Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
In the next project, I'm going to go through what all the sliders in
quick, “down & dirty” HDR crash course that will have your HDR image compiled,
Photoshop's built-in HDR feature do, but for now we're going to start off with a
tone mapped, sharpened, and finished off in just about six clicks (great for people
with attention spans like mine, who want it done now without a lot of fuss). I use this
exact HDR workflow a lot and thanks to something they included in Photoshop CS6,
we can just dive right in and do it (you couldn't do this without some serious
prep work back in CS5—you'll see why in a moment). Hang on—here we go!
Step One:
If you shot for HDR (like I talked about in
the previous tutorial), you can easily take
those images straight from Mini Bridge
to Photoshop's Merge to HDR Pro feature.
Here, I've selected the five shots I brack-
eted with my camera (one that's 2 stops
underexposed, one that's 1 stop under-
exposed, the normal exposure, one that's
1 stop overexposed, and one that's
2 stops overexposed). Once you've
selected your bracketed shots in Mini
Bridge, Right-click on any one of those
thumbnails and from the pop-up menu
that appears, under Photoshop, choose
Merge to HDR Pro
(as shown here).
Step Two:
In a few moments, the Merge to HDR
Pro dialog will appear (I'm being pretty
gratuitous when I say “a few moments,”
because I just timed it and, on my laptop,
it took 22 seconds before the dialog
appeared. For everything else in life,
that's a very short time, but when you're
waiting for a dialog to open, it feels more
like 3½ hours). Anyway, it merges these
five images, with five different exposures,
into one single HDR image that looks
pretty bad, because it's using the default
settings, which should be named simply
“Bad” for the sake of clarity.
(Continued)
