It isn’t often that I get all fired up about software.  However, the announcement that Nik Software’s newest Lightroom and Photoshop plug-in, HDR Efex Pro, will be available for public consumption in October has me as giddy as a girl in a prom dress.

I’ve experimented with HDR in the past using what most consider the current industry standard software – HDRSoft’s Photomatix.  Frankly, I wasn’t terribly impressed.  Now, that isn’t to say that stunning images can’t be created using Photomatix, or for that matter, any other HDR software.  To the contrary, just read Royce Howland’s guest post on my blog last week, “Why I Love HDR - Part 1“.  Then pay a visit to his galleries to see some of the most amazing HDR landscape photography I’ve ever seen.  Clearly, Royce has mastered Photomatix.

After failing at HDR I went back to using filters to tame dynamic range.  Then I tried my hand at manual exposure blends.  While I love the control and final result of blending images by hand, I don’t love staring at a computer monitor for hours on end doing the tedious work required of the technique.  So, I’ve gone back to using filters.  Again.

Now, in walks Nik Software and their badass new HDR Efex Pro plug-in.  Okay, fine – I’m being a little sensationalistic.  I can’t really call it badass yet because I’m not one of the chosen few who was given a pre-release copy to run through the wringer.  But, if it’s even half as good as their other plug-ins it will in fact be badass.  Nik Software knows how to make software for people like me, who would much rather be outdoors photographing than sitting at a desk.  I have complete faith that HDR Efex Pro will allow me to create stunning, natural looking images in less time than blending by hand.  Naturally, you’ll all be the first to hear my initial impressions once I’ve had some time to spend under the hood with it.

Nik is currently taking pre-orders  on HDR Efex Pro, slated for release in October.  Anyone who purchases the Nik Complete Collection after July 25, 2010 will receive HDR Efex Pro free upon release.  And, if you don’t feel like paying full price for any of the Nik plug-ins, you can always use coupon code “BEDGE” at checkout to receive a 15% discount on your order from the Nik Store.

Until October, tick-tock…

Are you excited to try out Nik Software HDR Efex Pro?  What HDR software are you using now?  Let us know in the comments section!  

All text and images are provided courtesy of Royce Howland and are protected under copyright laws.  I invite you to link to this article but please do not re-post the content without prior approval from Royce.  A huge “thanks” to Royce for writing this article and allowing me to publish it here on my blog.  As a side note, if you’ve ever wanted to photograph the Canadian Rockies in autumn you should definitely check out Royce’s “Fall 2010 Photo Tour“!  Enjoy the article and be sure to leave your thoughts on HDR in the comments section.

I’m mainly a landscape photographer, and I’ve been using High Dynamic Range (HDR) techniques in my work for about 5 years now. During that time I’ve used HDR on many images. In fact, I’d venture to say that HDR has become nearly indispensable to my way of working. I don’t use it for everything, and it’s not the only tool in my toolbox, but it’s a very important part of my process.

I’ve done some thinking about HDR and photography, and written about it as well as discussed it with people. I’ve also read quite a bit written by others, both pro and con. It’s now clear to me that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who love HDR, and everyone else.

(Side note – okay, okay. Really, there are two kinds of people: those who think there are two kinds of people, and everyone else. But this is about HDR and photography, not some kind of social studies. And I needed a controversial-seeming opening line.)

Elliott Peak At First Light, White Goat Lakes

When I show my images or prints and disclose something about the part that HDR plays, those who know about digital photography or post-processing frequently have a reaction like “Wow, that doesn’t look like HDR, it looks natural!” Hmm. First, thanks very much – it’s a gratifying comment to receive. It’s my intention to present art, not artifice, and I don’t want my use of technique to be very front-and-center to the visual experience. The main point should be the image itself, not the processing.

But second, there’s something else going on with this interaction. Maybe there’s an implication that my images don’t look like HDR because HDR must look “unnatural”. Just maybe there’s a feeling that there’s a little something different to my images even though they still look kind of “normal”. There are definitely some assumptions about what a “natural” or “normal” photograph is. What’s up with this?

Perhaps a few of those who know that HDR exists and don’t love it simply don’t understand it the way I do. That’s right – HDR isn’t bad, it’s just misunderstood! I don’t want to try to convince anybody to adopt something they don’t need; but on the off chance there is room for clarification, I thought I would write something new about Why I Love HDR.

So what’s to love? I can sum it up in two phrases, five words: high fidelity capture and creative development.

High Fidelity Capture

The Sun Is Shining… But the Ice Is Slippery, Preacher's Point

I don’t want to spend a ton of time on this part because it has been written about at length, by myself and others. However it does set the stage so I don’t want to gloss over it too quickly, either.

High fidelity capture is about the technical or craft part of the equation: one aspect of mastery of tools and techniques. Craft is interesting, and it’s an important part of things like achieving personal style, effectively interpreting subject material and presenting an engaging vision. Many photographers really gravitate to the craft aspect of photography. I suppose in part it’s because the tools and techniques are tangible, fun to debate, learnable by many avenues, and we can feel a sense of accomplishment in getting a grip on successive elements of the craft.

