yousee at 100% sometimes), then choose this option to help minimize
those.
There are not many wrong choices you can make on this dialog,so dont panic.
Preprocessing options allow you to make a few choices that affect theoverall processing of the images.
No worries, there are no bad choices to make here!
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
22/39
Click Preprocess and now your computer will churn like a farm of
computers generating a single frame from a Pixar movie. Note that if
you checked any of the boxes above, this processing steps even
longer.
Every picture is different. There is no right way to set these sliders.
There is certainly a wrong way to doit, though. I am sure you have
seen lots of crappy HDR images. Below, I paste an example of how
you canreally make your image look too funkadelic. Funkadelic is
cool if that is what you want or you have a lot ofdruggie friends that
like laser light shows and your mind-bending HDRs, but most people
dont like them. Actually, please dont look at my old work. Its a little
over-the-top too I cringe when I think about it. J ust look at the
newer stuff. Thank you kindly.
Actually, I keep my older stuff up there to illustrate how much
progress you can make in such a short time. I hope this is as
inspirational for you as it is embarrassing to me.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
23/39
Friends don't let friends do HDR on drugs.
Above, you can see the options I selected. Its way overdone. The
key setting is in that Lighting Adjustmentssection. J ust be careful.
Please! For the sake of humanity.
Below, you can see the default settings. Note that if you are afraid of
all the sliders, you can just pick the pre- made thumbnails on theright, and youll be in business. The rest of the tutorial describes how
I use thecontrols.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
24/39
These are the default settings that appear in Photomatix. Since every photo isdifferent, I advise getting to know and "playing" with the sliders.
Now, its time to start making the adjustments that are good for this
image in particular. Remember, none of these settings are cast in
stone:
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
25/39
Strength Keep it at 100%. If it comes out too strong, you can
always dial it back later in Photoshop,should you want to go into the
Advanced steps.
Color Saturation Keep it reasonable. Dont over-saturate your
photo. Again, each photo is different. There is a difference between
color that pops and color that bleeds too electric. Remember, HDR is
aboutlight, not about over-saturation!
Luminosity This is used for the painterly effect, let us say. The
further to the right, the less contrast willbe in the photo. If you find
yourself with Halo problems in daylight shots, moving this to the farright will help.
Detail Contrast A mysterious slider that helps the details and
fluctuations in colors on the very smallscale. Like the others, play
with this until it looks and feels right. Generally, the more to the right,
the moregrungy and black-contrasty it becomes.
Lighting Adjustments This is an important slider that effects theHDRness of the shot. The more tothe left, the more psychedelic.
White Point & Black Point Be sure to pop the Black Point off the
left side, where it rests by default. Bringing a bit of black into the
image will help the other colors resonate. Adjust the White Point so
that thebright parts of the image are not blown out.
All the other sliders? They are interesting, but I honestly dont usethem much. I wont waste your valuabletime by going into extreme
descriptions of oft-ignored controls.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
26/39
I have used arrows here to point to the sliders I use the most often.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
27/39
Once you have set everything up with the sliders, click Process andsave the result.
YOURE DONE!!
You can make a case that you are all finished now! J ust getting to
this point can make a tremendous differencein your photos.
Now, personally, there are more steps that I go through. These are a
series of advanced steps sort of a masters touch that borders on
the obsessive.
ADVANCED TECHNIQUES STEP 1 PHOTOSHOP FUN!
What? You are not good at Photoshop? First you tell me you dont like
carrying tripods, and then you tell me youdont like using Photoshop.
How about this Lets get you a little bit out of your comfort zone, eh?
Thats what good friends do right push you to make yourself better.If you keep doing things you are comfortable with, thenyou are never
going to improve and experience new things, right? So comon get
with it.. Photoshop is great fun.
As you might have seen, Photomatix is great, but it probably messed
up parts of the image that you now need to repair.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
28/39
.
Four things are worth cleaning up... minor bits that are important to me
So, how do we fix this? Briefly, is what we are gonna do:
Import all of the original images plus the .J PG we just made inPhotomatix
Please note that this is kind of overkill to import all of them
over time, you will probably only import just the ones you need,
as you will see.
Repair the areas that are broken via Masking through to some of
the original photos.Sharpen the image, since photomatix washed
it out a little bit.
