22 Tutorials For Creating High Dynamic Range Photographs Using Photoshop / Photomatix

9. Cambridge In Colour
Cambridge In Colour explains why increasing the dynamic range of your photography is a good thing, when and where the technique should be applied as well as some of the trade off that you will encounter by taking the HDR approach. Many people (myself included) treat HDR-esque post-processing as a black box; images go into Photomatix, HDR comes out followed by tone mapping. Cambridge In Colour delves behind the scenes and explains very well the mechanisms of HDR – well worth the read if you want to sound all knowledgeable on the topic  .













10. NatureScapes
This isn’t so much a traditional guide as it is a book on the topic! You can download a 49 page pdf of this guide; well worth having saved to disk. It covers every aspect you could ask for: What is HDR?, Setting Up Input Images, Processing a Single Frame HDR Image and Processing Multiple Frame HDR Images. The HTML version also provides a gallery of very good HDR images towards the end that’s worth checking out. By the way the book is free so you’ve really got no excuse not to check it out!







11. PhotoShop Support
This is an advanced tutorial in Photoshop – for those of use used to the black box approach of Photomatix, be prepared for a challenge! The main focus of this tutorial is overcoming the problem of combining images in which subjects in the images have moved between different exposures. This is achieved using smart objects. There’s quite a bit of manual work involved (oh No!) but it gives you more flexibility in the long run when you are post-processing your hard days shots.





12. Duane Storey
A quick tutorial with a great subject (see right) this guide uses Photomatix to create a great scene of the Vancouver skyline. Five images were used to make the final image and from what I can gather from the guide, the HDR was made using jpg images – very impressive!.







13. Abduzeedo
Abduzeedo uses a simple subject to get a very color rich final result. There are plenty of illustrations to go with this tutorial as well so there’s no way you’ll get lost while using it. It’s also the first guide I’ve seen where a HDR was made from a compact camera, showing that high end DSLR’s are not essential for getting good results.







14. Thoughts From My Life
Thoughts from my life uses an interesting subject and Photoshops Merge To HDR options. Any photos taken indoors that have windows in them usually suffer from overexposure of whatever can be seen through the window – Thoughts From My Life shows how HDR can overcome this problem.







15. WebDesign Library
Here’s yet another site that uses Photoshop to create the HDR image from three differently exposed RAW pictures, followed by tone mapping in Photomatix to jazz up the final shot.

16. Easy HDR
EasyHDR is a piece of software I just came across while writing this post. I haven’t used it so can’t say much but the website gives a very comprehensive guide to all its functions and the illustrations of
HDRed photos look very impressive.



17. Slager Man Photo
Slager Man Photo shows the difference between the histogram of a regular picture and that of a HDR, something I’ve not seen anywhere else. They also have a link to a small gallery at the bottom of the guide of some seriously wacky looking sunsets!









18. Visual Photo Guide
This guide is quick and to the point – no padding. Some settings for your camera are recommended and how to set them on a NikonD50 (the camera used for this tutorial) is explained. There’s also a link to a HDR video tutorial.



19. Picture Correct
Picture Correct throws together a little personal story to go with their guide – a nice touch. It uses only two images – one overexposed and one underexposed to get really good results. Layer masks are used as one choice to blend the photos so if you enjoy working with them then this guide is for you.







20. Grumpy Editors Guide To HDR
Every site I’ve listed so far has assumed that you are either using a windows or a mac machine, but what if you use Linux instead? Well then this tutorial is for you: it mentions OpenEXR, PFScalibration and Qtpfsgui as Linux HDR solutions. Tone mapping is then achieved with Qpfstmo (I’ve no idea why such strange names are used, if they give results then that all that matters.)







21. Digital Photography School 
Digial Photography School is a very popular photography site and for many is the first choice of all photo related information on the internet. This guide is a guest post from Pixelens.com. It talks about the essentials, and compares Photomatix to less known programs (to me at least) such as the Photoshop plugin ReDynaMix. It also compares the difference in using different number of exposures and how much of a difference there is between using a single RAW and multiple RAWS.







22. Stuck In Customs 
Stuck In Customs is a site by Tray Ratcliff, home to some of the most amazing HDR photographs I’ve ever seen. Seriously his work is world class and is the standard everyone should aspire to. From what I’ve seen he deals mostly with the surreal HDR look rather than the realistic look but you should check out his work to really see what can be done if you know how. It’s likely you’ve seen his work on plenty other sites – any list of “Amazing HDR Photographs” will likely contain more than one of his works.

After looking through these guides I feel rather humbled by my own efforts. I guess the saying is true – the more you know about a topic the more you realise how little you know.

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