I asked Peter Thorpe, a member of the Crosstown Camera Club and admitted HDR junkie, to explain how he processes the fine HDR images he has been submitting to recent salons. He described for me one process he uses that involves a single image HDR processed using only Lightroom 2. Here is what he told me:
He started with the original lighthouse image below:
It was shot using a Canon 30D and a 400 mm lens on a tripod with remote shutter at 1/500th at ISO 100. Then he began processing this original image in Lightroom 2 working exclusively with the Adjustment Brush tool. In essence he is painting with a light/tone/exposure/contrast brush to arrive at a final HDR image. Note that a basic understanding of Lightroom 2 is useful to understanding this technique.
With the original image in Lightroom he painted the wave in it using a saturation setting of –23 and a clarity setting of +100. The saturation setting of -23 got rid of some brownish tint and the clarity setting of +100 pressed the image to HDR levels. Similar treatment was applied to the beacon light using a +5 setting for both Contrast and Saturation to give it a “glow” and +1.38 Exposure setting to give it some illumination. This also added some dimension to the scene. Similar exposure adjustments were made to the building to give the whole scene an acceptable HDR look.
The sky was treated with +80 Contrast setting, +70 Clarity and +35 Saturation for the final “HDR” touches again using only the settings available on the Adjustment Brush in LightRoom2 to brush over the sky liberally. The result of this work was the image below:
Finally, the Histogram was checked as noted in the attached illustration. Peter is mindful of the Histogram of each image mainly at the start and finish of processing. He tried to create one that contains information at all levels from black to white.
What Peter didn't like in the attached finished shot was a bit of noise that developed upon processing. However, that could easily be removed using noise reduction software offered by such companies as Nik or Topaz. Despite any noise the final image shows well creatively thanks to his work creating an HDR image from the single original image.
You can sample more of Peter’s HDR work at http://canonman.redbubble.com/. He is also a regular contributor to “HDR Spotting” a website dedicated to HDR artists located at: http://www.hdrspotting.com/ (look for Peter as canonman). This website offers a wide variety of HDR styles and techniques and is open to all HDR enthusiasts, but by invitation only.
I’ve asked Peter to continue to share his HDR knowledge, work and techniques with us, so look for more from him in the future here on the Camera Council’s blog.
