LR CC HDR Merge - A bit of an oversell

So like a lot of folks I pulled down LR CC yesterday and watched the Scott Kelby & RC Conception webcast yesterday. I knew about the HDR and Panorama merge functions, but I was pretty stoked when I found out that it saved the files as 32-bit DNG "RAW" files. For the pano's this is awesome and delivers as described. For HDR? Hmmmm.

When I saw RC demonstrate it the final result was beautifully toned and looked very close to what you'd want in a realistic HDR image (as presenters he obviously was able to shoot and choose images that had the "Wow" factor). He went on to speak about how you could now adjust the white balance, contrast of the RAW file, but not much more than that. So, when I actually got a chance to play with it I was a little surprised to see what it actually produces compared to what I saw in the webcast.

What do you get? A more than decent rendering of a 32-bit "RAW" file with as much light information as you can pull from the source files (my three +/-3EV D750 files yielded a 95MB file). That's awesome that it gives you that kind of file. But if you choose the Auto Tone option, which is what they showed you as the completed image in the webcast, what you get is a DNG file that actually looks an awful lot like the 0EV exposure (what you see when you turn "Auto Tone" off), with the Develop module sliders preset in a way you would normally expect to see them in an "HDR Toning" preset in prior versions of LR. So, it makes for a nice image, but as the sliders are set it gives you little room to play with the image afterward.

A problem? Not really, but definitely an over-sell. What I would have loved to have seen was the "Auto Toned" image get saved in a way that allowed you to still play with it in Lightroom without having to export it as a TIFF/PSD file that can be imported and then tweaked, which is what you're essentially doing when you use in the Photoshop HDR process, Nik and/or any other HDR package. My take, if you're using a modern camera with great dynamic range then there isn't much you'll get from this that you wouldn't get from applying the same settings (Highlights at -100, Shadows at +70, Whites at +15, Blacks at -15) to just the 0EV image. I suspect that for this to really be worthwhile you're going to need to go at least +/-5EV to see something significantly beneficial.

I'm going to play with it some more with an eye towards stretching the +/-EV boundaries to see at what point it really produces something beneficial, but in the meantime, if you found this a little hard to follow, here's 10 minutes explaining it...

Thanks for the info, Jake. Since I still don't have the Nik Collection, this new feature is intriguing. Haven't yet taken anything for HDR so at least it will allow me to attempt it now--and this type of info pushes me towards considering getting the Nik Collection sooner rather than later.

I sure miss these types of posts of yours. Thanks again for sharing.

I'll have to add to favorites till I finally get my camera back so I can play with this. I'm looking at the software but no new pictures to play with so keep your findings coming and I will send a tip to you pay pal acct.....

As I'm thinking about this more and more I believe it has to do with the entire idea of whether or not you really need to used HDR for a given photo. In cases with 9 stops of dynamic range are sufficient then you don't even need to used HDR if you're shooting RAW, because you get that with most modern sensors and bracketing an extra 3 stops on either end just gives you more black and white information. If it was sunnier outside (like it was this morning) I'd shoot some stuff in the office that would require 13+ stops of range to get and see how that goes, but with the rain coming in that'll need to wait for tomorrow AM.

Like I said, I'm not knocking the tool, particularly if you want to make nice, natural looking HDR shots. For the wild stuff you'll still want HDR Efex Pro 2 or Photomatix.

BackdoorHippie said:

So like a lot of folks I pulled down LR CC yesterday and watched the Scott Kelby & RC Conception webcast yesterday. I knew about the HDR and Panorama merge functions, but I was pretty stoked when I found out that it saved the files as 32-bit DNG "RAW" files. For the pano's this is awesome and delivers as described. For HDR? Hmmmm.

When I saw RC demonstrate it the final result was beautifully toned and looked very close to what you'd want in a realistic HDR image (as presenters he obviously was able to shoot and choose images that had the "Wow" factor). He went on to speak about how you could now adjust the white balance, contrast of the RAW file, but not much more than that. So, when I actually got a chance to play with it I was a little surprised to see what it actually produces compared to what I saw in the webcast.

