15 Examples of Beautiful HDR Photography

One of the most important things that you can do to multiply the effectiveness of your content is to provide a visually impressive experience with it. Of course, you’ll want to use a theme on your blog that makes it fun to view your site and easy to enjoy your content but you’ll also want to illustrate your articles with lively, vivid images that really grab the attention of your visitors.

Today I want to draw your attention to one of my favorite styles of photography. It’s called HDR, or high dynamic range. In order to create an HDR photo, the photographer takes three images almost simultaneously. One image will be very light, one will be very dark, and the third will be normal. The light one will be able to see all of the texture and details in the dark corners and shadows and the dark image will see all the details in the light areas.

In Photoshop, the images are then merged back together to create one single photo that is now characterized by amazing detail and beautiful colors. The result of this process is seen below in the 15 images that I’ve gathered in this showcase. If you like these image then be sure to swing by the Creative Commons Gallery over at Flickr and attach the letter HDR to whatever you’re searching for.

If you’re interested in creating artwork like this, it’s incredibly easy with the latest release of Photoshop. Open your photo in Photoshop CS5. From the top menu select image –> adjustments –> HDR Toning.

I prefer to change the preset to surrealistic high contrast and then I begin adjusting from there but you can select whichever styles you prefer.

These, of course, aren’t true HDR photos because we will only be making them from one photo rather than the 3 or more than true HDR uses but you’ll be surprised how impressive Photoshop CS5 can make your images in just a few seconds of tinkering with them.