November 20, 2013
Sea Stack Sunset at Cannon Beach, Oregon, and the Photoshop Realistic HDR Technique

We returned to Oregon yesterday and made it to Cannon Beach just in time for a great sunset.

Photoshop Realistic HDR Technique

I tried to process this image using the Lightroom HDR technique, but by mistake I saved the 32-bit merged file as a PSD instead of a TIFF. Lightroom 5 complained that it couldn't read the 32-bit file, so I thought there must be something wrong with Lightroom 5. Because I really wanted to use Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) to do the realistic HDR, I created this Photoshop Realistic HDR Technique.

1. In Bridge, select the bracketed photo series RAW files, or already-processed TIFF files, then select  Tools > Photoshop > Merge to HDR Pro…
2. Wait for the images to load into Photoshop CC
3. Click the "Remove ghosts" box, set the Mode to "32 Bit" and check the "Complete Toning in Adobe Camera Raw" box, then click the "Tone in ACR" button
4. Wait for Photoshop CC to create the 32-bit file and launch the ACR window
5. Use the Exposure, Highlights, and Shadows sliders to develop the file w/o worrying about the typical HDR tone mapping controls
6. Click "OK" to create the 32-bit file in Photoshop CC
7. Convert it to a 16-bit file to continue processing:
   1. Select  Layer > Flatten Image
   2. Make sure that the default color space is correct (for example, RGB is set to "ProPhoto RGB") by selecting  Edit > Color Settings…
   3. Select  Image > Mode > 16 Bits/Channel…
   4. Set the Preset to "Flat"
   5. Click "OK"
8. Continue to process the 16-bit image as usual in Photoshop CC

I'm so glad I can easily create a realistic HDR image now from multiple RAW files without having to go through Lightroom.