his HDR Photoshop tutorial shows quite easy way to fake HDR photos in Photoshop. You don’t need to shoot into RAW or take multiple photos – one JPEG file is enough.
HDR Photoshop effect gives a cool painterly style to your photos.
<!– hi-res version of final fake HDR foto
–>If you want get this effect instantly, see Photoshop actions offer. These actions can easily tune up your photos, they do the all work for you.
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The most important is first step, it is a base of HDR Photoshop effect. Use command image > adjustment > shadow/highlight and set up values: shadows amount: 50%, tonal width 45%, radius 44px; High-light amount 67%, tonal width 65%, radius 46px;
Duplicate layer “base” and set up its layer interaction to Color Dodge. This interaction gives picture strong colors and cause that light areas turn into pure white. In next step it will be repaired by another layer interaction.
Do the same thing as in the second step, but layer interaction is set up to Linear Burn now. You can see big black area in picture, it has to be eliminated. Set up foreground color to black and use command select > color range, tick off invert option (we want everything except black parts), fuzziness should be set to around 100. Now click on red marked icon, new layer mask will be added and black will dissapear. There are some ugly artifacts in the picture, to remove them, click on layer mask and use Gaussian blur filter.
Fourth step is easy, it profits from third step. Just duplicate layer “linear Burn”, set its interaction to Overlay, select layer mask and pres ctrl+i (invert). This interaction darkens too much light shadows and raises contrast. As you can see in this HDR Photoshop tutorial, Layers and its interactions is very powerful tool.
google_ad_client = “pub-5870819669985901″;
google_ad_width = 728;
google_ad_height = 90;
google_ad_format = “728×90_as”;
google_ad_type = “text_image”;
google_ad_channel = “”;
google_color_border = “000000″;
google_color_bg = “000000″;
google_color_link = “FFFFFF”;
google_color_text = “CCCCCC”;
google_color_url = “999999″;
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window.google_render_ad();
Now it’s time to adjust picture look, try to experiment with layer opacity. Optimal values are about 40% for layer “Overlay” and 55% for layer “Linear Burn”. Whole HDR Photoshop tutorial is based on experimentation.
Set up foreground color to white and use command select > color range with fuzziness set up around 100. “Crawling ants” will appear around light areas. Duplicate “base” layer and move it up, then click on icon add layer mask. Select layer mask and soften it by Gaussian blur filter.
The last step colorize picture into red tones. Click on red marked icon and select from menu gradient map. This layer adjustment tools modify image colors according to defined gradient. There is a model gradient at the right border of picture. Load selection from layer mask of layer “light”, invert it (select > invert) and click on add layer mask icon. Set up interaction of layer “colorize” to hard light and finally set opacity to 72%.
I use some other adjustmenst to achieve HDR look. For example I fill white areas by photoshop generated clouds – filter > render clouds. If you have a question, feel free to ask in forum below.
You needn’t do manually all this steps again and again, much easier is to use HDR Photoshop action, which do the all work for you.
See Photoshop actions offer
Another photos adjusted in the same way:
