{"id":4104,"date":"2018-09-25T18:14:27","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T02:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/?p=4104"},"modified":"2018-09-26T16:26:44","modified_gmt":"2018-09-27T00:26:44","slug":"why-do-i-need-an-hdr-app-when-lightroom-has-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2018\/09\/25\/why-do-i-need-an-hdr-app-when-lightroom-has-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do I Need an HDR App when Lightroom Has It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was recently in the redwoods of Northern California.\u00a0 One of the groves I love is the Lady Bird Johnson Grove in Prairie Creek State Park.\u00a0 In it is a Western hemlock growing next to a massive redwood.\u00a0 The hemlock\u2019s roots spread out across the ground, making an interesting and photo-worthy pattern.\u00a0 I\u2019ve photographed it a number of times in the past but never liked what I got.<\/p>\n

This year was different.\u00a0 I finally saw a composition that excited me.\u00a0 The sky was overcast and a bright mist hung in the forest.\u00a0 I knew I was going to have a dynamic range problem so I shot HDR – 5 shots bracketed 1 1\/3 stops.<\/p>\n

I knew I was going to have a dynamic range problem so I shot HDR\u2026.<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was eager to see what it looked like so when I got back to my hotel room I ran it through the Lightroom HDR.\u00a0 One thing about the Lightroom HDR feature is that it is convenient, quick and creates a DNG file.\u00a0 But its drawback is that you don\u2019t have a lot of control.\u00a0 Besides alignment and de-ghosting, you have the Auto function, the same Auto found in the Basic group in Lightroom. \u00a0That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

I ran my five files through Lightroom HDR, but the results were disappointing.\u00a0 The foreground was rendered well but the forest in the background was blown out.\u00a0\u00a0 I tried my best to recover what I could, but it was too far gone.\u00a0 Another year gone by and I still don\u2019t have this photograph.<\/p>\n

\"Redwoods<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until sometime later that I was browsing my redwood images and came across this shot.\u00a0 I decided to have another go at it but this time using my tried and true Photomatix Pro 6.0.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been using Photomatix Pro since version 1 and it has always produced for me.\u00a0 Photomatix Pro is extremely versatile, giving the photographer a wide range of expressions from natural to surreal.\u00a0 And with over 40 presets, it\u2019s easy to find one that is very close to what you\u2019re looking for. \u00a0I always prefer the more natural look.<\/p>\n

\n

An image that I thought was lost came back to life with Photomatix Pro.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I imported the five files, selected one of the more natural presents and what a difference.\u00a0 An image that I thought was lost came back to life with Photomatix Pro.\u00a0 Not only was the foreground beautifully rendered but so was the background.\u00a0 A few small tweaks and the photograph was ready for the rest of the workflow.<\/p>\n

\"Redwoods<\/p>\n

I finished my normal workflow by completing the Lightroom adjustments once Photomatix Pro had imported the TIFF file back into the Lightroom catalog.\u00a0 That was followed by the fine tuning I always do in Photoshop.<\/p>\n

I thought you might like to see the HDR outputs from Lightroom and Photomatix Pro along with the finished photograph side-by-side.<\/p>\n

\"Redwoods<\/p>\n

Lightroom HDR still has a role to play for me.\u00a0 When I\u2019ve just uploaded my files from a shoot and am browsing through them to select the ones I want to work on, I find the Lightroom HDR very handy to get a sense of if I\u2019ve captured the dynamic range or not.\u00a0 But if I later decide I want to print the image and add it to my portfolio I\u2019ll redo the HDR blending in Photomatix Pro where I have so much more control.\u00a0 Lightroom HDR doesn\u2019t come close to providing the artistic control that I need.\u00a0 Photomatix Pro continues to fill that gap and remains an essential tool in my HDR workflow.<\/p>\n

You can see for yourself and give Photomatix Pro a spin by downloading a trial version from their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(53)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lightroom is good for basic HDR but for full creative control, HDR applications have an important role to play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1435,1436,1437,1339,8],"tags":[66,187,47,190],"class_list":["post-4104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hdr","category-landscape-photography","category-nature-photography","category-photography-workshop","category-workshops","tag-hdr","tag-high-dynamic-range","tag-lightroom","tag-photomatix-pro"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-14c","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4104"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4106,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104\/revisions\/4106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}