Julieanne Kost's Blog | Creating High Dynamic Range Images (HDR) in Lightroom Classic

In this video, you’ll learn how easy it is to use Photo Merge in Lightroom Classic to combine bracketed exposures into a high dynamic range DNG file that contains all the quality and flexibility of a raw file.

Here are several tips to use when creating high dynamic range (HDR) images with the PhotoMerge controls in Lightroom Classic.

• Ctrl + H (Mac and Win) displays the HDR Merge Preview window. For performance reasons, the maximum preview size is 2048 px.

• Option + Shift + H (Mac) | Alt + Shift + H (Win) bypasses the HDR blend preview window and creates an HDR image based on the last used HDR blend settings.

Lens correction — For best results, in the Lens Correction panel, enable Remove Chromatic Aberration and Enable Profile Corrections on all individual images before running Photo > PhotoMerge > HDR or make sure the corrected image is the “most featured” image before selecting the Photo Merge command. (see illustration below).

Although all three images of the mountain are selected, the one in the center (with the brightest highlight) is the “most selected” image (also called the focused image).

Applying adjustments – I prefer to merge the images first, then make tone and color adjustments to the resulting merged HDR file, because any adjustments made to individual images are not applied when merging to HDR. The parameters that are not applied include the main tone settings in the base panel (exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites and blacks – as HDR photo blending uses its own calculations to extend the tonal range), tone curve, adjustments Local, Red Eye, Right and Crop.

• To apply adjustments such as profiles, spot correction, color grading, etc. can be applied when merging HDR photos), make sure the adjustments are made to all images or that the image with the adjustments is the “most featured” image before choosing PhotoMerge > HDR.

Automatic alignment — Enable auto alignment if there has been camera movement between the exposure sequence (if the images were taken without a tripod for example). Lightroom will automatically align images and crop any uneven edges.

Automatic settings — Enable Auto Settings to automatically enhance the combined exposures (even if the Auto Settings feature is applied in the Merge HDR dialog, the settings can be changed/removed from the resulting file using the Develop module’s base panel after the fusion – without any loss of quality.

Ghost — Enable Deghost if there was movement in the photo between the sequence of images (blowing leaves, moving cars, people walking, etc.). “O” toggles the mask Deghost Amount, Shift + O cycles through the mask overlay colors.

Stacking images — Check Create stack to automatically stack the source and resulting HDR image. The merged HDR image will appear at the top of the stack.

File name: Lightroom Classic adds -HDR to the end of the file name of the merged HDR, making them easy to find using the Text filter in Grid view.

Process version – The resulting (merged) DNG files will always default to Process Version (PV) 2012 or later, despite the different PV settings applied to the source images (PV2012 or later is required for the extended exposure range (+/- 10 stops), previous VPs are limited to (+/- 4 stops).

Note: The blended HDR is a 16-bit floating point image due to the large (and painful) file size that would result from a 32-bit HDR blend..

This Adobe Helpx article discusses the optimal number of exposures/frames for an HDR photo merge.

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