How to create an HDR ‘superRAW’ image in Lightroom – it’s easy!

I’m drawn to extreme contrasts in lighting, which I guess a lot of photographers are. This gets me into trouble, though, because very often a scene will have a wider dynamic range, or brightness range, than the camera can capture.

One easy solution is to shoot RAW files rather than JPEGs. This will give you a little more dynamic range ‘headroom’ so that you can use Lightroom or any other raw processing tool to recover a little more highlight detail from bright skies, for example, or bring up shadows to reveal detail in the darker tones.

This only works up to a point. I reckon you can only recover up to 1EV of extra highlight detail (unless your camera has an extended dynamic range option), and while you can get a lot more out of the shadows, this often brings a lot of extra noise and sometimes a loss in sharpness in these areas.

So the surprisingly easy fix for this comes in two stages:

1. Use your camera’s AEB (auto exposure bracketing) mode to capture a series of different exposures in quick succession
2. Use the Photo Merge > HDR option in Lightroom to merge your separate bracketed RAW files into a single HDR DNG file.

Lightroom’s HDR DNGs have a much wider innate dynamic range than regular RAW files. You can use Lightroom’s Auto setting to automatically optimize the tonal range of the merged file and then use its masking options to enhance individual areas.

All of this is completely non-destructive. Once the images are merged you can undo and redo anything, even the Auto tonal adjustments.

Capture One has a similar HDR merge option for RAW files, too, and is just as effective.

So let’s see how this Lightroom HDR merge feature works.

01 My bracketed RAW files

Here’s my scene exposed as a set of three bracketed RAW files – one at the ‘correct’ exposure, one two stops underexposed be sure of capturing all the bright detail in the sky, and a third two stops ‘over’ to record all the shadow detail under the boat. You can probably see that while the ‘correct’ exposure looks as if it might have enough latitude to recover some good highlight detail, the shadow detail is probably a bit marginal.

02 HDR merge in Lightroom

So let’s merge all three in Lightroom. This couldn’t be any easier. You select all the images in the bracketed sequence, right-click and choose Photo Merge > HDR. You then see this HDR Merge Preview window where you can check some settings.

• Keep Auto Align on, especially if you shot your bracketed sequence handheld
• Keep Auto Settings checked if you want Lightroom to automatically adjust the tones afterwards
• You can leave the Deghost setting at None unless you have objects moving between exposures, in which case you can try the other options
• Keep the Create Stack box checked if you want Lightroom to stack the original RAW files with the finished HDR image – or don’t bother if you intend to delete the RAW files afterwards

03 HDR merge vs original RAW

Now you just have to wait a few moments for Lightroom to create the merged HDR image – and here’s my HDR photo alongside the best of the individual RAW files so that you can see the difference.

04 HDR image after editing

In this version I’ve used Lightroom’s masking tools and local adjustments to enhance different areas of the merged HDR image. All the editing tools work exactly as they do on regular images. I’m showing my editing version alongside the original merged image. I’ve exaggerated the adjustments somewhat so that you can see a clear difference.

Now with scenes like this where the lighting range is not very far outside the camera’s raw dynamic range, you may only see a small advantage over regular raw files, but the greater the lighting contrast, the bigger the advantage.

And even with a scene like this you will see differences. The merged HDR image is much more ‘robust’ when you carry out big tonal adjustments, so that shadow areas, for example, come out much cleaner and crisper, and you’re likely to get much nicer tonal gradations in brighter areas like skies, for example.

You won’t need this HDR merge technique all the time – it’s still simpler to shoot with a single RAW file in most lighting conditions. But it is worth setting up one of your camera’s custom modes for Auto Exposure Bracketing so that you can quickly switch to this for a scene with an unusually high brightness range.

With this HDR merge feature you can create what I like to call a ‘superRAW’ digital negative with greatly extended dynamic range that can withstand much more extreme tonal adjustments. In black and white, it’s almost like working with film negatives again – only with much better shadow detail!