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HDR

Lesson 84 from: Adobe Photoshop: The Complete Guide Bootcamp

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

84. HDR

Next Lesson: Focus Stacking

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Introduction To Adobe Photoshop

04:05
2

Bridge vs. Lightroom

06:39
3

Tour of Photoshop Interface

18:21
4

Overview of Bridge Workspace

07:42
5

Overview of Lightroom Workspace

11:21
6

Lightroom Preferences - Saving Documents

08:19
7

How To Use Camera Raw in Adobe Photoshop 2020

05:10
8

Overview of Basic Adjustment Sliders

13:09
9

Developing Raw Images

30:33
10

Editing with the Effects and HLS Tabs

09:12
11

How to Save Images

03:37
12

Using the Transform Tool

04:48
13

Making Selections in Adobe Photoshop 2020

06:03
14

Selection Tools

05:55
15

Combining Selection Tools

07:37
16

Using Automated Selection Tools

17:34
17

Quick Mask Mode

05:07
18

Select Menu Essentials

21:28
19

Using Layers in Adobe Photoshop 2020

13:00
20

Align Active Layers

07:29
21

Creating a New Layer

06:15
22

Creating a Clipping Mask

03:02
23

Using Effects on Layers

11:24
24

Using Adjustment Layers

16:44
25

Using the Shape Tool

04:39
26

Create a Layer Mask Using the Selection Tool

04:39
27

Masking Multiple Images Together

15:15
28

Using Layer Masks to Remove People

10:50
29

Using Layer Masks to Replace Sky

10:04
30

Adding Texture to Images

09:11
31

Layering to Create Realistic Depth

05:35
32

Adjustment Layers in Adobe Photoshop 2020

05:29
33

Optimizing Grayscale with Levels

10:59
34

Adjusting Levels with a Histogram

03:37
35

Understanding Curves

06:18
36

Editing an Image Using Curves

18:41
37

Editing with Shadows/Highlights Adjustment

07:19
38

Dodge and Burn Using Quick Mask Mode

07:14
39

Editing with Blending Modes

08:04
40

Color Theory

05:59
41

Curves for Color

16:52
42

Hue and Saturation Adjustments

08:59
43

Isolating Colors Using Hue/Saturation Adjustment

13:33
44

Match Colors Using Numbers

16:59
45

Adjusting Skin Tones

05:25
46

Retouching Essentials In Adobe Camera Raw

10:52
47

Retouching with the Spot Healing Brush

07:53
48

Retouching with the Clone Stamp

06:51
49

Retouching with the Healing Brush

04:34
50

Retouching Using Multiple Retouching Tools

13:07
51

Extending an Edge with Content Aware

03:42
52

Clone Between Documents

13:19
53

Crop Tool

10:07
54

Frame Tool

02:59
55

Eye Dropper and Color Sampler Tools

08:14
56

Paint Brush Tools

13:33
57

History Brush Tool

06:27
58

Eraser and Gradient Tools

03:06
59

Brush Flow and Opacity Settings

04:17
60

Blur and Shape Tools

11:06
61

Dissolve Mode

09:24
62

Multiply Mode

15:29
63

Screen Mode

14:08
64

Hard Light Mode

14:54
65

Hue, Saturation, and Color Modes

11:31
66

Smart Filters

11:32
67

High Pass Filter

13:40
68

Blur Filter

05:59
69

Filter Gallery

07:42
70

Adaptive Wide Angle Filter

04:43
71

Combing Filters and Features

04:45
72

Select and Mask

20:04
73

Manually Select and Mask

08:08
74

Creating a Clean Background

21:19
75

Changing the Background

13:34
76

Smart Object Overview

08:37
77

Nested Smart Objects

09:55
78

Scale and Warp Smart Objects

09:08
79

Replace Contents

06:55
80

Raw Smart Objects

10:20
81

Multiple Instances of a Smart Object

12:59
82

Creating a Mockup Using Smart Objects

05:42
83

Panoramas

13:15
84

HDR

11:20
85

Focus Stacking

04:02
86

Time-lapse

11:18
87

Light Painting Composite

08:05
88

Remove Moire Patterns

06:11
89

Remove Similar Objects At Once

09:52
90

Remove Objects Across an Entire Image

05:46
91

Replace a Repeating Pattern

06:50
92

Clone from Multiple Areas Using the Clone Source Panel

10:27
93

Remove an Object with a Complex Background

07:49
94

Frequency Separation to Remove Staining and Blemishes

12:27
95

Warping

11:03
96

Liquify

14:02
97

Puppet Warp

12:52
98

Displacement Map

10:36
99

Polar Coordinates

07:19
100

Organize Your Layers

11:02
101

Layer Styles: Bevel and Emboss

02:59
102

Layer Style: Knockout Deep

12:34
103

Blending Options: Blend if

13:18
104

Blending Options: Colorize Black and White Image

06:27
105

Layer Comps

08:30
106

Black-Only Shadows

06:07
107

Create a Content Aware Fill Action

08:46
108

Create a Desaturate Edges Action

07:42
109

Create an Antique Color Action

13:52
110

Create a Contour Map Action

10:20
111

Faux Sunset Action

07:20
112

Photo Credit Action

05:54
113

Create Sharable Actions

07:31
114

Common Troubleshooting Issues Part 1

10:23
115

Common Troubleshooting Issues Part 2

07:57
116

Image Compatibility with Lightroom

03:29
117

Scratch Disk Is Full

06:02
118

Preview Thumbnail

02:10

Lesson Info

HDR

then a second, more standardized technique is one known as HDR. Your camera can Onley record a certain brightness range, and oftentimes the scenes that you're shooting are going to be on be beyond that range. And when that happens, either the brightest portion, your image will end up solid white with no detail or the darkest portion. Your image will end up solid black with no detail. And so, if you want to look at a example Ah, here I was in Southeast Asia, and I found this scene in This is generally what I captured. When here I'm near Angkor Wat, and if you look in the dark portion of this image, it's really hard to see any detail now. I could have changed my exposure and gone brighter and maybe even brighter, and I didn't go any brighter than this. But if I wanted to see the detail that was actually in this area down here at the bottom, I could have gone even brighter. Maybe two more shots to get brighter in order to see that detail. But when I do look at the sky, we're not getting t...

