HDR TUTORIAL

this website is, as of now, home to a tutorial. no blog, no other content, not even an about me page. you want to know who i am? i'm liz, i'm fantastic, and that's all you need to know! :) i jest. but seriously. i'm much too lazy and unable to commit to have a proper webpage. so this website is a tutorial, or if you're viewing this early on, a tutorial in the making. and yes, that was my introduction.

today, you are going to learn how to make your photographs even prettier than you would have ever dared imagine. unless you already know this technique, in which case, why are you here? i have three fantastic links at the top that you can visit instead. shoo.

here are the materials you will need: a camera that shoots in RAW (meaning a really nice point-and-shoot or a DSLR), adobe photoshop cs3, and photomatix pro. the first one will have to be bought, so if you don't have one, you better have money. unless you want to steal one, but i don't recommend that. you can steal the two programs though, even though it's of course illegal and much better to legally buy them. photoshop is expensive, photomatix still expensive but cheaper. again, if you don't have money, it's probably not legal for me to tell you to search at torrents.to for them, so i won't.

once you have all your materials on hand, go take a picture. i don't care of who or what, but make sure it's taken in RAW format (check your manual if you don't know how, dummy!) and try to make it properly exposed and not blurry, otherwise it will look like shit. outdoor photos tend to look better, but of course there are exceptions.

once you have opened your picture, open up the RAW file in photoshop. a cute little window will pop up.



i like to keep the white balance as is unless it's really screwed up (like your picture looks orange or something), but i usually click on auto (that's highlighted in red) just to make sure it's lit properly, but make sure the exposure (also in red) is set to zero. that's very important. once that's all done, click open image down in the bottom right corner.

now immediately open the RAW file again. keep all the settings the same EXCEPT up the exposure to +2! it will look like shit but open it anyway.

now open the same file yet again. same settings, except now set the exposure to -2. again, it won't look the best, but you need it.

save all three files. i like to save them as .psd, just because then i know i don't lose any information, but jpg is acceptable. there are probably other formats that will work, but really, why bother?

now for the fun part. open up photomatix. go to HDR, Generate. click on browse and open up your three images. hit ok, and you'll get a window that looks kind of like this:



set the spacing to 2, make sure your numbers match up to mine, and hit ok. next window, i'm not going to bother with a screenshot because i can just tell you what to do. really, i don't know why i bothered with the last screenshot, but oh well. anyway, uncheck "Align source images" because they're already aligned, they're the same image. hit ok and wait while your magic picture generates.



ewwww! don't worry, your final image will be more beautiful than this. go to HDR, Tone Mapping, and let the magic begin.



wow! hopefully yours already looks as much better as mine does. i've highlighted in red the settings i usually play with. i always click default first, because that always looks good, but then i fiddle around with those settings. that doesn't mean you can't play with the others, do whatever you want to make it look as you wish. once you're happy with the result, click ok and wait again. your image will load after a bit, then go to File, Save, and call it whatever you want. save it as a jpg, because it's pointless to save it as anything else.



now i really can't direct you any further. i always go back into photoshop and do more processing. i play with levels, curves, saturation, variations, color balance, just about anything i feel like. go search through my portfolio if you wish, and if you come across anything you really want to know how i did, email me at neversleeping@gmail.com and ask me about it. if i'm not too lazy, i'll put a little walkthrough up here. but that's a big if :)