Pseudo HDR Processing

As photographers, I'd say that we've all encountered situations where, due to shooting at the wrong time of the day, atmospheric conditions, etc., we end up with a wonderful picture except for a blown-out sky. One way to control this is by shooting for HDR. The typical shooting process is to take one picture at the camera's setting, one at -2 and one at +2 & then blend the pictures using an HDR program such as Photomatix. However, maybe you couldn't take three identical shots because you were shooting a moving subject, or perhaps you just didn't use it. What do you do then? Well, you can use a technique called "pseudo HDR" processing. That's what I used for these two pictures. The top picture is the original and the bottom one is the pseudo HDR photo. The program took the completely blown-out sky and replaced it with one that looks like it might have been taken at sunrise or sunset. All you do is open Photomatix and move your RAW picture into the program. Photomatix immediately starts processing. When it's done, you can use the Tone Mapping feature to fine tune your photo. The intensity of the picture increases as you move the sliders to the right. Watch the changes that take place as you move the sliders until you get the effect you want. This process isn't as good as if you'd actually shot for HDR, but if you couldn't, or if you need to fix an old picture, it makes a decent substitute. There are other ways, of course, to do the same thing, but this is probably the easiest and quickest method. So download a free trial of Photomatix and see what you can come up with. Most of all, have fun!