I’m a bit of a cheater when it comes to bracketing photographs. When traveling, instead of taking the time to put the camera on a tripod, I’ll just hold as steady as I can and take two different exposures. I take the brightest exposure with a shutter speed of at least 1/60 and then without taking the camera off my eye, I speed up the shutter – usually about one or two stops to let’s say 1/160 or faster. I call it the lazy way to do bracketing for HDR Photography.
Whichever way you decide to bracket your photos, it’s easy to blend them in Photoshop or Lightroom. See this article and video by Joe Fitzpatrick to learn how to do this effect in Lightroom Classic CC:
https://www.understandphotography.com/hdr-lightroom/
In Photoshop, it’s easy as well.
- Bring the photos into Photoshop
- File – Automate – Merge to HDR Pro
- Add Open Files
- Click OK
The computer will go to work and show you the mock up of what it thinks is best. You’ll have the opportunity to tweak the image here. Play around with the sliders to get the look you desire. When done, click OK.
Save your new image.
This is just one of many ways to process bracketed photographs. There are several HDR Photography software programs such as PhotoMatix and Aurora HDR. It’s simple in Lightroom and you can always use layer masks.
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