Monday, 23 November 2015

HDR Experimentation - Process

To create my HDR photos, I started off by taking sets of three photographs; one too dark, one too bright, and one where the lighting was in the middle. I made sure I had plenty of photographs then imported them onto my computer and went through them all to find the ones I thought worked out best. I then proceeded to open up photoshop and click on the File drop down menu and clicking the Merge to HDR option on the Automate section


I then selected a dark, bright, and normally lit photo and merged them together to create a more detailed image.


After I did this, I started editing levels. I edited the brightness and the contrast. I did this as I wanted to bring out the pale tones in the skin and create more contrast within the eyes. I added a second layer with just the eyes so that I could make the eyes the main focus and remove the layer if my experiment didn't work. 


My next step was to adjust the layers. This helped to add more detail to both the subject and the background of the photograph. Not only this, but it also helped to boost the contrast and the changes to brightness I'd made. 


One of the final steps I made was to edit the highlights and shadows so that I could add more darkness and light where it was needed and make the eyes stand out.


My last step was to change the blending on the layer that was just the eyes. I tried different effects such as linear and colour dodge and overlays. For this particular image, I also lowered the opacity so that the irises looked much paler and stood out more but in my other two photographs I used the colour and linear dodge to bring out the blues and golds of the iris.


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