HDR Photography

What is HDR Photography? Is different methods that when they are put together create imaging and photography to capture a more distinct dynamic range between the dark and light areas of an image. HDR photos can show a more accurately the intense levels found in real scenes. It can vary from direct sunlight to faint starlight.

How are HDR photos achieved? They are achieved by taking three different layers. There are many different ways and methods that you can use in Photoshop and in other photo editors. Here are some examples.

1) You need a digital camera that allows you to set the exposure manually, a sturdy tripod, something thats not going to move to take a picture of and a computer with photoshop on it. When you take your photos you need change the exposure(ie: -2EV, Metered EV and +2EV). In photoshop change your image to 16 bits. The you can play around with what different effects.

2) If you want to make your photo look gritty, here is what you do. Open up photoshop, convert to smart object, the go into the images settings>adjustments>shadow/highlights. By doing this a few bars should pop up, move the bars to your liking. After that add a halo effect with the Unsharp Mask filter.Choose Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp mask, again move the bar to where you want it. The next step is the Black and White adjustment layer, Layer>New adjustment layer> Black and white, change it to Overlay. Adjust the colours then create a new layer named "Grain". Add 50% grain and then add noise by choosing filter>Noise>add noise. Lastly blur the noise and increase the contrast of the layer with Auto Levels.

3) This one is very similar to the first example. You add your pictures and all of that and then instead of changing it to 16 bit, you change it to 8 bit. This changes the image a bit, but not very much, i prefer 16 bit.

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Personal: In my images I was looking for a source of light in each of them. From the sun, to an actual light. I wanted each of them to be bright and colorful. When I edited them in photoshop, I added more than three different exposures to a few of the pictures. Doing this made the photos have more definition to them.