A bright mid-morning trip up to the Cow and Calf is a lovely way to start a bank holiday Monday. Light breeze, nice\u00a0patterned\u00a0clouds and nice shadows were what we were greeted with.<\/p>\n
Thing is, using ND Grad filters to keep detail in the sky would blacken the top of the rocks. So to get both nice, bright rocks, and the sky, I took 3 shots of each scene (dark, normal and light) and then used Photomatix V 4.2 to blend them together to get the best from all 3 shots.<\/p>\n
Using the same techniques taught in McFade’s HDR Masterclass, I created one finished image, then batch processed the rest of the shots to the same settings, working smartly increases your efficiency<\/p>\n
What pops out of Photomatix V4.2 can be stunning in its own right – gone are the days of “cartoon-like” images which need hours of work in Photoshop. You will probably want to tweak the results though, so Lighroom 4 is the perfect tool.<\/p>\n
You can tweak colours, make selective adjustments – maybe bring out detail in a wall, add contrast to a sky, brighten up the main focal point.<\/p>\n
In this gallery, I’ve added in a few examples from a shoot which lasted about 30 minutes – right up until the sun disappeared behind a HUGE cloud!<\/p>\n
So in this set, the HDR had the same settings for each shot and the “effect” was added in Lighroom afterwards.<\/p>\n
In order we have..<\/p>\n