he detail up there in order to get up the detail in the sky and have to shoot darker, darker. I want to get the detail over here on the edges, maybe darker. If I do that, I do. It's known as bracketing my exposures. Then I can combine together those multiple exposures that vary in brightness into a single file that contains that full brightness range and that's known as high dynamic range HDR. When you shoot that, I'll usually end up, uh, setting my camera toe auto bracketing in the menu system for the camera, and I'm in aperture priority mode. So the aperture setting this consistent between all the shots and so it's only changing my shutter speed. You can do this handheld, although it will be, ah, higher quality result. Usually if you end up doing it with a tripod, I'm gonna take these images, select all of them, and there's two different ways you could merge this into HDR. The first is you go to the Tools menu. You could use Photoshopped, and there's a choice called merged HDR Pro. If I choose that option, it's going to load those files into layers and Photoshopped, and then it's gonna merge them together and it's gonna present me with this list of adjustments to apply in using those sliders you're gonna find some for make rather radical changes to your picture. That don't necessarily always look good like that Looks pretty terrible in other ones will just make radical changes. So you have to be rather subtle with the way you move these. Otherwise, it'll look very much fake. Well, I don't use that very often. I only use that when the feature I'm about to show you fails me and doesn't give me an acceptable result that this is my back up. So let me cancel this and show you the way I would usually do it. I would still select the same images. But this time I would go to the file menu here in bridge and I would choose opening camera raw. When I'm in camera in the upper left, I would go to a side menu and tell it to select all the images. I'd return to the same menu and then choose merge to HDR. Now you can do the same thing in adobe light room. If you select the images and you go to the photo menu, there'll be, ah, choice. I think it's just called merge or might be called photo emerge, and it'll offer you the choice of stitching a panorama or doing hdr, which is what I'm doing here. Now I get a preview in here, and there are some checked boxes on the right, a line images I almost always have turned on. The only time it wouldn't is when I'm on are extremely stable tripod and I'm using a cable release or another method for triggering the camera where I'm not touching the camera. Ah, then I wouldn't have to try to align the images. But you need that on if you're going to shoot handheld because the image won't be in the exact same location and each shot, then at the bottom is a choice. Go d ghost. And if there's any movement in the scene, if there is any wind and let's say there's a flag flapping in the wind or there's Ah River and the water is in a different position and each shot, then you're going to change this D ghost amount. If there's absolutely no motion whatsoever, you could set it off and then it's not gonna look it's not gonna compare the shots and look for motion. But if there's any chance that there was wind in your picture that might be moving things around, I would at least put it on low. There's a little check box called show overlay, and that will cause it to put red and top of the picture where it's compensating for motion. And so if it's obvious where the motion is in, the red is not covering all of the areas of motion, then you could bump this up to medium. The red will expand theory it's covering, or you could bump it up too high and it would work on an even larger area for this particular image. I don't really see any red in it. If I zoomed up, there be a small chance there be some area, so I'm gonna leave it on low because I'm assuming there be some sort of motion in there, and then I'm gonna choose merge, and when I dio, it will ask me where to save the resulting file you save, and then the end result. Lip here at the bottom of the list of thumbnails on the left side of my screen and what's special about this. It's not only is it an HDR image HDR, meaning a wider brightness range than a single shot, uh, it's also still a raw file. And that means changes to things like White Balance are going to give you a higher quality the result than if you used the first technique that I showed you, which is the technique I use as an alternative to this. Only when this technique messes up and can't combine images. So at this point, none of the adjustment sliders have been moved. That's because I did not have the check box turned on that, said Auto in. Now I can optimize this picture just like you would any other most of time with HDR to start off with. I just max out the shadows. As high as it goes. I bring the highlights as low as it goes, and then I just contrast to control. How big of a difference is there between bright and dark? After I do that, I treat it like any other photograph, and it doesn't mean I leave. Highlights is high, there's lows, it goes and shadows as high as it goes I might deviate if I don't need that much shadow detail or to darken the highlights that much. But