What do you get? A more than decent rendering of a 32-bit "RAW" file with as much light information as you can pull from the source files (my three +/-3EV D750 files yielded a 95MB file). That's awesome that it gives you that kind of file. But if you choose the Auto Tone option, which is what they showed you as the completed image in the webcast, what you get is a DNG file that actually looks an awful lot like the 0EV exposure (what you see when you turn "Auto Tone" off), with the Develop module sliders preset in a way you would normally expect to see them in an "HDR Toning" preset in prior versions of LR. So, it makes for a nice image, but as the sliders are set it gives you little room to play with the image afterward.

A problem? Not really, but definitely an over-sell. What I would have loved to have seen was the "Auto Toned" image get saved in a way that allowed you to still play with it in Lightroom without having to export it as a TIFF/PSD file that can be imported and then tweaked, which is what you're essentially doing when you use in the Photoshop HDR process, Nik and/or any other HDR package. My take, if you're using a modern camera with great dynamic range then there isn't much you'll get from this that you wouldn't get from applying the same settings (Highlights at -100, Shadows at +70, Whites at +15, Blacks at -15) to just the 0EV image. I suspect that for this to really be worthwhile you're going to need to go at least +/-5EV to see something significantly beneficial.

I'm going to play with it some more with an eye towards stretching the +/-EV boundaries to see at what point it really produces something beneficial, but in the meantime, if you found this a little hard to follow, here's 10 minutes explaining it...

Click to expand...

Thanks for the update Jake... I am seriously considering the jump to the CC... Some of the new features look useful (I watched the Creative Live summary yesterday...). I will let you know if I do!

Pat in GA

I played with this for a while last night and I'm convinced I understand the basics of what this process is doing, and what it's not doing. This seams to be true regardless of the number of stops of dynamic range offered.

I'll start with what it's not doing - it's not, under any circumstances, giving you a complete, finished and balanced HDR image. I'll explain what I mean by that while I explain what it is doing.

What this merge process does that every HDR program does (either well or poorly):

• Auto-aligns exposures
• Deghosts as specified
• Accumulates and allows access to the full range of light information from across all images passed

And it seems to do this rather well. Given that most RAW file being passed at 16-bit files, the resulting 32-bit DNG "RAW" file has more than enough capacity to store the full dynamic range of light data for each pixel, and that's really what you want in HDR photography.

But that's where the HDR experience ends. Once the full dynamic range of light information is merged together, LR produces a 32-bit DNG file with the exposure set to the original 0EV shot. This seems to happen rather well regardless of whether you pass in the full series of exposures or just 2 from either end. I shot a +/-7 EV set last night in 1 stop increments and it produced almost identical images from the from the full set and from only the +7 and -7 images. The resulting image will differ from the actual 0EV shot from the series primarily where in areas where highlights are blown out - otherwise they appear nearly identical. What differs is the amount of light information available to subsequent editing programs that must be used to coax components out of the shadows and white areas.

In the merge dialog there is an "Auto Tone" option, which isn't really an "option" as much as it is a filter preset. To an image last night, if I selected Auto Tone what I would see is the basic '0' image described above appear in my catalog, and then a second later it would look toned for HDR. To an image the sliders in the Basic section of the Develop module looked like this:

• Contrast = 0
• Highlights = -100
• Shadows = +70
• Whites = +15
• Blacks = -15
• Clarity = 0
• Vibrance = 0
• Saturation = 0

The only variation would be in the Exposure slider which generally fell between +0.10 to +0.25. These slider settings, as I mentioned in earlier posts, make it near impossible to apply any significant level of additional light edits to the resulting image if you're not happy with it. But, Adobe seems to have done a lot of hard work in the math to make sure that the Auto Tone'd image is actually pretty close to a normal looking HDR image with that preset applied.

