On a sunny day you would use images that were bracketed further apart. That’s not a lot, but it was a cloudy day and what I wanted was a photo that captured detail in both the landscape and the sky. I used two photos, bracketed one stop apart. From there you can edit the image as normal in the Develop module. Lightroom saves the merged image as a 32-bit DNG file, with the suffix -HDR appended to the file name, and takes you back to the module where you started. Tick the Show Deghost Overlay box, to reveal the areas in which Lightroom has detected and attempted to clean up ghosting (it is shown in red).Ĭlick the Merge button when you’re done. You can simply go back and reprocess the images if you notice ghosting at that stage. You can’t zoom in to a 100% in the preview mode, so you may only become aware of ghosting once you move on to the Develop module and zoom in to 1:1 magnification. Ghosting takes the form of lines, white patches, or other artefacts caused by subject movement taking place between frames (such as trees blowing in the wind, clouds moving across the sky, or people walking through the scene). You can set Deghost Amount to Low, Medium, or High if you see any ghosting (double images) in the image. This is deliberate, as the aim is to let Lightroom produce a natural looking HDR image, which you can then process in the Develop module to achieve the desired look. You may be surprised to learn that there are not many settings to adjust. If there is subject movement between frames you can set Deghost Amount to Low, Medium, or High (trial and error is the only way to see what works best, and is different for each set of images). I find HDR merge works best with the Auto Align and Auto Tone boxes ticked (see below). Lightroom remembers the last settings used, if you have changed them.Īuto Align is useful if the camera moved between exposures (for example if you hand-held the camera) and Auto Tone performs a similar function to the Auto Tone settings in the Basic Panel of the Develop module. The Auto Align and Auto Tone boxes are ticked, and the Deghost Amount is set to None, by default. This may take some time, especially if you have selected several images. The HDR Merge Preview window opens, and Lightroom creates a preview of the HDR image. Or, right-click on one of the selected photos and select Photo Merge >HDR. Alternatively, you can select the images in the Filmstrip in the Develop module. Start in Grid View in the Library module, and select the images you want to merge. Let’s look at a couple of practical examples to see how it performs. There is less noise in shadow areas than you would expect from a regular, single photo.Having said that, I’ve found the best results come from bracketed photos taken with a tripod mounted camera. You can take bracketed sequences hand-held, and Lightroom will align them automatically.There is also much more information in the file for Lightroom to work with, when you make adjustments with the Shadows and Highlights sliders (and local adjustment tools like the Graduated and Radial filters). The main difference is that the Exposure slider runs from -10 to + 10 stops, rather than the normal -4 to +4. Not only is this smaller than a TIFF file, but you can process it in Lightroom the same as you do with any other DNG or Raw file. The final HDR image is saved as a DNG file.Two seem to be enough (you can use more if you want, or if you have a really contrasty scene), one exposed at -2 stops, the other at +2 stops. You don’t need a lot of bracketed images.Not everybody will see this as an advantage – but if you want to create garish, over-saturated images the aforementioned plug-ins will help. Lightroom’s HDR merge creates natural looking HDR images.Most HDR plug-ins are not free, and are an additional cost for you.
Photomatix and HDR Efex Pro are two of the best known, and MacPhun’s Aurora HDR (Mac only) is a new application that has received good reviews.īut, if you have Lightroom 6 or CC, you can create HDR images right within Lightroom itself, without having to buy a plug-in. There are several advantages to using Lightroom for your HDR conversions: There are lots of plug-ins that you can use with Lightroom to create High Dynamic Range (HDR) images.