Less Conventional HDR – and an HDR Workflow
I recently decided to try using HDR for some, what might be considered, less conventional applications. I was doing some shooting for a local café before Christmas. In one session, I was actually working in the café while it was open. This was kind of cool; customers could see what was going on, people were asking questions and it was a nice interactive environment. In the other session I was shooting in the kitchen in the back of the shop. In both cases space was quite limited and bringing in accessory lighting wasn’t on. What do I do? How do I work around this? How do I get more control of the lighting? HDR? Maybe. I also thought the detail enhancing aspects of HDR would be beneficial too.
I decided to try shooting the project using HDR. My rationale was that by shooting in HDR and tonemapping with a very light hand I could generate fairly flat, low contrast starting point images that would then allow me to have a bit more control of shadows and light/dark contrast via the digital darkroom.
The bracketed sequences were 7 shots at 1 stop intervals for a -3 to +3 bracket. RAW files were imported into Lightroom. I use Photomatix and the Lightroom plugin for most of my HDR work. I like most of what PM offers and how it works. One thing I’d like to see the folks at HDRSoft do is add the ability to tag multi-shot, tonemapped HDRs with a colour space. (They allow it for single-shot, pseudo-HDR conversions but not multi-shot. Depending on how you have your preferences set up in Lightroom/Photoshop you may end up with your tonemapped TIFFs tagged with a colour space you don’t want.) Photomatix works faster if you create your 32 bit files from TIFFs rather than RAW files. The conversion to RAW, particularly out of the LR plugin just takes a little longer. So after importing my RAW files, the only thing I might adjust is the white balance – nothing else. The RAW files then get batch exported to 16 bit TIFF files and these TIFF files are what get exported to Photomatix. You can also use the PM batch function to import the files and process them to 32 bit files or to fully tonemapped LDR files. Since we’re discussing an HDR workflow I’m not going to go into a discussion of backing up your RAW files right after loading them onto your computer. But you do back up your RAW files right after loading them onto your computer, right? Don’t you? 30 lashes with a wet noodle if you don’t.
[Some HDR applications work better/faster with RAW files. HDR PhotoStudio is one of those. So if you're using something other than PM, find out what file types work best and adjust your workflow accordingly.]
Once the tonemapping is done, the files get imported back into LR where additional work is done as needed. If more complex work is needed such as perspective correction, I’ll right-click and choose the Edit In>Photoshop, Edit a Copy and Render using LR to open the image in PS for additional editing that can’t be done in LR. This way I still have my original TIFF file if I want to go back to it for some reason. This approach does chew up hard drive space but storage is pretty inexpensive these days so leaving that added flexibility is, I think, a positive. Once the work in PS is done, the file gets saved and LR updates the image automatically.
Once all the editing is done, I’ll output for specific purposes. In most cases this is going to be smaller JPEG files for web use or full rez JPEG files for printing.
How’d the HDR experiment work out? Well, not badly I think. The owner of the café is happy with the results, which is the most important thing.
Now, I’m no food stylist (yeah, I know, some would say I’m no photographer either) but I think the end results weren’t too bad. These small JPEGs don’t show the full detail that is captured in the full size files, unfortunately. Higher quality versions can be seen on my Facebook Page or my Flickr portfolio.
Handmade chocolates
Lunch