The good news is that the 32-bit file, when sent to Photoshop, gives you a ton of information to look at if you want to do the HDR toning from scratch yourself, even if you start by not using Auto Tone at all (a couple people who have done videos on this feature actually recommend that you don't use it). If you like the Auto Tone look but want more room to edit then you can simply export the file as a TIFF as-is and then edit that in Lightroom, or simply choose Edit In... and open the 32-bit file in a compatible program like Photoshop using the "Edit a copy with Lightroom adjustments" option. It's certainly better than having just the single 16-bit RAW file even when your camera has the dynamic range of a D810, because hey, more light information is always better.

Is it a time saver? I'm guessing it can be if you're doing basic, natural looking HDR shots for Real Estate or something similar - at least once you learn what it likes and doesn't like in order to get the best image (it has been said that, unlike most HDR programs, this merge tends to like fewer images with more extreme exposures rather than complete series). But if you're into the hardcore, highly structured HDR look then you're probably going to need to send your series into your editor of choice anyway, so you might as well do that up front and skip LR for it.

I'm going to keep playing, and if I come up with something interesting I'll let you all know.

I saw mentioned NIK. I did load it and was very confused by using it in LR. I ended up with multiple files and could not figure out what was going on or which one to use. Anyway.... Is the built-in HDR any better than that of NIK?

Don Kuykendall said:

I saw mentioned NIK. I did load it and was very confused by using it in LR. I ended up with multiple files and could not figure out what was going on or which one to use. Anyway.... Is the built-in HDR any better than that of NIK?

Click to expand...

Nik works differently from the way it does in Photoshop. In PS each new invocation becomes a new layer. In LR, since there are no layers, each invocation creates a new file. Need to go back, go to that file and re-invoke. Delete unneeded files as necessary the same way you'd collapse layers in Photoshop. Not nearly as convenient, so if you need to use it, do it in PS.

I would say that the LR HDR Merge is neither better or worse than Nik, just very different. LR produces a 32-bit DNG file with tons of light information that you then need to manipulate using whatever editors are at your convenience. If you're working in LR you will always have access to 32-bits of light. If you send it to another program you're limited by the parameters of that program, and ultimately the depth available on the output file produced (you cannot edit and save a DNG file the same way you can't do it to a NEF file).

Nik takes you RAW files, produces TIFF files which it than combines using software to allow you to manipulate all that information until you are satisfied and then save that file as a TIFF or PSD. You lose access to the depth of light information at that point, but the idea is that you've already done the manipulation you wanted in the module.

IMHO, Nik is a more satisfying HDR experience because the tool allows a much more severe level of light manipulation from LR, even if all you want is a natural looking HDR image. That said, if I'm doing some rote HDR work as a matter of habit (like room after room of real estate shots) I believe that you can likely come up with something more quickly and consistently in the LR process, but there'll be a learning curve.

BackdoorHippie said:

Nik works differently from the way it does in Photoshop. In PS each new invocation becomes a new layer. In LR, since there are no layers, each invocation creates a new file. Need to go back, go to that file and re-invoke. Delete unneeded files as necessary the same way you'd collapse layers in Photoshop. Not nearly as convenient, so if you need to use it, do it in PS.

I would say that the LR HDR Merge is neither better or worse than Nik, just very different. LR produces a 32-bit DNG file with tons of light information that you then need to manipulate using whatever editors are at your convenience. If you're working in LR you will always have access to 32-bits of light. If you send it to another program you're limited by the parameters of that program, and ultimately the depth available on the output file produced (you cannot edit and save a DNG file the same way you can't do it to a NEF file).

Nik takes you RAW files, produces TIFF files which it than combines using software to allow you to manipulate all that information until you are satisfied and then save that file as a TIFF or PSD. You lose access to the depth of light information at that point, but the idea is that you've already done the manipulation you wanted in the module.

IMHO, Nik is a more satisfying HDR experience because the tool allows a much more severe level of light manipulation from LR, even if all you want is a natural looking HDR image. That said, if I'm doing some rote HDR work as a matter of habit (like room after room of real estate shots) I believe that you can likely come up with something more quickly and consistently in the LR process, but there'll be a learning curve.

