Right guys, the following is a brief description of HDR and the process.

When I went to Vegas recently, one of the HDR shots I had planned was one of the classic Vegas Sign pictures.

So off I trotted with wife unhappily trudging alongside of me, to the far end of the strip and beyond, to the Vegas Sign.

I set up the tripod and fired off 5 consecutive shots, all with slightly different exposure settings. 1 was exposed evenly (as below)and then I did +1EV +2EV followed by -1EV -2EV. (EV is Exposure Value)

The one that sits in the middle of this is as below, you hopefully can imagine the other 4 shots




So, back here in jolly old Blighty and sat in front of the PC, the 5 RAW files that were shot are uploaded into Photmatix Pro (An HDR Package) where they are processed and then tone mapped. There are pre-sets for the tone mapping if you want to use them or you can play with the settings manually, which is what I did on this occasion. It is then saved as either a 16 or 8 bit Tiff file or a j-peg. I saved it as a j-peg.

One thing you will notice in the shot below if you look at the palm trees, is the ghosting where the wind is moving the palm fronds. This was not an issue in this shot as they were always going to be cropped out, but it is worth remembering if any fancies a go at HDR.

Below is the Tone Mapped HDR File.





After saving the picture as a j-peg, I imported it into Photoshop for further processing. First thing was a levels tweek followed by a contrast and brightness adjustment. I then flattened the image. This was followed by a saturation adjustment and then the final flattening of the image.

Then the tricky part

It started with a cropping as I wanted the picture to be a portrait format. The reason for taking landscape was so that it could be more easily cropped and straightened at home. Once it was cropped the most labour intensive part started, this was to clone out the cables that run around the sign and add too much distraction to the image. This is a proces that there is no short cut or easy option for and it takes a time to do properly.

Some 100 mins or so after sending the original 5 RAW files to Photomatix, this is the end result of it.



Now, I expect that there will be some people that think that this is not photography but excessive digital tinkering. And to a point I agree, BUT, this was always planned to be this way and general shots (like the holiday pics I have already posted) do not get anywhere near as much tinkering.

It is always best to get right in camera and then process very lightly.

Any road up, enough of my going on.