Pseudo HDR – Creative Lightroom Episode 5
Creative Lightroom has new reached episode 5, the half way point. In this weeks episode I’ve got a quick Lightroom trick which gives your photos a little bit of HDR magic.
When I say HDR don’t think for a second that this is a replacement to the traditional HDR technique of taking multiple images and merging the exposure together in Photoshop, Photomatix or Nik HDR Pro. No what it does is to pull the maximum detail from the shadows and highlights from a single image.
By far the best photos to play with are RAW files that are correctly exposed or a bit underexposed.
To fully pull off this effect you’ll need Lightroom 5 or Lightroom 4.
As always it’s worth mentioning that if you’re a Photoshop user rather then Lightroom user, EVERYTHING I show in the video is the same as Adobe Camera RAW in Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CC. It’s also possible to pull off the same trick with Elements 11 (but not the vignette in RAW)
Can’t see the video? Click here: http://youtu.be/NJvQWenordQ
Hi Gavin, Great tutorial, amazing what you can do with a single image!
Hi Gavin, great looking effect especially on that photo. I’ve watched some of Serge Ramelli’s tutorials and he does the same to nearly all of his photos although he is a bit more reserved with the clarity slider ! When I try this I do get a lot of noise which is hard to remove without softening the whole picture. Is this a high ISO issue or should I just live with it ? Keep up the good work !
Noise is a tricky one, it can depend on ISO or the way in which your particular camera deals with noise. If you’re struggling to remove it within Lightroom its evident that you have unusually high amounts on noise. So my suggestion would be, keep on eye on ISO – keep it as low as you can in the situation you’re in, avoid anything about about 400. Also look into the way your camera deals with noise, do tests at different ISO values and see how it compares to other cameras on the market. Hope you find a solution! Dunno what Gavin’s answer would be though!
Anything above 400 ISO*
Another really great Lightroom tutorial – I love these! Great way of forcing out the hidden details in images, remember… ALWAYS SHOOT RAW! (As if you needed anymore reasons after seeing the benefits of RAW in this video.) Thanks, Gavin!
Thanks for the advise Jared. I have a Canon EOS 7D which I’m still finding my way around and may need to do some tests as you suggest . I also tend to under-expose a lot so need to open up the shadows quite a bit , probably doesn’t help !