Click to expand...

Interesting!

Umm...any chance you might do a Nik HDR tutorial? Or one that highlights the pros/cons of Nik vs. Lightroom so we can see the benefits of each? Please?

hark said:

Interesting!

Umm...any chance you might do a Nik HDR tutorial? Or one that highlights the pros/cons of Nik vs. Lightroom so we can see the benefits of each? Please?

Click to expand...

No. There are people who get paid for that sort of thing.

BackdoorHippie said:

No. There are people who get paid for that sort of thing.

Click to expand...

Okay. Thanks for letting me know.

So, Jake, are you feeling that you can't use the Lightroom develop tools to get everything out of the merged file that you would like? I was hoping by working with the white, highlight, shadow and blacks sliders it would be possible to get a nice extended dynamic range picture.

Woodyg3 said:

So, Jake, are you feeling that you can't use the Lightroom develop tools to get everything out of the merged file that you would like? I was hoping by working with the white, highlight, shadow and blacks sliders it would be possible to get a nice extended dynamic range picture.

Click to expand...

I don't think I said that at all. I said it rather clearly in my first post today. Fact is, you can't use Lightroom alone to get "everything" out of any file. What you can do is produce a 32-bit HDR merged file rather easily, and that's awesome. What you do with it from there is up to you, but in general you'll likely want to use an HDR program for anything other than a pure natural looking image. And my point is that if you're going to do that, there's really no reason to do the merge in LR. But if you shoot bracketed series as a normal thing then premerging as an HDR file with no toning will give you a lot more light information for "normal" processing, in LR or anywhere.

NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 can standalone as well. It works without any other PP program such as PS6 Extended or LR5.6

Another thing I noticed, is that while merging 3 exposures in LR it's hitting up to 99% of my CPU. Merging 3 exposures in Photomatix it peaks at 46%.
Although I have an older AMD Athlon dual core.

Adobe just posted this blog about HDR in CC and it lends some more insight into what it does and doesn't do.

Tips for Creating Raw HDR Images in Lightroom CC « Julieanne Kost's Blog

If you want a definitive set of recommendations based on all this...

• If you simply want to create a single baseline image with more (i.e. compressed - no blown out whites or blacks) light information than a single exposure allows so you can then manipulate that image the same way you would a single image, use the LR Merge process.
• If you want to do any tweaking to the images out of camera before merging and/or want to do extensive HDR manipulations afterwards, skip LR HDR Merge and go straight to your HDR program.

One very important point in the blog that counters what Kelby & Conception stated in every piece they did on LR CC, the DNG file is not 32-bit!! Is this a big deal? Only in that it makes me trust those guys even less when it comes to presenting facts instead of hype. Otherwise it's no big deal.

BackdoorHippie said:

Adobe just posted this blog about HDR in CC and it lends some more insight into what it does and doesn't do.

Tips for Creating Raw HDR Images in Lightroom CC « Julieanne Kost's Blog

If you want a definitive set of recommendations based on all this...

• If you simply want to create a single baseline image with more light information (32-bits vs. 16 bits) than a single exposure allows so you can then manipulate that image the same way you would a single image, use the LR Merge process.
• If you want to do any tweaking to the images out of camera before merging and/or want to do extensive HDR manipulations afterwards, skip LR HDR Merge and go straight to your HDR program.

Click to expand...

Thanks Jake, makes sense and follows what I have also heard. I will check the link later, in the meantime, I am munching the bullet now and heading to subscribe to the CC

Pat in GA

I was replying to a FB thread about this and I think I've summed up my thoughts about this feature in a single line...

It's a nice feature that lets you create a better, more recoverable exposure in bad light than you could otherwise do normally - nothing more.

I watched this video from Tony Northrup and his thoughts on HDR in LR CC. HDR basically just expands the DR of a given scene and doesn't have the illustration capability of PS.