Fix the noise. Noise is not always a problem, but it does crop up atnight from time to time.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
29/39
After all the layers have been added to Photoshop. You can see I put the Photomatix
Tonemapped image on the top layer.
How many of the original images should you bring into Photoshop? It
depends on which of them you want to remix. In this case, I will
import five of them. We likely wont use all of them, but we have many
options forrepairing broken parts. There are elements from each of
these five exposures that perhaps I will remix into the tonemapped
version.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
30/39
Treys Undeniable Truth of HDR Photography #34: If
you shoot during the daytime and there is a nice
blue sky, your HDR processing will make your sky
look gray, mottled, and possibly give it a halo thatwill make viewers curl in a ball and cry. If you do not
fix this in Photoshop by masking in the original sky
before you upload to show your friends, then they
may no longer be your friends.
Okay, moving on. Maybe you should go get another coffee or a glassof red things are about to get juicy.
STACKING AND ALIGNING THE PHOTOS
In the screenshot below, look down in the lower right at the layers.
You can see the six layers there. I put thePhotomatix result on the
top layer, and stacked the other five below. The order does not
matter. Note that as youbecome more advanced, you will not need to
bring in all of these originals. Maybe just one or two will do thetrick.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
31/39
A zoom-in of the layers panel. The top one is the visible one,
and the layers can be moved around by dragging.
To import the photos, there are a variety of ways, as there is with
everything in Photoshop! If you read thefollowing bullet point list, I
will assume you are a beginner, so I will try tell you the easiest way!
If you have Adobe Bridge, you can select all the photos, then go to
Tools>Photoshop>Load Files into Photoshop Layers and
voila, all are in one Photoshop window!
After you open all the images into Photoshop, you will have
multiple images. You can then copy one at atime and paste them
into the same photo document. That will create layers for you.
After that, you can draglayers up and down the layer panel to put
them in whatever order you choose.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
32/39
STEP 2 MASKING DONT BE A-SCAREDEDED
What is masking? Masking allows you to poke through one layer tosee the layer that is beneath. You can eitherpoke through 100%,
50%, or however much you choose.
You do this with a brush. By adjusting the area and opacity of the
brush, you can choose where and how much to poke through.
Th
These are the areas that I would like to mask. I want to darken the bit inside the yellow because Ifeel like it came out too bright in the Photomatix result.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
33/39
A close-up of the layers and mask. The white box is the mask and
the scribbles inside show where the top layer pokes through to the
bottom layer.
Above, you can see a little white box with grey scribbles in it. That
white box is the mask, and it was created by clicking on that layer
and then clicking on that little icon on the bottom that looks like a grey
rectangle with awhite dot in the middle.
Here are more specific steps to create a mask and start revealing thelayer underneath:
Click on the top layer (the one you want to punch through)On the
Menu, go to Layer > Create Layer Mask > Reveal All.Choose the
brush tool (or hit B).
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
34/39
At the top, there are two areas to adjust:Opacity - Set that to 30%. This means how hard you will be
pushing down the brush to punch throughto the bottom layer.
Multiple brush strokes will make that percentage go up Forexample, if you brush over the same spot ten times or so,
youll be at 100% see-through!
Brush Click that dropdown and make the brush size 100.
You will keep adjusting this size throughout, depending on
what you want!
Quick Tip to change the size of the brush quickly usethe bracket keys ( [ and ] )
Now that you created the mask, you will see a little white box onthat layer down in the lower right. See it?
Click on that little white box because THAT represents the mask.
Make sure your chosen color over on the right is BLACK.
Start using the brush on the photo. Each stroke will make that
layer 30% more transparent. If you strokethe same area over andover again, you will get to 100%, which allows you to see the layer
underneath.
Bonus Tip: Are you still MASSIVELY confused by Masking? This
happens often because of my lousydescription. I suggest you visit
this niceYouTube Video on Masking (note that I did not make that
video).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA8TgyTruV8http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA8TgyTruV87/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
35/39
MERGING LAYERS
After you are done masking the two layers together, Merge Layers inthe menu or by pressing Command (Ctrl onPC) E. This will collapse
them into a single layer.
I continue to do this in area after area until I have a final image thatmakes me happy.
