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HDR Pro Part 2

But then there are other things that we want to compensate for before we merge. So let's, look at that here's. Another siri's of images where this is the general shot I was taking were in iceland. There's this farm with building buildings got a, uh, grass roof on it and everything and I wanted to show what's inside. Well, if I get it bright bright enough we could see what's inside that's the shot okay, that looks usable. No it's just beyond the brightness range my camera can deliver, but at least I got what was inside. So I find whatever exposure setting it takes experiment with making a brighter and brighter and brighter until I can see what I really want to see in that dark part of the image. Then I'm going to now go darker and darker and darker and darker until we get the other side. If this gave me the darkest part now we need to be able to get the brightest part so I'm making it darker. Take another shot, make it darker take another shot thinking darker take another shot, make it ...

darker, take another shot, make it darker take another shot. Well, finally we have our sky all right usually the maximum amount you want between these on your camera settings is two stops you know, on your camera you have a little gauge that's numbered. It'll say zero in the middle, it will say plus one plus two plus three those are stops. You want the difference. You want that little mark that's, their little arrow to move a maximum of two stops between these exposures. And if you want to get the most ideal, you do one stop between them. But one stop often it's just way too many pictures for some people, and you wouldn't notice it on the majority of images, there's about thirty percent of the images where if he did one stop, you'd notice a quality difference for the rest of the images to stops you would not wouldn't be ableto, so I'm going to take all these images. And now let's think about just selected them all before I merge them ogg over here to open and camera on and before I adjust him, I can't see what the heck's going on by looking at this one, so I'll pick one that looks semi normal, and before I move any of the sliders on the right side of my screen, I'll hit the select all button, so anything I do to them is going to affect them all now there are certain things I want to do before. I emerged these images together and let's look at what those might be one is it's not a bad thing to adjust white balance because every time you take a picture your camera if it's set to auto white balance was most are white balance is the color correction that your camera does it could be shifting around a lot with that and if you want to make it consistent between all the shots you could adjust it now because when we're done merging is hdr ah you're we're no longer going to have a raw file and when you have a raw file you could get slightly not even slightly sometimes dramatically better looking results when you do color correction just there's more information in the file is all and so I will often adjust temperature intent if they're off meaning that if the colors in the picture look way too yellow way too orange way to anything if the colors just look off adjust temperature intent give him is close to um good looking as you can second yes I go to that lens tab remember the one that looks like a lens sliced in half in under the lens tab there's that sub tab called color remember the one called remove chromatic aberration those are the little colored halos around things and if I were to see him in this image had probably seen where this rock hits the sky and I'm not certain of all see them or not but I just saw him down there but right here on if you can see a slight green halo around that edge uh but I can see it right there you can't can you see bluish green right there and otherwise I can see reddish on this edge right here though that's chromatic aberrations you khun see reddish on this edge here I can see it up in there in fact there I can see the red and the green at the same time green red ok so if I turn on removed dramatic aberrations those hopefully will be lessened now this is an image that's actually unusual it still has some of the green showing up this is one of the ones that could use some of the advanced stuff it's just beyond this class though just know that that is a good thing to turn on before doing hdr because what happens is with hdr it's going to exaggerate that chromatic aberration if it's in your image it's going to become more pronounced and anything you do to make it more pronounced is going to make it more difficult to get rid of. So we want to get rid of it before emerge it instead of after so remove chromatic aberration great thing to do white balance great thing to do. The other thing would be noise reduction if you notice that your images look noisy let's, say your camera when you're out shooting the iso setting the film speed setting instead of being at one hundred, which might be the default, you had it at eight hundred or sixteen hundred, because your shooting your nighttime, you know where you need to turn that up to get faster shutter speeds? Well, the higher you put that setting called s o, the noisier pictures get, and so if that's the case, and I noticed that you'd want to do noise reduction right now, noise reduction is not something we've gotten into, but it is in camera, and it is something you'd want to apply. If you notice to your images being noisy, I'm not gonna do it right now, because we haven't talked about it yet, and I don't want to get too deep into a different topic we're gonna click done when I'm done. And so now we've done things that are going toe that are best done beforehand, because they either needed to be a raw file in the case of white bounds, to do their best work, or they're going to be exaggerated, and therefore harder to get rid of, in the case of chromatic aberrations and noise is also going to be harder to get rid of, because it's going to be exaggerated, everybody cranks up things like clarity, which makes the everything pop but it makes noise pop too if we get rid of that before emerge it be better so now we're going to go over her emerge this and I'll show you I'm assuming in this image of course it thinks it's busy it's not uh but I'm assuming that this image might not turn out it's best and it's just happens to be that I