The following photo shows the results of an experiment in which I used Adobe Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS5 to create a photorealistic 32-bit pseudo-HDR composite image from three exposures of the George Washington Masonic Memorial, Alexandria, Virginia USA. I used Lightroom to make all of the adjustments to the composite image, including lens corrections. I’m not 100% satisfied with the results, but considering this is the first time I ever used Lightroom to edit a photo I say, “Not bad!”
The following gallery shows the three original photos that were composited to create the HDR image (shown above): Photo 1 is exposed correctly (0 ev); Photo 2 is underexposed (-2 ev); Photo 3 is overexposed (+2 ev). I converted the original CR2 (raw) photo files to JPGs for online display; no adjustments were made to these photos.
Tech Tips: How did I do it? See Lightroom Video: A New HDR Feature in Lightroom 4.1 for a five-minute video tutorial by Matt Kloskowski, Kelby Media Group. See also Tilt-Shift/perspective corrections in Lightroom 3, a three-minute YouTube video by “inthephotozone.”
Copyright © 2012 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved. www.wsanford.com
Tags: Canon EOS XTi, digital photography, HDR, landscapes, Lightroom, Photoshop
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