HDR-like effect applied to a single snapshot
Ever saw those surrealistic digital photographs of landscapes that are so rich in colours? These High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos are getting more popular due to the ease in producing them – with the proliferation of powerful software that combine bracketed shots of a scene at different exposures into a single photo.
Original dull photo with overexposed skies and underexposed foreground
The process allows much more detail to be displayed in a single photo than is normally possible, through the clever tone mapping of the colours in the photo. As a result, what little details are left from blown-out highlights and murky shadows are rescued and made more discernible.
HDR Toning using Equalize Method
What if you weren’t able to bracket the shot, or you have an old jpeg that wasn’t bracketed but still wants the same eerie and otherworldly effect? Photoshop CS5 has a new HDR Toning feature that can fake simulate the look, even if you only have a single exposure.
I tried it out and found the result rather impressive.
It resembles slightly the effect of the previous Shadow/Highlights command (still available in CS5) but gives the user plenty of options to give it an HDR look and feel.
The Highlight Compression Method produced disappointing results
To test out the HDR Toning feature, I used a photo I took of the famous canal in Kurashiki, Japan. The skies were overexposed while the shrubs and warehouse-turned-artisan shops on the banks were underexposed.
The HDR Toning command can be found under the Image > Adjustments submenu. Note that applying the command will flatten the image, so if you don’t want to lose your layers, duplicate your image, apply the HDR Toning command to the duplicate image, then drag the result back to the original image.
4 Methods of HDR Toning are available
There are 4 different Methods of generating HDR Toning effects in the dialog box. “Exposure and Gamma” gives you only two sliders to quickly vary the resulting appearance. “Highlight Appearance” and “Equalize Histogram” do not provide any controls over how the result is obtained – you just apply it and see if you like the result, which depends on the photo in question.
Tomorrow I will go through some of the presets and extensive controls available using the “Local Adaptation” Method.
Tags: CS5, image editor, photo editor, Photoshop, tips
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