find when there is a small area that is in the shade and that's what you're really trying to bring out as opposed to a small area that's extremely bright like a window the results aren't always quite it's good and we'll see if this is one it's just like with anything there sometimes when it just doesn't, uh isn't optimal, well, we'll see what we get just from past experience, I'm assuming that might okay, I look at this and I think is there any motion? Well, I don't know, but I'm assuming there might have been a slight breeze and if so, there are all sorts of twigs and things that could be moving around, so I probably want to turn on remove ghosts then if I look in here and I see any of these little twigs and things having a double image or anything like that, I would click around on some of the other images in see if they look different and you can zoom up on the image if you know of keyboard shortcuts or in the lower left down here there's a plus and minus button for zooming in uh, so you can inspect it, uh, have complete tony in and camera let's hit the button should be in there just a minute and we're going to the same standard thing, which is take highlights and shadows movement officer directions doesn't mean we're going to end there just means to better start, then starting with him zeroed out okay now highlights all the way down, which is should give us our sky shadows all the way up, which should give us our interior, and then we adjust exposure to get overall brightness, okay? And at that point, we just adjust the rest of the slider, so since we have our shadows and highlights already maxed out, we can't move them any further, so if I wanted to get more details in the shadows, I might not be able to get it there, but we have contrast and I could say bring down the contrast to try to get a little bit less than between there make it pop a little bit more with clarity, and if the colors, if I don't like him a little bit, we'll warm whatever but I confined to in the image and I could get a sense of what's in there and what's up here now if there's not enough in there that's when I grabbed the adjustment brush treat this like any other image at this point and so with the adjustment brush I say I have a limited range of sliders here but which one might be able to deal with an area like that? I would think for one shadows I know shadows already maxed out on the main set of sliders you can get them to go a little bit further here you are limited in the range but you can I might guess that exposure bring it up would do it and now I gotta paint it in so autumn ask us turned on and I'd be more careful with my painting here zoom up you know make sure that you're not going to crazy on it and s o now experiment with these sliders and say, well can I get a little bit of what's in there? Maybe I just the contrast of what's in there see if my shadows help it all just fine tune thanks. See if you can get to a point like um there's without the adjustment with the adjustment brush there's with needed we were careful cause I can see a little bit where the edge of my painting wass maybe I want to extend the painting out here uh that kind of thing so that one I don't think looks quite as good as the others, just the successful, but I do have the detail of the sky and the detail inside it's just I'm not overly happy with the result. Yes, instead of shooting five different or six different exposures, yeah, could you not take one exposure and go into camera and then alter make several copies with different exposures that would eliminate movement that you might get? Is there some disadvantage in doing that mean using a single exposure say, using a single exposure, but then going on camera and making copies with different exposures above from beetle? Yes, the main thing is the area inside there would be so noisy that it be hard to see any detail in it. Remember when I had that one picture that almost look black, but I brighten it up tremendously and it was a waterfall in there and you almost didn't even know there was a waterfall there, and then we zoomed up on it how much noise there is with hdr as long as we got one where that interior was bright enough, where it looked like a bright as he wanted it to look in one of the exposure's, there would be no dramatic noise in there, it would be just like it if it was literally lit that amount in so it's it's the noise that you're gonna have so much of it that it's not going to be is usable yeah, thea removed ghosts it would generally be good just to had that checked most of the time or what's the point where you wouldn't really need it if there's no movement in the scene whatsoever I'm in my house shooting something I can't see out the window there's nothing moving, it takes more processing time and it can in some situations degrade the quality a little bit as it tries to combine things together but in general for shooting in nature and things where there's trees and stuff it might be a good thing toe habit on is the general idea because there's probably a little breeze that you're not noticing and things there moving around a little bit so that's hdr it's taking multiple exposures different brightness is in combining the into a single shot you saw that there are some pre adjustment things like white balance like chromatic aberrations in like noise reduction that air not a bad thing to do ahead of time if you don't do in this result still going to look okay? It's just if you zoomed up really close and you're really criticized things, it could look better ah and then when we're processing it, if there's any motion at all removed ghosts is going to help too prevent problems and then our adjustment is in camera and justice the default I move shadows and highlights to their extreme doesn't mean it stays there just means it starts there because I get in okay, look at the image and then I find tune it just like I would any image, uh, take some time just getting used to cameras the main thing, but that's not just for hd arts, anything the right questions are concerning the white balance. Um, I noticed that a lot of times you would, um just the colors first before actually going to the eyedropper. And I know for myself sometimes when I do a lot of colors, my eyes start getting confused. So is it good to start with white balance like, man? Maybe I wanted a little bit one way or the other and work that way. Um, I don't know