Question about PP

There are several historical homes and churches in a small town in south Alabama where I grew up in. I will be there next weekend and intend to make some images. I will be shooting with a 7D and 24/105mm f/1:4 lens mounted on a tripod. I also will make several shots using AEB and saving the images in Raw.

My question, "How much processing do I do in ACR on the 3 images created through the AEB process?

TIA,
roger

Do you mean AWB as in automatic white balance? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the question, but are you intending to blend the three images together into a sort of HDR composite?

I'm not certain what you are asking. Are you wanting to do HDR? Or are you simply wondering how much work it is to convert the raw files to .jpg. Its very easy to convert in ACR, the degree to which manipulate depends on how accurate you are in the exposure and what work you want to leave for photoshop.

Roger, here's another megathread where you might find some additional feedback:

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=902973

AEB is automated exposure bracking. The camera will allow you to increase/decrease the exposure in segements of 1/3 stop on the 7D. I will start at +/- 1. The camera makes three images, one at the camera setting, one @ +1 stop and 1 @ -1 stop.

Elements 8 will create a new image from the three images taking the best from each (light from the under exposed and the darks from the overexposed?). All of the times I have done this, the shots were made in jpeg.

Thanks for the link I will study up on that.
thanks again,
roger

Roger, a helpful thing you can do when shooting is to set a fixed White Balance, either a Custom White Balance with a target or a preset if one "fits" the scene. This way you won't need to "fiddle" with the WB in your Raw processor. Of course with Raw you can always set the WB in software and Sync/copy it into the other shots, though -- it's just that it can be nice to have the images not jumping around a bit when doing the auto exposure bracketing.

Other than that, if you have a good range of exposures, there really isn't much you should need to do in a Raw converter, because your processing software is supposed to properly map the range of tones. Of course, if one of your exposures turns out to actually look quite good, then the Raw software may in fact enable you to get a good single-shot outcome. You might consider a couple "versions" of the image, one processing your "best" shot and then one running the three shots through HDR software. That way, if the HDR comes out "flakey" then you will still have the single best shot!

Overtrim wrote in post #11435277
My question, "How much processing do I do in ACR on the 3 images created through the AEB process?

As much, or as little, as you need to create the image that you see in your minds eye, when you take the shot.

You can get a dozen people to take the shots with the same AEB settings and they will process them in a dozen different ways, from mild to wild. Where you are in there, is entirely up to you.

You don't give us much of a clue as to what you want to achieve, or why you are bracketing the shots, so we can't give much advice as we don't know what you are trying to do.

You could be bracketing in order to get choose from 3 exposures and simply use the best, you could be going for a radical HDR and wild tone-mapped look, or simply blending the exposures manually for a natural look.

I would personally be likely to use the latter technique, simply picking the 'correct' exposure and adding the others with layers, then doing some subtle blending in to those areas which need a little more detail in the shadows or highglights.

Thanks Tony, this was my line of thought. Also, thanks for the tip to set the WB.

Sandpiper, I may be making something simple into something difficult. This small town contains 6 small white churches and each one contains beautiful dark stained glass windows. These churches date from the mid-1800s. There will be problems with shadows and light on some. I wanted to try and capture the most detail as possible.

These churches are special to me. A couple of them help support me during my seminary years. One of the chuches steeple is topped with the dome from the first capitol building of Alabama.

Thanks to all, these have been very helpful to me.
roger

Overtrim wrote in post #11436173
Sandpiper, I may be making something simple into something difficult. This small town contains 6 small white churches and each one contains beautiful dark stained glass windows. These churches date from the mid-1800s. There will be problems with shadows and light on some. I wanted to try and capture the most detail as possible.

Yeah, I know the problem. I would tend to do one shot exposed for the whites and another exposed for the windows. Then tweak them in RAW as usual (but specifically for the areas in each that you will be using). Having got the two versions ready, open both into regular photoshop as layers, with the 'windows' version under the general one. Then carefully erase the windows from the top one (I use a low opacity eraser so I can build it up gradually to where I want it, and it also gives a soft edge with several low level passes instead of one harsh one) so that the correctly exposed windows come through. If you have other areas that need different exposures, you simply add a third layer and do the same again.

That is simply my way of doing it, you can use HDR software but I find it is less realistic and you can easily lose true whites and blacks as it tries to fill whites from the darkest image, and blacks from the lightest. Like I say though, a dozen people will probably have a dozen ways of doing it.

Just make sure that you have plenty of history steps available in case you need to wind it back and redo a window (I use 99 as my default history setting).

One other way of getting the blending option going is by using the Photoshop Auto/Auto Blend Layers -- it actually creates and aligns the layers and then creates "starting masks" that give at least the beginning of masking out the whitest areas and darkest areas and blending the rest -- masks are a "non-destructive" way of doing this so you don't eras image layer content that you may later wish you hadn't. It's worth giving a try to.