HDR-Friendly Workflow, Using Adobe Lightroom for Realistic Results

Vanishing Water, originally uploaded by Jeffrey Sullivan.

Rodeo Beach, Marin County, California

A question came up a while back about workflow for HDR, and using a common editing program like Adobe Lightroom with it. I use Lightroom on all photos, and Photomatix 4.0 for HDR on a few with particularly challenging lighting conditions. Here's the approach that works extremely well for me.

I shoot in RAW and find Lightroom to be an excellent way to process files for many different shooting scenarios. The key is Lightroom having been designed from the start to facilitate operating on multiple files, such as its ability to copy development settings from one edited file and apply them to any similar images in the batch you're editing. It's also easy to use, so you don't need a bunch of obscure keyboard commands and you don't need to record scripts like Photoshop users always seem to be doing to create a given effect. At the highest level, my approach is this: for the images that I consider HDR potentially useful for, I simply perform the most basic adjustments like white balance adjustment, dust removal and some noise reduction, then convert these low noise, color-corrected images to JPG prior to performing HDR techniques. Using JPG images as input to the HDR process is exactly the approach recommended by HDRsoft for their Phototomatix software.

Single exposure HDR.  Deeth, Nevada

To cover the entire workflow from shooting to finished file in more detail, first I shoot automatic exposure bracketed images nearly all the time... not to get the best exposure, but to get the best contrast and color with an acceptibly low level of noise. One dirty little secret of digital photography is that sensor performance is not necessarily consistent across different exposures. What I'm trying to say is that three different exposures cannot simply be exposure-corected and turn out identical, even in the most basic sense like contrast and color. Just as was the case with film, the darkest exposure will almost always look best in color and contrast, the most likely to be good straight out of the camera (with minimal brightness adjustment), but it will require some "darkroom" adjustment of exposure, brightness and so forth, and in the end it may have too much noise in darker areas of the image. I do have a high success rate though, and at the very least it provides a reference image to try to edit the next best exposure to look like. It won't always be as straightforward or easy as you might hope, but at least you have a nice high bar to shoot for. Test this for yourself. Try shooting 3-shot exposure bracketing sequences in challenging sunrise and sunset lighting conditions, and adjust all three to see which looks best. Play with different bracketing and exposure compensation settings to see what works best on your camera.

On my Canon 5D mark II my default spacing is +/- 1 1/3 stops between exposures, but I also bias the whole sequence 2/3 stop darker (using exposure compensation at -2/3 EV). Therefore I end up with exposures a -2 EV, -2/3 EV and +2/3 EV. My Canon 40D doesn't quite have the same dynamic range nor does it have noise levels so low, so I may use -1/3 exposure compensation and shoot an Automatic Exposure Bracketing sequence of +/-1 stop. Either way, I examine the results and adjust my approach to the shooting conditions.

3-exposure HDR. Sunrise rainbow, Eastern Sierra.

Having multiple exposures and the ability to choose HDR later if I like is a benefit, but I've found that by having better single exposures and rarely having blown out areas, especially in my best, darkest exposure, I can rely on HDR a lower percentage of the time simply to get a useful result. In fact, not having to rely on HDR as a crutch in my typical daily workflow frees me up to consider it in much more selective cases, to achieve much more advanced goals like mixing together long exposures of different lengths. (A range of shutter speeds is particularly useful with flowing water, to blend in different textures.)

Knowing that I'm using HDR for texture affects my shooting choices. For example, I may tune my bracketing sequence to provide three specific textures to flowing water. The speeds I require very depending upon how fast the water is moving (waves vs. streams vs. waterfalls), with different ranges of shutter speeds useful for different water speeds (such as different waterfall heights).

So my workflow starts with a RAW file in Lightroom receiving basic adjustments and getting saved to JPEG. Then Photomatix 4.0 does some initial processing and shows previews of how the result will turn out using something like 8 different techniques. This new feature makes it easy to pick one of the more natural renderings, one of the more unreal ones, or take over and fine tune the settings to get what you want. When done with the HDR processing, I save a 16-bit TIFF file.

3-exposure HDR.  Mono Lake, California.

As good as Photomatix 4.0 has become for facilitating your pursuit of a certain style of result, I still find it critical to run the TIFF file back through Lightroom for fine tuning. While HDR changes exposure around a scene in the highlights and shadows much like our eyes might, our brains reconstruct the scene in our minds with full impact of the bright shadows and dark shadows. HDR has no such interpretation step, so it can leave an image looking far too "flat". Approaches such as Tone Mapping are an attempt to restore some emphasis to the edges of light and dark areas, but such an approach with a single strong tool like that often leaves an image overcooked. Instead, try applying your changes very lightly in your HDR tool, then go to a full-featured editing tool to use its full power to restore a realistic look.

