34 13 April 2019 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I subscribe 0330 333 1113
James Paterson
James is as skilled a photo editor as he is a photographer. His
work has appeared in countless magazines and books, and in
2014 he was appointed editor of Practical Photoshop magazine.
His subjects range from portraits to landscapes, architecture
and underwater scenes. For James, Photoshop is more than
just a work tool. Visit http://www.patersonphotos.com.Lightroom tips
Get to grips with Lightroom’s powerful
HDR and Panorama Merge features with
James Paterson’s 20 top tips
3
Using merge in LR CC
As of February 2019, both HDR Merge
and Panorama Merge as well as the combined
HDR-Pano command are now featured in
Lightroom CC (the cloud-based cousin to
Lightroom Classic), so you can now merge
on the go. The settings and controls are
near-identical to the desktop version and
just as effective.Master
Photomerge
in Lightroom
1
Get started
Lightroom’s Photomerge command
makes it easy to create natural-looking HDR
images or stitch panoramas. Simply Cmd/
Ctrl+click to select a set of photos, right-click
them and choose Photomerge>HDR or
Panorama; then work through the simple
settings. Upon completion, a brand new DNG
fi le will be saved alongside your original
photos, with the suffi x *-HDR or *-Pano.Merge files on the go in Lightroom CC using controls that are near-identical to the desktop version
Technique
2
Shoot HDRs the easy way
To make an HDR image we ideally need
a set of three or more varying exposures,
taken with a tripod to keep the frames in
alignment. The easiest way to do this is
to make use of your camera’s bracketing
mode, making sure it’s in Aperture Priority
so that the shutter speed varies rather than
the depth of fi eld.4
Merge in the background
If you’re happy to run the merge
command using the last-used settings, then
there’s no need to enter the settings. You can
quickly set off a new merge in the background.
Highlight the images you want to use, then hit
Shift+Alt+M (Windows) or Shift+Ctrl+M (Mac)
to merge a panorama, or Shift+Alt+H
(Windows) or Shift+Ctrl+H (Mac) to merge to
HDR. The top-left progress bar shows the
merge has been initiated.