CS2 HDR Help

[Alpha_7]

I did some massive bracketing today of my real estate shots, but now I can seem to get CS2 HDR to process them to affectively increase the Dynamic range (I was hoping it would help evenly expose the shot?) Or am I wrong ? Can anyone help me out please.

[casnell]

Are they RAW or Jpeg?

[Alpha_7]

I was using the NEFs, but I shot both raw and jpeg.

[casnell]

When i found it wasn't working it was because I'd opened the RAW images and hadn't unticked the auto options in that first dialogue box. You need to open them "as shot" , not altered at all. (mind you I've only done a few). Therefore the program was trying to correct the over/under exposure when opening, therefore the images were all much the same before HDR'ing. Does that make sense?

Chris

[Yi-P]

HDR in CS2 doesnt really work for me...

What I do is shoot 2 or 3 shots, first and last shot must be having exact highlight and shadow details, then the middle one about midtones (if necessary).

Then bring all three of them on top of the brightest image as layers. Align them all up. Create a layer mask in hiding the top layers. Use the paint brush and paint in the shadow details to where you need. Use a large soft brush and paint different sections to your liking.

Alternatively you can setup a gradient mask in hiding or showing the shadow/highlight details over one other. This way I find it is way more effective and controllable than HDR Merge IMHO...

After that, you can selectively level/curve edit the masked layers to your liking. Or similarly create adjustment layers through the masked areas for selective leve/curve edit.

[Viz]

Thanks for making me learn HDR function in CS2 on the spot. I gather that in real estate shots you want either the sky (exterior) or a window/lights (interior).

I just took 6 shots of varied exposure on D70s of my immediate surrounds including the ceiling light and monitor (interesting to watch monitor blend, because scanlines are different between shots and provide indication of what photoshop is doing behind the scene).

I find that it works fine if you specify 16 (or 8 I guess) bits per channel so that it downsamples, and you get a second menu - where you can use the hilight compression (or similarly named function) and I believe that this will be the image that you are after (at least in a real estate environment).

You might want to add some contrast to all those midtones and sharpen. I used a Levels adjustment layer with the "apply image" command to lift my hilights back to looking like the light was providing the illumination.

If you leave it in HDR, there is still lots of info there, but I believe that you will have to make selective adustments to bring it back together, and for everyday use 32 BPC is kind of overkill - somebody feel free to correct me.

Hope that this makes some sense.

I cant believe that the photoshop CS2 studio techniques book doesn't mention it (at least in contents or index).

[Alpha_7]

I actually have it kind of working now, well enough to have a fiddle with it and get some decent results!

Thanks.