Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic’s Merge To HDR feature received a lot of coverage when it was first released. Unfortunately, many of the tutorials that were rushed out the door right when Lightroom Classic went public are well-intentioned but misguided. Many of the early tutorials that first appeared when Lightroom Classic was released missed the real strengths of this new incredible feature.
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What Photoshop Lightroom Classic’s new Merge To HDR feature does incredibly well is not what most High-Dynamic Range photography experts were expecting. Many of us, myself included, jumped into experimenting with this new tool with lots of preconceived notions and expectation. Most of us jumped right in with the expectation that Lightroom Classic would produce similar results to what we have been accomplishing for many years via other Tone Mapping programs.
At first, I expected Lightroom’s new method of expanding dynamic range to be a replacement for third-party HDR applications like Photomatix or the HDR Efex Pro application that is part of the Google Nik Software Collection. But it turns out that Lightroom Classic’s abilities are not a replacement for any of these other methods. What Lightroom does is unique and different.
Below is a brief rundown of what Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic’s new Merge To HDR feature does well and where other tools are still a better choice.
Lightroom Merge To HDR Method Advantages
1. Lightroom Classic’s Merge To HDR utility works best when it is fed two raw files. Most other HDR programs require three, or more, images to create an HDR composite but Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic is different. You will get better results, and save processing time, if you ask Lightroom Classic to tie together just two carefully bracketed digital camera raw files.
Unlike other programs that require three or more images, Lightroom Classic’s Merge To HDR works best when it is asked to combine one raw file that contains plenty of highlight detail with another exposure of the same scene that contains plenty of shadow details. Unlike Photoshop, or Photomatix, there is no need to give Lightroom an additional “mid-tone” exposure. In fact, adding additional exposures into Lightroom’s Merge To HDR command only slows down the image processing and increases the likelihood of creating weird ghosting artifacts.
2. The HDR files that Adobe Photoshop Lightroom creates are stored in the .dng raw file format. Lightroom will automatically create and save a demosaiced 16-bit floating point .dng file at the end of every successful HDR merge. The bit-depth floating point math stuff is not an important detail here. What is important is understanding that the merged HDR files are still raw files and that this is something that we have never seen before in any other software program.
Since these are still raw files we have total access to all of the tools in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’s Develop Module for further image enhancement. The key words here are all of the tools. Everything that you can do to traditional raw file in Lightroom can now be done here. All of Lightroom’s Develop Module sliders and features are available for use with the merged HDR composite and then you can send the results over to Adobe Photoshop, or any other editing program if needed, for additional post-raw refinements.
3. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’s Merge To HDR results are incredibly clean. Traditionally, digital camera noise has been a big problem when combining images together to create an HDR composite. The incredible lack of digital camera noise is probably the greatest visual advantage that Lightroom’s new Merge To HDR routine has over all of the other HDR compositing workflows.
4. The -HDR.dng files that Lightroom CC automatically creates are relatively tiny when compared to the 32-bit .tif files that we have been creating for HDR merges using other programs like Adobe Photoshop or Photomatix. We are talking about hundreds of megabytes per file in disk space savings here. While disk space is cheap, and not nearly as important as the visual quality of our images, this reduction in file size is a big deal for professionals who will create hundreds of HDR composites per year.
5. You can combine multiple -HDR.dng files together within Photoshop Lightroom to create HDR panoramas. Yes, we can now create huge panoramic images built out of overlapping HDR images without ever leaving Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
In all honesty, the HDR panorama combo is not going to work in every situation. Capturing the right frames for a panoramic HDR merge is going to be very challenging, but under the right lighting conditions, you can now create gigantic images with an incredible dynamic range without the need for any additional software.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’s Merge To HDR Disadvantages
1. The automatic deghosting options that are available within Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC are primitive when compared to the tools available in third-party applications like Photomatix. Even Merge To HDR within Adobe Photoshop offers more controls than are currently available inside of Lightroom CC. If you are trying to merge together brackets where there has been a lot of movement between frames then Lightroom’s Merge To HDR feature is probably going to be a disappointment.
2. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom tries to make “photo-realistic” images. If you are looking for more artistic flexibility, especially for those wanting to create HDR images with a strong “grunge” look, then you are going to be let down with the image processing options available inside of Lightroom’s Develop Module. There are limits to just how far you can push any image, HDR or otherwise, within Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. For some artists this is going to be a big deal and a prime reason to stick to other HDR compositing tools.
My advice: pick the right set of images and give Lightroom’s new Merge To HDR a fair try. When selecting your test images be sure to select bracketed raw files with very little subject, or camera, movement. Avoid image sets that will require lots of deghosting. Look for scenes that deserve a photo-realistic treatment and then try merging together just your under and your over-exposed brackets.
Push and pull the results around until you get results that you like. Now try creating something similar by working with other HDR compositing tools. I suspect that you will find that Lightroom’s new Merge To HDR feature is not going to be the clear winner in every case. But I bet that the more you experiment with this incredible new technology the more that you will be stunned by how fast, and how elegant, this new feature is when applied to the right set of bracketed images.
