In this HDR Photoshop tutorial you’ll learn how to make realistic looking HDR photo. Instead of Merge to HDR command used in many other Photoshop tutorials this one is about exposure blending through layers and masks. The aim was to avoid manual work and make the process of creating realistic HDR photography as painless as possible. Though you still have some settings to tweak and get desired look. To follow this tutorial you can download HDR samples with different exposures.
1. Open three properly exposed for HDR photos on different layers. First goes photo with normal exposure (0EV), than Underexposed (-2EV) and last Overexposed (+2EV).
2. Select Underexposed Layer and apply Select->Color range->Shadows, check Invert box.
3. Apply Select->Modify->Feather, Feather Radius 150-250px (vary for different photos and also depends on image size). Decrease the Layer Opacity to 60-70%
4. Now select Overexposed layer and repeat steps 2 and 3 with one important exception: uncheck Invert box.
5. Finally the photo needs a little boost in brightness and contrast (Levels) and Saturation.
Realistic HDR Photo
Photomatix version
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This is really FANTASTIC! I have photomatix but I’m very pleased with these results! Can’t wait to try this out with my own pictures!
Not a bad way to get started, but you are actually introducing a lot of halos (see for instance in the sky around the dome). What you are doing is fairly similar to how tonemapping software works behind the scenes, except that they have a lot more tweaking possibilities. While I agree that the default photomatix look is crap, by using well chosen parameters *and* further processing in photoshop, it is possible to obtain a result better than both of your images.
Hmmm… I seem to be missing something. In step 3, I can see Select->Modify and Select->Feather but no Select->Modify->Feather . So I tried Select->Feather, gave a Feather Radius 150-250px; this changes the selection. But what should I do with the selected portion?