now I'm going to treat this like any other photograph in when I'm processing it. I'm not going to spend too much time on the image itself, though, because this is more about the process of merging it, then how to process images. We had a separate lesson on his part of the complete guide That was just about camera raw and use all the techniques I discussed there. When you're done, click OK, and then you're gonna end up with your original exposures in somewhere else will be your HDR file. I saved mine on my desktop so that I could throw it away later because it was just for demo purposes. But it will usually have the letters hdr near the end of the file names. So you can tell that it's, uh, that now we can combine those two ideas hdr to get a wider brightness range in, then panorama to get a wider view. So here is an HDR panorama. Ah, there. This is where I took one dark shot, one medium shot, one bright shot, then I panned my camera over. Took another dark, medium bright pan over. Repeat process paying over repeat process pan over. Repeat process. And I probably could have gone even one darker than this, but, um, here they all are. Well, I'm gonna come in here and just select all type command A to do. So I'm gonna go to the file menu and choose opening camera. I'm gonna go to the menu in the upper left, Select. All in this time we have a special command called Merge to HDR Panorama and that's going to end up doing the HD. Ours first left one first next one, the next one, the next one till we have the individual exposures. Then it's going to do the panorama stitch, and it presents me here with the end result, and I can choose which kind of distortion it can use to combine them together. And I have auto crap turned on so I could see if I would like to do a boundary warp. This is an instance when boundary right might be useful because you see how curved these lines are in the building and by doing boundary where it might end up, straighten him out a little bit more. It's a personal preference would be critical right near the corners because sometimes you get odd kinks there, and if they're not usable, then you might not used boundary warp You might in, said Phil Edges, but I think this needs to specific of info. Phil Edges is usually only good. When you have organic material like dirt on the edges, then it works fine. But when you have straight lines like this that need to remain straight, they will not usually do a good job. So in this case, I'm just going to use auto crop in order to get a clean looking result. Then I choose merge in its right then that it asked me for where I should save it and under what file name. And then, of course, it will appear at the bottom of my thumbnail. So this is an HDR panorama, which is pretty interesting. It used to be there was a lot of work to accomplish that, and now it's a single command which could merge it for you and the end result. If you started with raw files, is a raw file and so I find when I do. HDR panorama is very frequently used, a technique that I demonstrated in a difference, um, complete guide class, which is the class that was about smart objects where I can interpret this image more than once. And I might need to do that one for this middle portion that needs a lot more brightness to it, another different setting for the area outside and all that to create an optimal results. All right, so those are the more traditional ideas. Now let's look at what else we can do or we think about photo shop at the time were shooting.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Lessons 1 - 6 - Handbook 1: Introduction to Adobe Photoshop
Lessons 7 - 12 - Handbook 2: How to Use Camera Raw
Lessons 13 - 18 - Handbook 3: Making Selections
Lessons 19 - 24 - Handbook 4: Using Layers
Lessons 25 - 30 - Handbook 5: Using Layer Masks
Lessons 31 - 38 - Handbook 6: Using Adjustment Layers
Lessons 39 - 44 - Handbook 7: Color Theory
Lessons 45 - 51 - Handbook 8: Retouching Essentials
Lessons 52 - 59 - Handbook 9: Tools Panel
Lessons 60 - 64 - Handbook 10: Layer Blending Modes
Lessons 65 - 70 - Handbook 11: How to Use Filters
Lessons 71 - 74 - Handbook 12: Advanced Masks
Lessons 75 - 81 - Handbook 13: Using Smart Objects
Lessons 82 - 86 - Handbook 14: Photography for Photoshop
Lessons 87 - 93 - Handbook 15: Advanced Photo Retouching
Lessons 94 - 98 - Handbook 16: Warp, Blend, Liquify
Lessons 99 - 105 - Handbook 17: Advanced Layers
Lessons 106 - 112 - Handbook 18: Actions
Lessons 113 - 117 - Handbook 19: Troubleshooting Issues
Practice Images 1: Introduction to Adobe Photoshop
Practice Images 2: How to Use Camera Raw
Practice Images 3: Making Selections
Practice Images 4: Using Layers
Practice Images 5: Using Layer Masks
Practice Images 6: Using Adjustment Layers
Practice Images 7: Color Theory
Practice Images 8: Retouching Essentials
Practice Images 9: Tools Panel
Practice Images 10: Layer Blending Modes
Practice Images 11: How to Use Filters
Practice Images 12: Advanced Masks
Practice Images 13: Using Smart Objects
Practice Images 14: Photography for Photoshop
Practice Images 15: Advanced Photo Retouching
Practice Images 16: Warp, Blend, Liquify
Practice Images 17: Advanced Layers
Practice Images 18: Actions
Practice Images 19: Troubleshooting Issues

