100% Natural Looking HDR

[tlabranche]

If you are into HDR images, but hate the nuclear radiation look of some HDRs, then these may suit your taste more. These were all created using Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop, and then tonemapping in Camera RAW. The results are 100% natural HDRs.

The process is really simple. Drop all the images into Merge to HDR Pro. Once the images are merged, and the sliders appear, change the mode from 16-Bit to 32-bit depth. The image is completely unreadable, because your monitors cannot display a 32-bit file. Choose the de-ghost if you need to. After you click OK, the file will open in Photoshop. Save the file as a 32-bit TIFF file. From there, open the TIFF file in Camera RAW. All of the shadow and highlights, as well as 10 stops of exposure is now yours to play with. You can use the sliders, or my preference, the adjustment brush to custom paint your image. Since you have one huge RAW file with all those brackets in it, the results are natural.

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/511/18134061008_6bfbcd2629_b.jpg

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/420/18396301248_ca7b8bc1a1_b.jpg

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7755/17185450488_2b22b9d3a8_b.jpg

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7762/17342248392_ac57767f89_b.jpg

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8815/16717372503_186dc3e2c1_b.jpg

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7291/16520995632_40fd75c58e_b.jpg

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7324/16445239455_07a13cb9d1_b.jpg

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7282/16258851069_7f6676cdd1_b.jpg

[megatop412]

Dude, those are surreal....I love this look, very easy on the eyes

[tlabranche]

Dude, those are surreal....I love this look, very easy on the eyes

Thanks! It gives you the ability to seamlessly blend a slew of brackets. As you can see, it is perfect for those night cityscape images, where highlights are blown out well before shadows are exposed for.

Another cool tip is to incorporate luminosity masks with this. If an element isn't dark or light enough, you can layer the bracketed shot with that information on top of the TIFF. Then, just mask in want you need.