Digital SLR Photography - UK (2019-07)

Adobe Lightroom CC

How to combine

brackets for HDR

HERE’S HOW TO BLEND YOUR BRACKETED EXPOSURES

TOGETHER IN ADOBE LIGHTROOM IN MERE MINUTES...

T

HERE ARE DEDICATED HDR software packages out there that

offer no end of presets and controls. Some are fantastic, and

some are overly complicated for a beginner or HDR layman.

To be honest, most of the time the results from the presets can look

jarring and are part of the reason why HDR ended up with a bit of a

bad name for itself. Done well and tastefully, a successful HDR image

shouldn’t look like it was captured in HDR at all.

Rather than use one of the dedicated HDR packages here, I’m going

to stick to Adobe Lightroom. The built-in HDR Photo Merge feature

(Lightroom 6 and Lightroom Classic CC) is easy to use, and provides

you with a simple HDR base file from which you can apply your own

edits – essentially it uses the bracketed sequence to create one file

with vast dynamic range, all within the familiarity of Lightroom.

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MERGE SETTINGS With the full bracket selected, right-click on any

of the selected images and go to Photo Merge>HDR.... In the

Photo Merge window that opens check Auto Align. You can leave

Auto Settings checked, but I like to uncheck it and apply my own edits.

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SELECT EXPOSURES Import your images into Lightroom, as you usually

would. Identify the bracketed sequence in the Library module. Then

click on the first image of your bracketed set and, holding down the

Shift key, click on the last image in your bracketed set to select them all.

D O N E W E L L A ND TASTEFULLY, A SUCCESSFUL HDR IMAGE

SHOULDN’T LOOK LIKE IT WAS CAPTURED I N H D R AT A L L

Above: A representation of the five different exposures that went into creating the final image

(right). While the darkest and lightest frames probably aren't needed, they offer a bit of a safety net

when it comes to recovering highlights and drawing out shadow detail without loss of quality.

34 Digital SLR Photography July 2019