In Lightroom go to Library mode, simply hover your mouse over the folder name where the new TIFF files were saved, and (on a Windows PC) your right mouse button will reveal a menu with the Synchronize Folder commmand which will go find your new files and import them into Lightroom so you can make fine tuning adjustments to color, contrast, vignetting and so on.

3-exposure HDR.  Joshua Tree National Park.

If you do the best you can post-processing the HDR in Lightroom and like some of the characteristics of the result but still don't think it's entirely realistic, you still can use that to your advantage. Go produce your best single exposure edit in Lightroom on a single file, then bring both the HDR and single exposure result into layers in Photoshop (or Photoshp Elements), and blend them. I experiment with that maybe once a year when I get access to the latest Photshop trial software, but I prefer to spend my time shooting rather than in fromt of a computer, so Photoshop isn't in my workflow (or installed on my newest computer) at the moment.

For anyone not using Lightroom yet, you can download a copy at Adobe.com and use it in free trial mode for 30 days. The latest Photomatix 4.0 is useful to revisit if you tried or currently use a prior version. It's available at HDRsoft.com (it adds watermarks to your images, but if you buy a license later you can easily remove the watermarks, at least from the processed TIFF files output by Photomatix).

I have an HDR set here where you can see how various combinations of Lightroom and Photomatix have produced various results over the years: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreysullivan/sets/72157622008543219/

Wacky tone-mapped HDR from an earlier version of Photomatix.

Now that HDR has been on the market for a few years, it seems like there are many people who didn't like its early output, and there are others who did and use it all the time. The assumption seems to be that you either like HDR or you don't, it either worked for you or it didn't. However, there's a growing third camp of users who were able to wrestle HDR into submission and use it lightly in a realistic manner when useful, and perhaps create something wild from time to time as well. My opinion is that Photmatix 4.0 is far enough ahead of past versions in functionality and ease of use that it is worth a try, regardless of what you may have thought of HDR software or results in the past.

If you decide to buy Photomatix HDR software, I do recommend the version with an interface to Lightroom and Photoshop, to give you the most efficient workflow.  You can get a 15% discount by using the coupon code JeffSullivan when you by it from its publisher HDRsoft: http://www.hdrsoft.com/order.php

How to Take Milky Way Photos

Milky Way over Bodie's Standard Mill

Many digital cameras these days can do surprisingly well at capturing images at night. Their sensors are more sensitive than your eyes, especially at capturing color at night.

Photography has always involved multiple steps, with exposure being only one part of the equation. In the days of film, the darkroom enabled additional influence to be applied during development, and then again during printing. Unless you were using a Polaroid camera, there was no such thing as "straight out of the camera." Maybe you trusted someone in a drug store to do your developing and printing for you, but that wasn't an optimal situation and that certainly doesn't mean that no adjustments were made. For the most part, the entire concept of "straight out of the camera" is a myth that is best set aside as soon and as thoroughly as possible.

Milky Way over Mono Lake tufa formations

Today with digital cameras your darkroom is on a computer, implemented in software. Milky Way shots are a great example of images that you won't get the most out of until you get in the habit of spending 5 minutes in your digital darkroom to complete the photographic process.

If you find a dark place outdoors to shoot and you can make out stars and the lighter, more dense band of the Milky Way, a little postprocessing can get you a lot further. As with my previous blog post you need to shoot on a tripod, using manual aperture and manual focus. Having your long exposure noise reduction turned off is not critical since we're dealing with single exposures for Milky Way shots.

Shoot with your widest focal length lens to minimize star movement in the field of view, have it opened to its widest aperture to minimize exposure time. You may still have little enough light that you shoot at the longest exposure time (generally 30 seconds) or you may need to shoot in "bulb" mode for a longer time in order to get enough light. Always shoot in RAW mode so you have far more adjustment capability in post-processing software.

Shoot near the date of a new moon, so there is as little light pollution as possible. The last thing you need to know, probably the most important thing during planning your shot, is how to predict when the most intricate, dense, bright center of the Milky Way is in the night sky! In Summer the sun is up roughly 2/3 of every day, but the Milky Way crosses the sky in the night. The center of the Milky Way is towards the constellation Sagittarius. You can look up the dates when Sagittarius is high in the sky, and that's when the Milky Way is most intense: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mjpowell/Astro/Sgr/Find-Sagittarius.htm

In simple terms, it highest around midnight around July 22, two hours later per month earlier (2am in May), two hours earlier per month later (10pm in August). So really your best shooting will be on days near the new moon dates, and preferably within 7 weeks or so of July 22.

