Page 72 - Photoshop for Lightroom Users – Scott Kelby 2nd Edition

Merge to HDR Pro: Creating Tone-Mapped-Looking HDR
Lightroom has a built-in HDR feature, and it does a great job of combining bracketed exposures into a realistic-looking image. But, what if you don’t want
a “realistic-looking” image? What if you want that tone-mapped, “looks like you did this in Photomatix” look? Well, Photoshop has a feature that does just
that. It kinda stinks for creating a realistic look, but for that full-on HDR look, it’s got it down. That being said, in this project (don’t forget to download
these images and follow along), I’m going to show you the technique I use to get the best of both worlds—something between full-on, super-tone-mapped
HDR and a realistic look.
Step One:
In Lightroom, select your bracketed shots by Command-clicking (PC: Ctrl-clicking) on them. Here, I’ve selected three bracketed shots (one with the
normal exposure, one two stops underexposed, and one two stops overexposed. These were, taken at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York
City). Once they’re selected, go under the Photo menu, under Edit In, and choose Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop. You can also do this by Right-
clicking on any of those three selected photos and choosing the same thing from the pop-up menu that appears (as shown here).

Step Two:
This launches Photoshop (if it’s not already open), brings up the Merge to HDR Pro dialog (shown here), and compiles your selected images into one flat-
looking, fairly ugly image (as seen here), but that’s just reflecting the default settings. By the way, although I used just three bracketed images total to make
this ugly HDR, you can use five frames, seven, nine, whatever you like. It really doesn’t matter how many you choose, because it will still look pretty ugly.
Rather than dragging all these sliders around, there are some built-in presets found in the Preset pop-up menu in the top-right corner of the dialog. These
are a collection of HDR presets that are, for the most part, pretty unusable.