Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
You could ac tually get kinda close to an HDR look with a single image back in
Photoshop CS5, but now in Photoshop CS6, with its new Camera Raw controls,
and especially the enhancements and expanded power of Clarity, you can really
get incredibly close to an HDR look using just one photo (instead of combining
a number of bracketed photos). Here's the recipe to make it happen:
Step One:
Here's the original single-image exposure,
and it's the perfect kind of image to apply
an HDR look to. There's a wide tonal gap
between the bright light coming in from
the windows and the dark shadows in the
rest of the image; plus, things with lots
of texture and detail tend to look great
as HDR images, and if they look great as
HDR, they'll look great with an HDR ef-
fect applied, even though we're applying
it to one single image, rather than a set of
bracketed exposures in HDR Pro. Start by
opening the image in Camera Raw. Here's
the basic recipe we follow: crank up the
Shadows, crush down the Highlights, add
lots of Blacks, max out the Clarity, add a
dark edge vignette, and then add some
sharpening. Okay, let's try it.
Step Two:
Drag the Highlights slider all the way to
the left. Then, drag the Shadows slider
all the way to the right, which tends to
make the image look washed out. So,
then drag the Blacks slider way to the
left, until the photo doesn't look washed
out anymore. Now, increase the Clarity
to +100, and if the photo needs a little
boost in color (I sure think this one does),
crank up the Vibrance slider a bit (here I
dragged it to +25). This particular image
looks pretty dark overall, so I increased
the Exposure to +1.40 (as shown here),
but you won't always have to do that.