Thinking about the craft of digital photography, I remember a time not so long ago when a category of debates raged. Remember these? RAW vs. JPEG. Lossily compressed JPEG vs. lossless TIFF. 8-bit vs. 16-bit. Image layers vs. destructive image edits. sRGB vs. Adobe RGB vs. ProPhoto RGB. On and on they went, until they mostly just sort of died away; now we rarely read or engage in these arguments any more. Why? Because they are all arguments about fidelity and it has become more or less accepted that throwing away fidelity early in the digital image workflow isn’t that great an idea, as a rule.

Sure, there are cases where sacrificing fidelity is a trade-off that can – or perhaps must – be made. Photojournalists targeting deadline-driven distribution via low resolution print or web reproductions. Sports or event shooters ripping through massive volumes of frames and needing efficient workflows with rapid turn-around time. Travel photographers going for long periods of time without access to plentiful storage, electricity or bandwidth. But for those of us who are more like fine art landscape photographers working from home base, raise your hand if you still shoot 8-bit sRGB JPEG’s in the camera for your main work. Anyone? No, I didn’t really think so.

Okay, so with that set-up, consider an HDR image file – and I mean a real HDR image file. One with a file type like .hdr or .exr, not something that’s been rendered back down into a normal TIFF. Think of this HDR image like a RAW file on steroids. It sniffs at debates of bit levels, color space gamuts, or tone curves. It sneers at issues of dynamic range like clipped highlights or noisy, blocked shadows. An HDR file is something called a scene-referred image. At its best, it’s got all the contrast, every hint of detail, the full range of color of the original scene, all the way from the brightest highlights to the darkest shadows. In essence, it has all of the light. Photographers work with light – it’s the foundation of our medium. Doesn’t it sound appealing to have access to all of the light in a single, high fidelity capture? It does to me! My frustration with the dynamic range of digital capture some years ago is precisely what first prompted me to try HDR when I first discovered it.

Are there limitations? Yes, you bet. They come up largely because for most of us, currently, HDR is a bolt-on to traditional digital photography with cameras that aren’t actually designed for HDR. (“Traditional digital photography” – there’s a generational statement!) We HDR shooters typically take a bunch of exposure-bracketed frames and merge them using software on a computer. Some cameras coming on the market recently (notably from Pentax) are starting to push HDR functions into the camera, but so far they’re still based on taking multiple exposures and somehow merging them after the fact. Merging exposures brings the same kind of problems as with any frame blending technique – moving camera or moving subject elements in the scene. Motion over time leads to the need to develop image alignment & morphing approaches, ghost removal retouching tools, that kind of thing. These are time consuming, sometimes don’t work well, and can’t solve everything even when they do work.

But trust me, this will change – in fact it is changing. Digital photography is photography, and so many of the hallmarks of the last century or more of the practice still apply. But it’s also digital, and that means profound advances in photographic capability are happening extremely fast compared to what went before. A digital camera is in large part a computer running software; things that only can be done on a desktop computer today might be done in the camera tomorrow. There are native HDR capture cameras already in existence that can capture HDR files without shooting separate exposures and then merging them. These cameras are specialized, expensive and limited in ways that make them unsuitable for most of us. But more R&D is going on and I believe we’ll have affordable, useful, native HDR capture cameras well before I’m too feeble and broke to use them. (Knock wood!)

Summing Up

Fresh Snow in Bright Sun 2, Mistaya Canyon

Okay, I’ve covered this part of the topic for the moment. Let me sum up. Regardless of how I get an HDR file, what I end up with is a high fidelity capture of the light on the scene. It has some nice characteristics that I can’t get easily (or at all) any other way for certain kinds of scenes – all the detail, all the color, all the dynamic range, none of the noise. That sounds great, almost like a TV commercial! There are limits, many related to motion; but in situations where those limits aren’t a factor, a new kind of master image file is there for the taking.

I love having this kind of high fidelity master, both as a point of philosophy and practicality. But such images, and the processing techniques that produce them, are mainly about craft. It isn’t sufficient to stop there because I haven’t really done anything yet in terms of my intent to realize the final image. As Ansel Adams said in one of his most commonly quoted statements, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” Having taken a high fidelity capture, going on to the next stage – creative development – is where the real action is for my image-making. And I think that’s also mostly where those who don’t love HDR are getting hung up.

So that’s the real big question – I’ve got a high fidelity capture, now what do I do with it? Stay tuned for part 2, where I’ll address creative development.

About Royce:

By day a mild-mannered IT consultant, Royce Howland is also a photographer based in Calgary, Alberta. Initially drawn to photograph birds and wildlife through his experiences as a birder, Royce became increasingly focused on turning his lens on the land itself. He loves exploring the rich array of photographic opportunities in his home region of the Canadian West, as well as travel destinations including the American Southwest and England. He is a member of the editorial team at NatureScapes.Net, and contributes photos and articles to various online and print publications. For more information, visit http://www.vividaspectphoto.com/.

