Introduction

High dynamic range photography has taken off in the last couple of years. With cameras becoming cheaper and memory getting inexpensive, as well, we are shooting more and more frames with little worry for what each image may cost. Hey, it’s pixels. You don’t have to buy film anymore. Even the iPhone is doing HDR—a true sign that this art form is hitting the mainstream.

The one thing that had always interested me about doing HDR was that the community doing it was very open about sharing the methods for their creations. With every picture put out on the Internet, they were always quick to say, “These are the settings I used in Photomatix. Have at them!”

As more and more people become interested in this, I’ve noticed the opposite has started happening. You still see the pieces being shared, and people still share their exposure information, but those settings alone do not produce the final piece that you see on the screen. It’s as if people are only interested in sharing some of the technique, keeping some of the key pieces to themselves, for fear of giving away the entire trick. Yes, you got the settings, but just plugging those settings into the software didn’t make the image. In some cases, it made your image worse.

There are two secrets to HDR photography: (1) The settings you use to make the HDR are largely built on taste. Yes, you can have someone give you an overview of what this slider does, or that slider does, but for the most part, we all spend time in front of the screen, jiggling sliders around, thinking, “Hmm...that looks kind of interesting. I’ll go with that.” And, (2) when you process your HDR image in any software you choose, you’re only halfway done. Many of the images that you’ll really come to love are based on key post-processing. The post-processing isn’t hard, but it’s there. The problem is that no one has really spent time talking about that part. This book aims to change all of that.

HDR photography is surprisingly easy. I’d say it’s probably one of the easiest techniques to get good at because of how easy the process of generating an HDR is. You need some specific tools, some specific rules, and a heck of a lot of experimentation. We will spend some time talking about what things you need to be able to capture the shots from a hardware standpoint, as well as some hardware tips that make it easier to get those images.

From there, we will talk about how to get out there and look for HDR images. If you spend some time looking at HDR images on the Internet, you will see that there are patterns that emerge. Learn those patterns, and you can immediately make your HDR better.

We’ll then spend some time talking about how three major pieces of software work to make your tone mapped image: Photoshop’s HDR Pro, HDRsoft’s Photomatix Pro, and Nik Software’s HDR Efex Pro. We’ll go over the general sliders, what they do, and how to save your presets to come back to them later. These three parts are done as fast as possible to get you to what you need to know.

The rest of this book is dedicated to the post-processing of the images, using 10 actual HDR projects from my collection (with four extra added, shown only in their finished state, but using the same techniques you’ve learned on the others). All of the source files for these projects (including the four extra images) can be downloaded from the book’s companion website at: www.kelbytraining.com/books/hdr. Each of these project chapters starts with screen captures showing you what tone map settings I used in all three programs (there are presets you can download from the companion site and load into each program, if you choose). Then, we use tried-and-true Photoshop techniques to get them to show-ready condition.

The four additional projects I’ve included are at the end of Chapters Four, Nine, Ten, and Thirteen, and are labeled “It’s Your Turn.” I want you to experiment with them. The images are yours to have fun with and to come up with your own creation. The only thing I ask is that if you post one of your works of art on the Web, let them know that you got it from this book!

The projects here cover a wide range of subjects, from natural landscapes, to portraits, to surreal cityscapes. I included everything from medium-format imaging to a real estate image taken with a point-and shoot—it’s all in here. We’ll spend some time faux-painting an impressionist landscape. We’ll double-tone-map an image. We’ll make HDR portraits, panoramas, recomposited pieces, a black-and-white image, as well as single-image HDR works of art.

All of the tricks in this book require the use of specific software, and their inclusion in the book does not give me a penny toward my kid’s college fund. If it’s in this book, it’s because the pros out there use it and I use it. You don’t need every single one of them, and most of the time, you can get trial versions of the software to experiment with. Once you settle on a style, you can buy the ones you need.

Throughout the book, I also wanted to introduce you to people out there living in the HDR world, so you can learn more about their passion, become inspired by their work, and see the different faces of the technique.

We are about to go on an awesome journey exposing HDR for what it is, a technique that you can totally master. By working on these projects, you can develop your own style for processing this really dynamic technique.

I hope you’re as excited as I am. Let’s get to it!