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Single Image Processing for HDR…Again

July 23, 2008 by 12 Comments

I received a comment on my past Single Image processing video from one of my subscribers.  He told me about a different method that he was using for processing single RAW images for HDR processing.  I gave it a try and it’s pretty darn cool.  So much so in fact that I made a tutorial to show you how it’s done.  Just like everything in Photoshop, there always seems to be a multitude of ways to get things done.  Enjoy.

Here’s the before and after for comparison

Related posts:

  1. Single Image Tonemapping in Photoshop CS5
  2. Excessive HDR Noise in the Single Image Process
  3. HDR Processing in Photoshop – A Follow-Up Video
  4. Image Processing – The Other Half of the Coin
  5. Image Processing for Stock
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  • http://9030.blogspot.com Goh Keat Liang

    i’m wonder if using a JPEG file then convert to 32bit image then tone mapped. i think that might work.
    but i think the quality if not as good as RAW.

  • http://www.seanleahyphotography.com Sean

    Just want to say thanks, this video gave me an “a-ha!” moment.

    And yes this will work with jpegs, they just wont have as much color depth as you loose that information when the image is compressed into JPEG format from RAW. But it still works :)

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  • Rick

    Jeff – thanks for the tip, I think I’ll give this a shot. One question though, do you use the standalone version of Photomatix or the plug-in or both?

    Rick

  • Charlie

    I have a workflow question. If you’re creating your HDR file using Photoshop and bringing the file back into photoshop for more editing after tone mapping. Why don’t you just using the Photomatix plugin within Photoshop? Then you don’t need to save multiple files and you’d only have to open the file and do everything in one motion.

  • http://www.revellphotography.com jeff

    Rick and Charlie,
    You both have fairly similar questions which I can easily answer. I use the full version of Photomatix Pro because it is what I have. I could easily use the plug-in for the tonemapping process if I wanted to pay for it but since I own the full version, it doesn’t make much sense for me to buy the plug-in. The full version gives some extra features that allow me to bypass Photoshop if I want to but I like combining both applications. If I were starting fresh, I would probably just buy the tonemapping plug-in and skip the full version.

    Jeff

  • http://9030.blogspot.com Goh Keat Liang

    Try to download the plug in with and use your Photomatix Pro Serial it works :)

  • Harold Dunstan

    Jeff – I am interested that you can show an image in exr file format. I have Bridge 2.1.1.9 which my updater says is the latest but I cannot view the 32 bit exr image in Bridge. I understood that bridge thumbnails did not support 32 bit6 images. Is there some special tweak ?

    Harold

  • Rick

    Jeff – thanks for the advice on the plug-in. I pretty much go through Lightroom and CS3 for everything so this would probably work better for me.

    Rick

  • Jay S

    Does anyone seriously think that the ‘after’ image is better than the ‘before’? All that’s been done is blow out the shadows to produce a flat image that has no depth at all !! *shakes head*

  • http://pseudoscape.photoworkshop.com Gopi

    I noticed that you said that HDR format does not render a thumbnail of a zoomed area within a photo. In the latest version of Photomatix, you can do that.

  • Duncan G.

    Thanks again enjoyed it very much