I absolutely love High Dynamic Range (HDR) photographs! The ability to easily capture the entire dynamic range of a scene by combining separate frames is one of the benefits digital photography has over traditional film photography. Although it can be a little tricky, you can create beautiful HDR images with just a little practice and the right software. One of my favorite programs for creating stunning HDR images is Photomatix. Photomatix is extremely popular with photographers of all stripes. HDRsoft offers Photomatix as a standalone program and as a Photoshop plug-in.

Until just recently, there wasn't an easy way for Lightroom users to jump directly into Photomatix to create HDR images. Users had to leave Lightroom and manually locate the images they wanted to work on. This has always been tedious and added unnecessary steps to the workflow. In October, HDRsoft solved this problem by releasing a brand new plug-in that allows you to open images in Photomatix directly from Lightroom. I've had a chance to play around with the plug-in and have found it fairly easy to use.

Before I go any further about how the plug-in works, let’s to take a step back and review some of the basic principles for capturing photographs to merge into an HDR image. You are going to need a tripod, a digital camera that captures Raw images and a remote shutter release. Although it’s possible to capture your images handheld, shooting from a sturdy tripod is going to save you a lot of time later on in processing. Using a remote shutter release helps insure that there is no camera movement while you are working. Since the goal is to extend the dynamic range of the scene you are photographing, I recommend shooting in Raw mode. Compressed, 8-bit JPEG images are very limited in how far the exposure can be pushed.

If you can, set your camera to automatically bracket your shots two stops apart. The key is to capture images with as little camera and scene movement as possible. Automatic bracketing keeps you from having to fiddle with your camera between exposures and potentially jiggle the tripod. It is also important to lock the aperture between frames so that the depth of field doesn’t drift. Consider setting your camera to manual or aperture-priority mode so that the shutter speed changes the exposure between frames. Shooting three images, two stops apart should give you plenty of latitude for creating a high quality HDR image (feel free to shoot even more images if you wish). Consider taking several groups of photographs at varying exposures so that you have enough images to work with in Lightroom and Photomatix.

Now let’s take a look at how the Lightroom plug-in works. You will need Photomatix Pro 3.1 and Lightroom 1.3 or higher. You can download the Lightroom plug-in for free here. Unzip the file and save it to a location on your computer where you plan to permanently keep it. If you are a Lightroom 2 user, navigate to the Plug-in Manager by going to File > Plug-in Manager. Once the Plug-in Manager opens, click the Add button and browse to the plug-in saved on your computer. If you installed the plug-in correctly, you should see Photomatix listed as “installed and running” in the left column of the Plug-in Manager. Click Done and you are ready to start creating HDR images!

Note:
Lightroom 1.x users must manually drop the plug-in file into their Lightroom directory. If you are a Windows user, move the plug-in file (Photomatix.lrplugin) into the following folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.x. Mac users using Lightroom 1.x must move the plug-in file to: Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules.

There are two ways to open images in Photomatix from Lightroom. The first is to highlight or select the shots you want to combine and then navigate to File > Plug-in Extras > Export to Photomatix Pro.

The second method is to right click (Control click on a Mac) your selected images and choose Export from the context menu. The Export dialog box should appear. Look for the small triangles located at the top right corner of the box and choose Photomatix. With Photomatix selected, you can change the image format and color space settings. When you are ready, click the Export button to open your images in Photomatix.

The new Lightroom plug-in makes it a snap to work seamlessly in Photomatix. HDRsoft promises that the next version of the plug-in will allow you to re-import your finished HDR images into Lightroom once you have finished. This should make it even easier to move back and forth between Lightroom and Photomatix.

Next week I’ll show you another slick (and affordable) HDR plug-in for Lightroom that creates very natural looking high dynamic range images. Stay tuned!