Getting Organized

I'm new to HDR and am wondering what might be a good way to organize my photo files---those to be merged, the HDR files, and the tone mapped JPG's. Thanks.

Hi Nicholas -

This is how I do it, but I bet there's a better way.

Let's say I'm taking photos of trees.

I upload my RAW files to the TREES folder. Within the TREES folder, I have a RADIANCE folder (the unprocessed, merged .hdr files), an INITIAL TIFFS folder (where I store the tiffs that are processed in photomatix but not yet Photoshopped), FINAL TIFFS and FINAL JPGS folders, that I think are self-explanitory.

Mel

Hi Mel

Thanks for your reply and best of luck with the site.

I ordered a Photomatix CD, which should be arriving in a few days. I plan to shoot RAW images with my Nikon D200 and load the sequence of 5 shots directly into Photomatix for merging to an HDR file. You mention TIFF files. At what point would I convert to TIFF and why?

Thanks--Nick

Hello Nick,

Since one does not edit RAW images, but only converts them for processing, you can feed them directly to PhotoMatix, but must make a format decision for the output. You can save the HDR version as Radiance for later processing, or the Tone Mapped version as 8 or 16 bit TIFF or JPG. While you may want to convert to JPG for web use, always make 16 bit TIFFs as your high resolution archive. You can then save as JPG for web use.

If you don't shoot from a tripod, you may need to align the RAWs. PhotoMatix has an align ability, but the PhotoShop Align function is much better.

Good luck,

hugh

I actually don't do my RAW aligning in Photomatix. I use Adobe Bridge/Photoshop and then open the Radiance file (.hdr) in Photomatix. Here's a quick clip of my tutorial:

-Select 3 RAW exposures in Adobe Bridge.
-Then click Tools-->Photoshop-->merge to HDR
-Let Photoshop do its work
-When it's done, click OK
-Then save merged image as a Radiance file (.hdr)
-Open Photomatix Pro program
- Open your Radiance (.hdr) file in Photomatix

Ben Willmore does it this way so I followed his lead.

Mel

My first step is to create a folder on my desktop with my RAW images. I then burn two dvds, one for off-site and one for back-up. Then I move that folder to my external hard drive. At that point I import into Lightroom.

Oh yeah. Backup. Maybe I should do that. Good point, Gary...

Mel

Mel---do you merge Raw images or first convert them to TIFF and then merge? Thank you and the others for your helpful comments.

Hi Nicholas - I merge the RAW files first. Only after I run the .hdr composites through the Photomatix program do I see a tiff file. Remember, try to always save the tiff as a 16-bit file!

Mel

To reinforce the posting of garyros...I just lost a year's work because I was too dumb not to make backups and my external hard drive failed where I kept my stuff. I sent the drive to a world class data recovery company but even they couldn't recover my work even though the drive had never been abused. Very costly mistake! Losing a hard drive is not a question of "IF but "WHEN"...Don't be a chump like me...BACKUP!

Decent, being new to HDR I almost hesitate to answer but I'm going to anyway, take it for what it's worth.

I use 4 programs altogether, first I take my raw files from my camera using the canon supplied utility, I put them in a file P:\Photography\YYYY_MM_DD.

I then import my raw images into Lightroom 2, during the import I'm prompted for alot of the metadata and it's at this stage I add copyright, location, KEYWORDS, etc. that apply to all the photos I took on that day. Lightroom has an export plug-in for Photomatix (free) so I select the pics to be used for the HDR shot and export them to Photomatix, Lightshop converts the raw files to 16bit tiff files and shuffles them off to Photomatix.

When I save the file from Photomatix, Lightroom automatically adds the adjusted pic to the catalog for that day's shoot. Now I can select the HDR tiff just created, right click and export it off to Paint Shop for any further post processing, again this file is added to the Lightroom catalog automatically (unless I change the saved file name in Paint Shop).

Now (because disk is so damn cheap now) I have, for example, 3 raw files, one HDR tiff and one edited HDR tiff for the shot. One of the cool things about Lightroom is that it allows me to select all 5 pics and "stack" them on the display, leaving only the final, edited shot on top for viewing.

There are some more really cool features of Lightroom that keep all the pics super organized so I don't have to worry about a complicated tree structure for my directories, if I want to see all the pics I've ever take of the child's dirty bedroom I just do a search on the keywords, dirty and bedroom and all the shots display in a gallery format no matter when they were taken.

Whew, sorry to be so wordy but I hope I gave you some ideas. Later, Paul