A little A/B to demonstrate that you can make most any photo into an HDR photo. The Savonlinna castle in Finland dates back to roughly the time the U.S. was founded, and the photo dates back to the days before I shot in RAW format. It started life as a plain old jpg.
Here's the HDR, top, and the original, below, and there's some tech details after the jump. Click the photos for much larger versions.
Making an HDR shot from an ordinary jpg takes a few minutes, but it's a straightforward process. For this one, I cleaned up the original in Photoshop - specifically applying auto levels and color balance, then looking at levels and lightening the photo slightly, and then sharpening the photo to suit.
Once it was as good as it could be, I "saved as" the baseline photo, which I called Fin0. Then using the Adjustments/Exposure tool, I saved eight more exposures, at one stop up and down, from - 4 to + 4, and called them Fin-1, Fin-2, Fin-3, Fin-4, Fin+1, Fin+2, Fin+3 and Fin+4.
Be sure to go back and open your original, properly exposed photo (in this case Fin0) each time before you make your exposure adjustment and "save as." That is, change the exposure each time from the properly exposed photo, not from a photo you've already adjusted.
Then combine all the photos the way you normally would. In this case, I combined all nine exposures and tone-mapped in Photomatix. That's all there is to it. An HDR from any old jpg.
(See more in the HDR Gallery, and see the Savonlinna Castle and more photos from around Finland in the Finland Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)
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