Pseudo HDR using Photoshop

2011

Introduction:
HDR (High Dynamic Range) is an image which contains both shadows and highlights in detail. To get the details on shadows in your image you need to overexpose your image, but highlights in the image will get washed out. The reverse holds true as well. So what is the work around for this? Thats what we will be exploring here. First you need 2 photos of the same subject a. Underexposed (E.g. -2.0 EV) - Highlights should have been exposed properly here b. Overexposed (E.g. +2.0 EV) - Shadows should have been exposed properly here To get this done, set your gear on tripod and turn on AEB (Auto Exposure Bracketing), provided the subject is still. In this case the EXIF info of the two images will be different in terms of exposure this is needed to automate HDR using PS. Your job is simpler now, as there is an option in Photoshop CS 2.0 or later versions to create HDR from minimum of three photos (underexposed, overexposed and normal). As I said, it is a minimum requirement that you need 3 images. The more the range of exposures you have, better the HDR image will be. However in this example we are going to deal with another technique Pseudo HDR, which is a rough technique to achieve HDR using a single RAW image.

mak manoj23.86@gmail.com

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Pseudo HDR using Photoshop

2011

Step 1:
First you should have shot your image normally exposed in RAW format. Use any RAW processing software (I use Rawtherapee- free and quite handy tool) and save two versions of the image with +/EV (here I saved them with -2.0 EV and +2.0 EV). Underexposed Image: (No details in shadows -completely dark, but highlights exposed properly)

mak manoj23.86@gmail.com

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Pseudo HDR using Photoshop

2011

Overexposed Image: (Washed out highlights, but shadows captured in detail)

Step 2:
Open both the images in Photoshop. Copy the overexposed image and paste it over the underexposed one, which results in creating a new Layer (say Layer 1).

mak manoj23.86@gmail.com

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Pseudo HDR using Photoshop

2011

Step 3:
With Layer1 selected go to Select->Color Range and choose Highlights in select box. Tick the Invert check box-by doing this you are inverting the selection of highlights. This means the highlights are actually going to come from underexposed image.

Step 4:
Now create a layer mask for Layer 1 using Add layer mask option.

Go to Filter->Blur-Gaussian Blur and set the Radius to 250.0 pixels which is the maximum. This would make the background layer to blend gradually with the Layer 1 thus avoiding abrupt edges in the selection.

mak manoj23.86@gmail.com

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Pseudo HDR using Photoshop

2011

Step 5:
We are almost done. Now you can see details in both shadows and highlights of your image. Now go to Layer->Flatten Image, which will convert our work into a single layer. Youve got your HDR image ready here.

HDR Image: You may further follow your usual workflow like any of your other images. Here you can notice neither the shadows are completely dark nor the highlights are washed out. (still the

mak manoj23.86@gmail.com

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Pseudo HDR using Photoshop

2011

The sample image exposures had been taken as -2.0 EV and +2.0 EV, only to explain the procedure. However, if you look into the image, shadows still look little dark. So I took images of +3.0 EV and -2.0EV to get the shadows right.

mak manoj23.86@gmail.com

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Pseudo HDR using Photoshop

Final HDR image, without any other processing:

2011

mak manoj23.86@gmail.com

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