STEP 3 SHARPENING
The previous HDR process can drain some of the line and contrast
from your shot. Have you seen some shots that look a bit washed out
or too painterly? The way to bring back in some line and
microcontrast is to usesomething like Unsharp Mask (which is free
and already in Photoshop) or use something like the Topaz Adjust
below.
In the screenshot, I highlighted a few of my favorite presets. After I
choose a preset, I usually tweak the sliders abit to make sure I get
the effect I want.
Topaz Adjust You can grab it from theTopaz Website. I have a
Topaz Adjust Review here on the site ifyou want to read more. If
you can afford a little more, I suggest the wholeTopaz PhotoshopBundle since itcomes with a lot of other goodies too!
http://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/get_Topazhttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/get_Topazhttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/get_Topazhttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/topaz-adjust-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/get_Topazhttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/get_Topazhttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/get_Topazhttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/get_Topazhttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/get_Topazhttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/topaz-adjust-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/get_Topaz7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
36/39
It is important to fix the parts of the photo that might have been washed out by the HDR
process earlier.
STEP 4 NOISE REDUCTION
You may notice that you probably have noise in the finished result.
The HDR Process does this it is an unfortunate side effect, but
easily cleaned up.
7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
37/39
I will not go into the full description of Noiseware here, but you arewelcome to go read my Noiseware Review.The only thing I really
have to do is to show you the following screenshot. I mean, are youkidding me? The only tip I can add beyond this, for a full masterstouch, is to create a duplicate layer of your finished product beforedoing the noise reduction. It may get rid of some details you quite like,in which case you can use the masking tricks above to just keep thedetails and noise how you best see fit for your own work of art.
As you can see below, this can help make your final product look a lotmore silky-smooth.
Noiseware is great for noise reduction - just look at those results!
http://www.stuckincustoms.com/noiseware-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/noiseware-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/noiseware-review/7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
38/39
OTHER TOOLS
Now that you are done with that, here are some other tools that I
recommend. These are part of my workflow, and I recommend you get
these and play with them all!
Nik Software Nik makes a great suite of tools I recommend. Use
the Coupon Code of STUCKINCUSTOMS to save the most amount
of money. You can get it from the Nik Software website. I have a full
Nik Reviewhere on the site for more info.
OnOne Software This is another great suite of powerful tools that I
use a lot. Use the Coupon CodeSTUCKINCUSTOMS to save the
most amount of money when ordering from the onOne Software
website. Ihave a full review of the OnOne Plugin here on the site for
you.
Lucis Pro Ive also started using Lucis Pro more and more. Its a lot
like LucisArt, but its even better. Ivewritten a Lucis Pro Reviewand a
Lucis Tutorial here on the site, which maybe you can save for later.
The same coupon code for LucisArt applies here of
TREYRATCLIFF. She tells me its the best one available.
http://www.niksoftware.com/index/usa/entry.phphttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/nik-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/ononehttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/onone-plugin/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/lucis-pro-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/lucis-tutorial/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/lucis-tutorial/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/lucis-pro-review/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/onone-plugin/http://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/ononehttp://www.stuckincustoms.com/nik-review/http://www.niksoftware.com/index/usa/entry.php7/30/2019 Ratcliff, Trey - HDR Tutorial for Beginners
39/39
BONUS STEP PROCESSING A SINGLE RAW FILE
In Photomatix, go you can simply open a RAW file and then go right to
Tone Mapping! If you are on a Mac, youcan just drag your RAW fileand drop it right on the Photomatix application. This is a new feature,
and awelcome time saver You will get a little warning that it is not a
true HDR image (a pseudo-HDR image), butjust ignore that.
People ask me all the time if it is better to use just One RAW or
multiple. Well, sometimes you have no choice if the subject is
moving but the result can be quite nice in both conditions. For the
record, I always take multiple exposures whenever possible.
MORE
That is an hour of your life you will never get back, but lets hope you
formed some good memories and skills tocreate more. Best of luck
and I thank you for all your comments and feedback. I currently have
over 65,000emails unread in my photography inbox, so I apologize if Ido not get back to you just dont have enough time Iam afraid. But
thanks for all your comments and support! I hope you all have as
much fun with HDR as I am again, best of luck to you!