Get started today and see what you can create. With intuitive user interfaces and a wealth of online tutorials to browse, Photoshop and Lightroom have all you need to make stunning HDR photos that truly capture the essence of a high-contrast scene. Shoot each piece of a panoramic scene using the same exposure bracketing, and Lightroom will combine the exposure bracketed files and stitch together an HDR panorama, all in one step. Now the Lightroom camera will automatically capture an exposure bracket and will align, merge, and deghost the files.įor the best results when shooting HDR on mobile, use a tripod or brace the camera to keep it extremely still. Press and hold to the left of the shutter button to select HDR.In Lightroom mobile, click Library and then select the camera icon in the lower right corner.Simply launch the in-app camera from a compatible mobile device and activate HDR mode. With Lightroom for mobile, you can capture real-time, HDR-style photos in one click. Shoot HDR photos on mobile with one click. After editing, you can convert your image into a TIFF, JPG (or JPEG), or other format as needed. These files contain greater tonal information and more accurate pixel values. RAW files: Shoot your photos in raw mode.Leave your aperture (f-stop) the same for each shot. Shutter speed: To control the exposure of your photos for HDR merging, shutter speed adjustments are the way to go.You can fine-tune color with Photoshop and Lightroom, but you should try to capture the most consistent original files as possible. White balance: Set your white balance manually, to avoid color shifts between shots.But some ghosting is unavoidable and can be corrected with editing tools. You can also mitigate camera movement by using a tripod and taking your shots quickly. Ghosting: Anything that moves in your frame between shots - like clouds or trees on a windy day - will appear blurry in your merged image.This way, your photos will merge more easily into a single image. Take your shots as close together in time as possible to help with this, and keep in mind the following issues: Your main goal in achieving a high-quality HDR image is to keep everything in your three exposures as consistent as possible. For example, a 1.0 bracketing setting means the darker shot will have an exposure of -1.0 from the base shot, and your lighter shot will have an exposure of +1.0 from the base shot. “It will do all three in a row when you click the shutter button just once.”ĭepending on its functionality, your camera may also allow you to choose how varied your bracketing shots are. “The camera will take a base image, then the next image (slightly underexposed), and then the next image (slightly overexposed),” explains Kosslow. Many cameras have a bracketing function, which you can set to take three or more shots automatically. Take HDR shots automatically with bracketing.
In this shot, you’ll capture all the details in your darker area (such as the ground), and your bright area will appear blown out. Lighter shot: One photo with the shutter speed adjusted for the darkest areas of the scene.In this shot, you’ll capture all the details in your bright area (such as the sky), and your dark area will appear in silhouette. Darker shot: One photo with the shutter speed adjusted for the brightest areas of the scene.Base shot: One photo of the scene with your camera adjusted to the base exposure or the midrange between the bright and dark areas.Shoot the following three types of photos, one after another in quick succession: While the human eye can look at a scene and adjust very quickly as it looks into the shadows and brighter areas of that dynamic range, that adjustment is not something cameras can do.Ī tripod is essential to keep your camera steady and ensure image alignment. “The human eye has about 30 stops of dynamic range it can process, while your top cameras nowadays have only anywhere between 12 and 15,” explains photographer Lukas Kosslow. Cameras capture less tonal range or different exposure levels than we can see, so working with HDR is a great way to expand what we can create. An HDR image of that same scene preserves both the details of the sunset and the foreground.Ĭertain types of scenes require HDR image capture and HDR image editing to appear in a photo the way they do to the naked eye. If you expose on a person in the foreground, the sky will be too bright and washed out. If you take a picture of a sunset and let the camera decide on the exposure, the foreground of the image will likely be too dark to make out. HDR stands for high dynamic range, and these types of images display more exposure levels than cameras can typically capture with one shot.