All text and images are provided courtesy of Younes Bounhar and are protected under copyright laws.  I invite you to link to this article but please do not re-post the content without prior approval from Younes.  A huge “thanks” goes out to Younes for writing this article and allowing me to publish it on my blog.

In this article, I would like to discuss an alternative method that can not only replace GNDs in some circumstances, but offers significant advantages over both GNDs and the automated HDR options. This technique involves blending multiple exposures using masks and layers in Photoshop. Now, I don’t mean to re-open the debate of “getting right in-camera vs. take it and fix it later approach”. Neither do I pretend that this option is the end all be all, mother all of all options. If you dislike spending time on your computer, this is probably not for you. If on the other hand you believe that you should use every tool you have at your disposal to make the best image you can, then buckle up and jump on board!

Enter Exposure Blending

Let me first start with a disclaimer: as I indicated above, this is not a panacea, or some miracle recipe. Exposure blending is very useful but does have some limitations: it simply does not work with scenes containing moving objects. Also, when dealing with trees or grasses blowing in the wind, it can get tricky and sometimes even unworkable. That said, I find that exposure blending beats HDR programs by a long shot because the results are more realistic looking (personal choice here) and it avoids the muddy toned images that HDR programs often result in.

The Setup

So, what is exposure blending exactly? As its name suggests, it involves taking several exposures of the same subject and “mixing” them in Photoshop using layers and masks.  It is imperative that the framing be identical for each exposure, so it is important you use of a tripod, and ideally a remote release to minimize vibration and motion. The exact bracketing required varies from scene to scene and depends in great part on the dynamic range of your camera. Using my Nikon D700, I simply set it on “matrix metering” and take 3 exposures: 0, -1 and -2 stops. If you are just trying your hand at this, I would definitely recommend trying at least +2 to -2 brackets (5 images total), then adjust accordingly once you get more comfortable. Ultimately, however, only two exposures are usually necessary (0 and -2). I will sometimes blend in parts of a third one if I need more details in the shadows, but that is rarely required.

Blending Exposures

Now on to the blending.

1)  Once the images are uploaded on the computer, process each exposure separately in RAW then open both exposures in Photoshop (here 0 and -2 stops).

2)  Go to the darker exposure, select all (command+A), copy (command+C) and paste it on top of the lighter image (command+V).

3)  Select the top layer (dark) and while pressing the alt button, click on the “add layer mask” button.  This will create a “see-through” mask that will come in handy later to “paint-in” details from the dark exposure onto the lighter one.

4)  In the layers panel, select the channels tab.  Photoshop allows you to create a selection based on the luminosity values in the image. In essence, at the click of a button you can select all the “light” pixels. You can do so by pressing the command button and simultaneously clicking on the RGB channel icon.

5)  You should now see a set of “marching ants”, indicating a selection appear on your image. While this can be used as your mask, I find that going one step further will provide an even better selection. To do so, press shift+option+command and click on the RGB channel icon one more time. This will intersect the previous selection with itself and select a narrower set of light values. You can repeat this as many times as you want, but I find that two selections (step 4+5 combined) are sufficient.

6)  Now move back to the “layers” tab and make sure to select the dark mask we created earlier in step 3, by clicking on it.

7)  Select the eraser (press E), select a large brush (400 px) with 0% hardness and ensure the opacity and flow are set at 100% (top panel). Make sure that black is your foreground colour (you can toggle between foreground and background colours by pressing X, if black is not already one of your colours, press D to revert to default colours, then press X to select black).

8)  Here is where the magic happens: simply start erasing over the overexposed portion of the image (sky and/or reflections for example). You will now see that the darker layer is literally being painted over the lighter one. Because the selection is completely self-feathering, you need not worry too much about being very precise with your painting. I usually find that a few passes with the eraser are necessary to bring all the colours out. Notice that while the sky is being uncovered, the areas in the shadows (e.g. buildings or foreground) are hardly touched.

9)  That is it. Once the result satisfies you, you can merge your two layers and continue on with your usual post processing routine.

10)  If you feel that you are still lacking a bit of detail in some of the shadow areas, you could use an overexposed frame (+1 or +2) to paint in the necessary detail. To do so, simply copy the overexposed frame on top of your other layers. Then, create a “see-through” mask as done in step 3. Select the Eraser, set the opacity between 25 and 40% and flow at about 50%, make sure your foreground colour is black. Then select the mask and start painting over your image in the areas where you would like to reveal more detail. Since the opacity of your eraser is low, multiple passes may be required to achieve the desired result.

The process may sound a bit daunting at first if you are not familiar with masks and layers but once you give it a go you will see that it is fairly straightforward and the results will surely speak for themselves!

About Younes:

Younes Bounhar is a ridiculously talented photographer and super nice guy from Canada.  He offers group workshops and fine art prints, and is a frequent contributor to Photolife magazine.  I encourage you to visit his website for inspiration and check out his blog for a steady stream of helpful information.