Why I Switched to Photoshop's HDR Pro for easy and natural Exposure Blending

[JustMeOregon]

Have you ever tried the "Merge to 32-bit HDR" Lightroom plugin by HDRsoft (the Photomatix folks)?

http://www.hdrsoft.com/download/merge_lrplugin.html

I find it to be a much more straight forward way to get a virgin (NOT tone mapped) 32-bit HDR file that can then be processed in Lightroom (or ACR). It does not require Photoshop and allows me to simply stay in Lightroom for all my basic post-processing. Also, the resulting 32-bit files, that can be really big as you know, can be cut to half-size (while retaining the entire 32-bit tonal range & edit-ability) if you select the "use half floating point format" option.

 

[aroo]

Dustin, thank you so much for sharing this. I've been wishing for *exactly* this workflow for some time now. Great to know it's there in PS CC! Now I can go back and get the intended results from a couple years of exposure bracketed files. Also appreciate your succinct and helpful video tutorial.

 

[TWI by Dustin Abbott]

Have you ever tried the "Merge to 32-bit HDR" Lightroom plugin by HDRsoft (the Photomatix folks)?

http://www.hdrsoft.com/download/merge_lrplugin.html

I find it to be a much more straight forward way to get a virgin (NOT tone mapped) 32-bit HDR file that can then be processed in Lightroom (or ACR). It does not require Photoshop and allows me to simply stay in Lightroom for all my basic post-processing. Also, the resulting 32-bit files, that can be really big as you know, can be cut to half-size (while retaining the entire 32-bit tonal range & edit-ability) if you select the "use half floating point format" option.

I have used that plugin, and there is one major shortcoming that I encountered: if you have handheld your images (which I often do) the alignment is frequently off by a hair, and that plugin does not seem to do "auto-align" particularly well. It's fine if you work off of images taken on a tripod, but... By contrast the workflow that I have detailed here does a great job of compensating for images that are not perfectly aligned.

 

[TWI by Dustin Abbott]

Dustin, thank you so much for sharing this. I've been wishing for *exactly* this workflow for some time now. Great to know it's there in PS CC! Now I can go back and get the intended results from a couple years of exposure bracketed files. Also appreciate your succinct and helpful video tutorial.

Thanks. One of the most practical advancements in Photoshop is the ability to run ACR at any time. I use it sometimes in post when some step has raised highlights or lowered shadows a bit too much.