So lets assume you go out on the right night, shoot south towards Sagittarius, capture a RAW file with some stars showing, and maybe you can barely make out the bright stripe of the Milky Way and its slightly more dense center.

Well, if you were in a darkroom... how do you lighten the Milky Way while keeping the background sky dark? The simple answer is dodge and burn... selectively darken some areas while lightening others!

In +Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (download a 30 day trial if you don't have it already, AFTER you collect some images to process) use the paintbrush tool (under the Develop module) to select and lighten the area around the Milky Way. Use the paintbrush tool to darken the sky everywhere else (this makes both the Milky Way and the stars pop).

To do even better, you can also increase contrast while performing these functions, further darkening background light levels, including noise. Adjust exposure and brightness so the fainter stars in the Milky Way get brighter while background and noise gets dark. You can increase saturation slightly on the Milky Way, but increasing contrast has that effect already, so you might not need to.

NASA satellite launch over the California Coast

Don't worry too much about how much noise your camera produces... after you adjust contrast and brightness, just crank up the noise reduction. After all, there isn't generally much detail to lose by doing that. In Lightroom for dark, noisy photos I try to max out noise reduction at 25 or maybe 30, but lately for night skies I've been going into the 60s.

Lightroom can also selectively adjust saturation and brightness of individual colors. If you shoot too close to sunset and "blue hour", or during a too-bright moon that is too full (and creating blue night sky), it can be handy to darken a blueish background sky to help separate that from the stars (just did that on a star trails shot). On the other hand for dark new moon skies, like you should have if you're planning ahead for Milky Way shooting, there is little or no light scattering turning the sky blue. A lot of the Milky Way stars have a slight blue tint though, so selectively raising brightness of blue can help separate them from dark background and any noise.

Perseid meteor shower in the Mojave Desert

It's a balancing act between white balance, adjusting individual colors, and tweaking the brightness and especially contrast of the area the Milky Way covers, but you can find a reasonable compromise pretty quickly. Once you do fairly well adjusting one shot, Lightroom enables you to copy your develop settings and apply them to additional photos.

There are other subtle considerations of course, especially for special situations such as meteor showers, but this will get you off to a great start!

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Milky Way arch panorama

If you'd like a little extra help, I lead one night photography workshops in the Wild West "ghost town" of Bodie.  For more practice, you can join me for a longer tour of Yosemite, Death Valley or the Eastern Sierra.

In many cases I offer a visit to Bodie adjacent to one of those longer workshops, so you can shoot in Bodie to start or end your trip.

If you're looking for dark places to try night photography on your own, consider anywhere away from metropolitan areas. I identify over 300 great locations for landscape photography in my new 320-page book, "Photographing California Vol. 2 - South", pictured below.

For night photography in California, focus on locations in the Southern California desert from Anza-Borrego State Park through Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave Preserve to Death Valley National Park, or on the Eastern Sierra region.

I offer author-signed copies on my Web site: www.JeffSullivanPhotography.com

Tame HDR to Produce More Realistic Images

For about a year now I’ve been bracketing exposure on most shots so I have the option of using high dynamic range (HDR) software to increase highlight and shadow detail in my shots.

As noted in this article at NatureScapes.net, digital cameras can capture a range of about 8 stops of light, while film cameras cover about eleven, and your eye covers 14, while an actual outdoor scene may cover 17. HDR software can help you restore some of that range of light and color that your film camera could capture, or that your eye might see.

Many people are now experimenting with or using HDR software, but it can be difficult to produce natural-looking results. By now the majority of my images on this site have some degree of HDR postprocessing involved. In the interest of timely posting, many are first pass edits that I'm not fully satisfied with or done fien tuning yet, but you can decide for yourself whether or not I'm on the right track and my experience might offer some value for you.

Here are some techniques and tricks I've learned to better control my HDR results in an attempt to produce more natural results. I consider this to be a list of basic to intermediate tips. I'm working on a list of more advanced advice on tips and tradeoffs to consider when handling some of your more challenging shooting and postprocessing situations.

Shoot RAW and work only from file formats that preserve maximum tonality data
- Compared to JPEG which has 8 bits of color information, my RAW files have 12 bits, and the extra 4 bits provide 16X more shades of each primary color. In simple terms the HDR software works with 4096 levels of each color instead of 256. The difference can be very noticeable in the results, especially in areas with subtle shading such as blue sky and orange sunsets. Working with JPEG files frankly produced crappy results for many of my shots. Some new cameras just starting to ship now produce RAW files with 14 bit color depth, so the HDR software will have over 8000 levels of each primary color to work with in RAW files instead of 256 in JPEG.

