Nikon manual David Busch’s Nikon D7000 Guide to Digital SLR Photography

126 David Busch’s Nikon D7000 Guide to Digital SLR Photography

Figure 4.16

Make three exposures for the highlights, midtones, and shadow areas.

Figure 4.17

Use the Merge to HDR com- mand in Photoshop to combine the two images.

If you do everything correctly, you’ll end up with a photo like the one shown in Figure 4.18, which has the properly exposed foreground of the first shot, and the well-exposed rocks of the second and third images. Note that, ideally, nothing should move between shots. In the example pictures, the ocean waves are moving, but the exposures were made so close together that, after the merger, you can’t really tell.

What if you don’t have the opportunity, inclination, or skills to create several images at different exposures, as described? If you shoot in RAW format, you can still use Merge to HDR, working with a single original image file. What you do is import the image into Photoshop several times, using Adobe Camera Raw to create multiple copies of the file at different exposure levels.

For example, you’d create one copy that’s too dark, so the shadows lose detail, but the highlights are preserved. Create another copy with the shadows intact and allow the highlights to wash out. Then, you can use Merge to HDR to combine the two and end