HDR with LR 4...

[dilbert]

Highlights that you thought were unusable are easily rescued with Lightroom 4.

These three images are all from the same base image that I was going to use as part of a set of 5 for HDR because of problems with highlights.

The three images are - "from_camera.jpg" (this is the image imported into Lightroom, without any adjustments being applied). "lightroom_process_2010.jpg" is the best I could get with Lightroom v3.6. Maybe I could make it a bit better but going further requires messing around with tone curves and is quite tricky. Lastly, "lightroom_process_2012.jpg" is what I get with Lightroom 4.2

Of the three, it is the one from Lightroom 4.2 that looks the most natural and as can easily be seen, a lot of detail is recovered from the clouds whilst a little bit of saturation fills out the colours with some body.

[blaydese]

Yup, middle one is the best.  And you're right you could spend hours on one picture in light room.

Thanks for share!

Peace!

[pwp]

Highlights that you thought were unusable are easily rescued with Lightroom 4...

...particularly with 5D3 files. I've been astounded how much detail there is lurking in highlights.

-PW

[molnarcs]

Lightroom 4 is fantastic - I think you can get at least half a stop more detail from RAW files compared to the 3.x series. The evidence is clear in your photos. For me, this means staying within Lightroom for over 90% of my post-processing needs, while I had to use PS's more advanced tools (plugins such as Noiseware Pro) far more often with LR 3.x.