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[ 81 ]HDR Toning: A Different Use
Now I want to tell you about what has become my “secret sauce” for
finishing a composite. It involves using the HDR Toning feature but in a
way for which it wasn’t necessarily designed. But then again, how many
great things in history owe their discovery to venturing outside the box.
So if you have a composite image comprised of multiple layers of images,
graphics, and effects, this effect will help unify the overall look, while
adding some overall contrast.
Step One: HDR Toning won’t work on a layered document, so you’ll
need to flatten the image; however, you don’t want to flatten your work-
ing image. So instead, go under the Image menu, choose Duplicate, and
click OK to create a copy of the composite. Now you can go under the
Layer menu and choose Flatten Image.
Step Two: Once the image is flattened, go under the Image menu to
Adjustments and choose HDR Toning.
Step Three: Go to the bottom of the HDR Toning dialog and set the
Saturation to –100% to remove all the color, as it will tend to muddy
the image with oversaturation. Since this will be an overlay, it doesn’t
need color.
Step Four: Go up to the Tone & Detail section and increase the Detail
amount. This tends to brighten the image a little too much in some
areas, so dial down the Exposure slider a little to compensate for this.
Depending on the image, you can also increase the Gamma a little to
soften the highlights.
PixelSquid/3d_molier