Amateur Photographer (2019-04-13)

subscribe 0330 333 1113 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I 13 April 2019 37

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Cropandcorrectaftermerging

It’sbesttoapplylenscorrectionand

transformsettingstothecombinedHDRrather

thanattempttomakethesecorrectionsbeforehand,

asthey’llbediscarded.However,if you’vealready

spenttimecorrectingonephotoin theset,youcan

alwayssyncthecorrectionswiththeHDRfile once

it’smerged.

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Try HDR plug-ins

If you want to explore further HDR

options beyond those found in Lightroom

then there are plenty of dedicated apps

out there, including many – like Photomatix

here – that work as a plug-in for Lightroom,

meaning you can export your images to the

app with a right-click.

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Correct for movement

in HDRs

This seeks out movement and inconsistencies

between frames, like blowing clouds, water or

grass, and in areas where things have changed,

it uses the information from a single exposure

in the set, so that you don’t end up with messy

areas of transparency. There are four strength

settings to choose from. You can see how

each affects areas of the image by enabling

the overlay (Y).

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Change the preview

The preview box for HDR and

Panorama Merge can be dragged to resize

it. However, for performance reasons the

maximumresolutionof thepreviewdisplayed

withintheboxis only1024pxonthelongedge

(2048pxforretinadisplays).Assuch,the

imagemayinitiallylooklikeit’slowquality.

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Thesizelimit
Panoramas willbelimitedin sizeto
65,000 pixels along thelongside,or 512
megapixels (whichevercomesfirst).Thisis
plenty for most of us, butif youwanttobuild
hyper-detailed giga-panoramasfromdozens
of photos then you’ll needtouseother
stitching software like PTGui.

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Pano projections
Each of theseaffectsthewayimages
are stretched or warped.Perspectiveusesthe
centre image as a reference,thenstretches
and skews the others tomatchit. Cylindrical
maps the panorama asif ontheinsideof a
cylinder and corrects forbowingbetween
frames in wide panoramas.Sphericalworks
by mapping the framesasif theywereonthe
inside of a sphere – bestfor360°panoramas.

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Two merges in one

A recent update to Lightroom sees the

introduction of a new combined HDR Panorama

feature that lets you do both at once by merging

bracketed overlapping frames into an HDR

panorama. The HDRs automatically have the

auto-align and auto-settings options turned on, so

if you don’t want these to factor in then you’ll need

to fi rst create the HDRs manually before merging

to a panorama.

Give plug-ins such as

Photomatix a go

Merge bracketed

files that overlap

in one go