if I absolutely get the way you're asking the question, but thea's faras white balance is concerned. The first thing is is it's most useful tohave your image surrounded with gray and that's why you see gray here and bridge and another things is because if you're screen is off for your eyes, are you getting used to particular colors? The more you look at grey, the more you calibrate you adjust to color correcting that gray with with your brains, you could say, and the easier it is for you to kind of see what's in there, but as far as attorney what white balance setting should be used in a picture. The first thing I'll do is a look and say, is there anything in the image that if I was standing there in person and pointed at it and said, ask somebody what color is that? They would pretty much agree with you that there's no color in it, meaning it would look the same in a black and white photo as it does here in this color environment that would be this white sheet of paper, the black text that's on it, a gray things, and I might have a handkerchief on it might be part of their shoes, that kind of thing or the laptop that we have here, the greys, those were the first things I'd look forward to see. Is there anything in the scene? Because if there is, I can use the eyedropper and click on it, and therefore you have to trust my eyes that I have to trust my screen. I'm trusting the fact that photo shop can look at that area and say, is there anything in there that shouldn't be there? Because if it's supposed to be gray and it's yellow it's going to move the slaughter away from yellow until there's, no more yellow in it, that kind of thing. So it's the first thing to do second thing I dio is when I'm moving the white balance around, I look for where do the color separate the most? Because if there's too much yellow, everything looks yellow and that means what should be green in what should be red look more yellowish, and so there they don't separate as much, and when I get to the point where all the yellow is a way that to look like they're distinctly different colors and so I'm moving around try to get the colors to be the most distinctly different in the third thing to do is just look at the picture and say, what makes it look the most pleasant? Because not every image should look what some people call neutral as if it was lit with white light. Sometimes you want it to look yellowish. What looks warm s o those kind of three things that I go through, and sometimes I just don't know if I have to experiment. Just a quick one from kane newberg and one of the person was wondering if you hand hold your camera and so it's slightly off can you automatically line them up in it? Does it automatically when you do the merging process where I do merge to hdr pro it's murdered trying to align the images so that if your camera moved it all between them it's trying to compensate for it and it could do it a limited amount so you can do it hand held I do it all the time tens of thousands of hdr images were there shot hand held it's not that big of a deal but you do need a stable hand. Hold me don't be loosey goosey with it get good at taking your elbows and shoving them into your sides and then doing like this so that you have those your left hand if your right hand well, everybody's got a right handed out a camera looks the shutter but called the bottom your lens with your left hand hold that the right hand like this and then get it against your eyes so that it's got those points of contact or actually set it on your shoulder it's a weird thing, but you can set your camera here and shoot with your opposite I and it's sitting right there on your shoulder uh I think that joe mcnally taught me that I think he just sat on your shoulder shoot with your opposite I it's a stable, much more stable than your flame flano flailing around hands so yeah, the only thing is we're shooting hand held if it starts to get somewhat dark out, I can usually tell when it gets too dark because I can hear my camera sound different usually my camera when it takes three shots I just hear it is three clicks click, click click but if you ever hear it not be a single click as the sound instead it sounds like a clock click that means it was a longer exposure it's getting me too long to be hand held so instead of hearing click click it goes really fast when it takes the three exposures you hear one of them sound like a click click click you know, little extended you know it's getting little too long to be handheld uh, just try to brace it real well and then one final one before we move on and this might lead into something that we're doing later in the course somebody wants to know can you merge images that are not the exact same shot like two created new graphic from two different photo files, so what happens if you if you take as photo of a zebra is this the way that you would merge it onto a city sidewalk? I wouldn't use this particular because when you're merging together part of the process is I don't know if you noticed or not but in the merge two hdr dialog box the big thing that showed up that had the removed ghost check box below each image it had a number the number in the middle said zero the number like two the left said one point nine or something like that and that was the difference the brightness difference in the pictures in stops zero means you're metered exposure or default exposure and then this one was two stops under exposed this was two stops overexposed and it needs that information and if you grab a random pictures were those values are going to be very similar like normally exposed images it's going toe sometimes beep at you and say what the hell are you doing? This is a nation e r I would do other things if you take those images and load them a separate layers and photo shop there's something under the edit menu called uh I think it's auto blend layers it's one thing he could use or you can use something called an image stack which we won't have time to get into here but if you want to google it uh do smart object image stack and if you learn how to do those it's another way in the third ways, with something called blending modes. But those air kind of beyond this course. But no, I wouldn't. General use hdr for that. But interesting idea. Like I like the mindset that that comes from because I like using things for what they're not designed for in getting cool results.