Hello, this is Mark from the Photomatix Team and I'm going to show you how to
batch process bracketed photos using the HDR Batch plugin for Lightroom.
You can use the plugin to merge multiple stacks of bracketed exposures in Lightroom.
This lets you automatically create HDR images while you do something else.
Here are several bracketed photos from a photoshoot which I've organized into stacks.
That's to say I've grouped each set of bracketed exposures into its own stack.
Before starting the plugin select all the stacks.
Then invoke the HDR Batch plugin by right clicking on the photos, ...
... selecting export, ... ... and then HDR Batch.
The plugin offers two input options for grouping bracketed photos.
I'll stay with the first one since my bracketed exposures are grouped into stacks.
But if you have the same number of photos in all your bracketed sets
you don't have to stack them.
Just choose the second option and select the number of shots in each set.
The rest of the plugin's window lets you select various options for HDR processing.
The HDR Preset feature lets you choose the style of your merged images by
picking a preset from the list.
You can narrow down the choices by
selecting a category of interest from the 'filtered by' list.
You can pick one here ...
... or click 'Choose Preset with preview' to see what all the presets will look like,
and then pick one.
When you click on the button
you'll get a preview in Photomatix to let you see the effect of your preset.
Click on the preset thumbnails to preview them.
For example, 'Interior 2' gives you a bright and clean looking image good for interiors.
Click Choose preset when you've picked the one you want, ...
... or ... ... create your own preset by adjusting some
of the HDR setting sliders.
I'll save this as a new preset now.
The preset you choose will then be applied to all the photos you've selected.
Now click on the batch button to run the batch.
While it's running you see the progress bar on the top left of the window
showing how far through the batch processing is.
The batch runs in the background so you can do other work in Lightroom while the
plugin merges your photos.
After the batch has completed you'll find the HDR photos listed right next to
their stacks.
The plugin has another feature for merging photos:
instead of choosing a preset you can just merge the photos to 32-bit HDR images
and then adjust them entirely within Lightroom.
You can save them in DNG or TIFF format.
I'll run the batch to merge the photos and save them as 32-bit DNG images.
The plugin now creates all the 32-bit HDR images
and saves the DNG files back to Lightroom's library.
You can adjust these DNG images like any raw photo.
So these are the things we've looked at:
- Merging stacked or unstacked photos
- Previewing and choosing a preset
- Saving as 32-bit images without a preset.
If you have a lot of HDR images to create after a photoshoot
you'll find that this plugin is a big timesaver!
Try it for yourself!
The trial is free and doesn't expire,
it just adds a 'Photomatix' watermark to the batched results.
If you have any questions please leave them in the comments section below.