Ratings and Reviews

Noel Ice
 

I am an avid reader of photoshop books, and an avid watcher of photoshop tutorials. I have attended (internet) several hundred of presentations. In the course of this endeavor, I have found my own favorite photoshop websites and instructors. Creative Live is probably the bargain out there as well as among the top three internet course sites. I have to say with great enthusiasm that the best Photoshop instructor is Ben Willmore. There are many great ones, but truly, he is the best I have come across, and, as indicated above, I have watched literally 100s of tutorials on Photoshop. I have seen all of Ben's courses, I think, and among them, this one is the best by far, and that is saying a lot, because that makes this course the best course on Photoshop to be found anywhere. I am going back and watching it twice. Not only is it comprehensive, but Ben is so familiar with his subject that he is able to explain it like no other. This is crème de la crème of Photoshop classes. I have been wanting to write this review for some time because I have been so thoroughly impressed with everything about this class!

ford smith
 

Highly recommended if you want to take your Photoshop skills to the next level. Ben Willmore is clear, concise, and professional. He also has a good speaking voice that is not distracting but also keeps you engaged. Lastly, I would recommend that as you become more advanced, increasing the speed of the video (one of the options given on the menu)...especially if you've gone through the course once before and maybe want to watch it again. The double speed is very efficient as you become more advanced in Photoshop. Thanks for the help Ben!

a Creativelive Student
 

Wow. I cannot communicate the value of this course!! The true value in this course is how the instructor identifies workflows you'll need before you'll ever realize it, repeats important information without it becoming annoying, and explains the "why" behind the techniques so well that even if you forget the exact method, you can figure it out via the principles learned. Excellent value, excellent material, excellent instructor!!!

Student Work

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