Consider your brightest and darkest shots from any HDR sequence. Using JPEG you're settling for 256 color shades instead of 4096 in 12 bit RAW, dramatically reducing subtle shades by a factor of 16X in exactly those darkest and lightest areas that you're trying to salvage. Assuming 2 stop spacing of shots, perhaps the results where I've noticed a clear difference occurred with colors and brightness values occurring in the 4 ev stops beyond all of the other exposures (the more detailed color data two stops above and two stops below all other shots, no matter what total range you're covering).

- RAW also enables you to change the white balance setting. Want to better preserve the color in your sunset? If your first HDR run on a shot reduces the color too much, try running HDR processing again using the shade or cloudy white balance setting for a warmer (more orange/yellow) tone. You don’t have that option, and can’t achieve the same results, working from JPEG files.

- As noted by the NatureScapes.net article:
Further, the camera applies a tone curve, compressing shadow tones in order to favor highlights. Since I personally find that shadow tones contribute a lot to my HDR work, I would not like to sacrifice them. Finally, introducing JPEG compression artifacts (however slight) into the HDR process may degrade image quality.
I understand there are arguments in favor of shooting JPEG. Typically the benefits raised are to get more continuous frames, more storage capacity, and potentially minimize subsequent workflow effort in RAW conversion. However, in my opinion, these factors are not particularly relevant for HDR work, especially landscape photography as discussed here.

- If you ever intend to "go pro" and submit to stock photography agencies, you'll be happy that you saved the original 16 bit TIFF output from your HDR runs (retaining your full 12 or 14 bit RAW quality, further expanded via HDR into the 16 bit TIFF color space), and don't have to re-run HDR interactively on thousands of archived RAW files to retain value from your shots. (I'm not talking about "microstock" agencies, which are fine with you spending hours to produce and manage high quality JPEG images that can be sold for pennies for online work.)

Use a Tripod and Use Auto Exposure Bracketing
- The less you touch your camera, the more likely your shots will overlay well and produce a sharp image. HDR software such as Photomatix may have the functionality to attempt to get misaligned shots to register well, but don’t count on it; it seems almost as likely to further misalign your shots. Having the camera take the shots as fast as possible also reduces any movement within the scene (leaves, clouds, etc.) that might turn into distracting ghost images in the result... better to prevent the problem and spend any postprocessing time doing something creative rather than trying to repair or salvage a shot with motion artifacts.

Use Interactive Mode, not Batch
- The default settings for Photomatix software for example seem to desaturate and overexpose many images and leave them with unrealistic halos of light around dark objects. HDR processing can reduce noise in some cases, enhance it in others. If you care about the quality of your results, all of these challenges are best faced in interactive mode.

Tame Halos: Set Light Smoothing to High or Very High
- This is your #1 tool to fight distracting light halos that may flag your results as HDR output, what some people might refer to as "overcooked." I set it "very high" at first, then back off a notch or two to see how much HDR the scene can handle.

Tame Noise: Adjust Micro Smoothing
- On some sequences HDR can cancel out noise, for others it might interpret severe noise as valid data and enhance it! Increase the Micro Smoothing setting to smooth out HDR-enhanced noise.

Restore Color: Postprocess in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements
- Since your HDR software shifted light intensities and color tones, something as simple as Auto Contrast and/or Auto Color Correction can make a lot of difference when trying to restore natural-looking lighting and color. Noise reduction can be needed too.

Restore a Natural Look: Layer and Blend HDR Result with a Single Exposure
- Sometimes my best results with HDR software are not acceptable, but neither are my results trying my best to balance the exposure and color in one of my single exposures for the same shot. Consider blending both your best single edit in with your HDR result! The single edit will most likely have better color and shading and the HDR result will have more shadow and highlight detail. A 50/50 or 60/40 blend may still not be a perfect result, but it may be better than either of the two results before you blended them!

I'd be curious to know what other techniques people have found useful, specifically when their intention is to create realistic-looking results.

If you decide to buy Photomatix, you can get a 15% discount by using the coupon code JeffSullivan when you by it from its publisher HDRsoft: http://www.hdrsoft.com/order.php

(I'm still tuning the focus of this site. If you like my inclusion of experience and technique tips in this blog, drop me a line to let me know in my guestbook. Thanks!)