HDR

Photography

The dynamic range (ratio between dark and bright regions) in the visible world far exceeds the
range of human vision and of images that are displayed on a monitor or printed. But whereas
human eyes can adapt to very different brightness levels, most cameras and computer monitors can
reproduce only a fixed dynamic range. Photographers, motion picture artists, and others working
with digital images must be selective about whats important in a scene because they are working
with a limited dynamic range.

How to shoot photos for HDR
1. Secure the camera to a tripod.
2. Take enough photos to cover the full dynamic range of the scene. You can try taking at
least five to seven photos, but you might need to take more exposures depending on the
dynamic range of the scene. The minimum number of photos should be three.
3. Vary the shutter speed to create different exposures. Changing the aperture changes the
depth of field in each exposure and can produce lower-quality results. Changing the ISO
or aperture may also cause noise or vignetting in the image.
4. In general, dont use your cameras auto-bracket feature, because the exposure changes
are usually too small.
5. Dont vary the lighting; for instance, dont use a flash in one exposure but not the next.
6. Make sure that nothing is moving in the scene. Exposure Merge works only with
differently exposed images of the identical scene.

How to edit HDR photos in Photoshop

1. Choose File > Automate > Merge To HDR Pro.
2. In the Merge To HDR Pro dialog box, click Browse to select specific images.
3. Click Add Open Files, or choose Use > Folder. (To remove an item, select it in files list, and
click Remove.)
4. (Optional) Select Attempt To Automatically Align Source Images if you held the camera in
your hands when you photographed the images.
5. Click OK.

Note: If images lack exposure metadata, enter values in the Manually Set
EV dialog box.
(A second Merge To HDR Pro dialog box displays thumbnails of the
source images, and a preview of the merged result.)

6. To the upper right of the preview, choose a bit depth for the merged image.
7. Choose 32 Bit if you want the merged image to store the entire dynamic range of the HDR
image. 8bit and (non-floating point) 16bit image files cannot store the entire range of
luminance values in an HDR image.

Tim Kosaka Photography 2015