Photo of the Week – HDR Imaging

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I went to the Kenmore Camera Expo on Sunday and sat in a session to learn about my new Canon EOS 7D.  While in there, I heard about high dynamic range (HDR) imaging.  After a bit of search on the Internet, I found this link which explains how to do HDR in Adobe Lightroom, my tool of choice for now.  The general operations in Lightroom are as follows:

  • Set recovery to 100%
  • Set fill light to 100%
  • Set contrast to 100%
  • Set clarity to 100%
  • Set vibrance to 100%
  • Reduce saturation but keep some color
  • Adjust the white balance
  • Drop the exposure
  • Bring up the blacks
  • Adjust the colors using the saturation sliders
  • Use the tone curve to boost up highlights and drop down shadows
  • Use noise reduction if needed with luminence and color at 30

Here’s an example of the results of this technique:

hdr-spaceneedle

This was shot with my previous body, the Canon XTi with my 17-85 walking around lens.

UPDATE: I just discovered Photomatix, a tool which does this.  I’m going to download it and give it a try.