Tutorial - HDR from 1 JPG

    A big thankyou to everyone for visiting! This photo has 158'000 views, and 350 favorites!

    Welcome to my photostream! I hope you enjoy this tutorial and my photos. To read more about this photo and why its edited the way it is, scroll to the bottom of the tutorial. Please leave a comment if you visit! :)

    Note: Below tutorial was written for Photomatix Pro 2.22. Photomatix latest software version has similar but slightly different settings.

    About this photo:

    This photo was taken out of the train, speeding through the Dutch countryside. I decided I wanted to try something new. A lot of my HDRs are bright and very saturated with colour. I wanted to go for the darker more ominous look, close to black and white, but not completely, still showing a hint of colour. I think it turned out nicely. Because of the strong tonemapping settings I got pretty much noise, but I also decided to leave that, because it gives the photos something rough and old looking, which I find fits to the colours and darkness.

    How to succesfully make a HDR from 1 JPG

    Would you buy an expensive DSLR, expensive lenses, and lots of filters, when you can get similar effects with just a cheap compact camera and cheap tripod?

    Ok, I must admit, there are a few more benefits of having a DSLR verses compact, but still, for the beginning or budget photographer, you can do a lot with software and a reasonable compact camera. This is supposed to be a tutorial about making HDRs (High Dynamic Range Photos), so let me get back to the point. You may know that for HDR images, you need to take multiple photos, of multiple exposures. If you want to know more about creating HDRs in general, I suggest you also read my HDR & Photomatix tutorial. Of course everything that you want to photograph in that way has to stand perfectly still, or you will have exposures that don't "fit" over eachother. Of course sometimes this effect is nice, such as in this example from Altus: Ethereal Skating.

    But if you want a HDR of a person or car that's moving by, and you want it to be sharp, in focus as in a normal photo, its impossible to do it with multiple exposures. So you may have seen some of the HDRs that were created from 1 RAW image... Another nice example from Altus, also about skating and also one of my faves is this one: Tokyo Transition. This was made from 1 RAW photo, shot with a camera that supports RAW. Software is used to extract multiple exposures from the RAW file, and then you can use your favourite program to turn those exposures into a HDR.

    But I dont have enough money to buy a DSLR that can shoot RAW...

    So lets say that you don't have a camera that can shoot RAW and don't have the money or dont want
    to spend the money on a new one, like me, there are other options. I thought, why cant I create HDRs from 1 jpeg? I know its not RAW, but its worth a try... (before you try this, read the whole tutorial)

    1. I opened my photo in Photoshop.
    2. I pressed control + M to get the "curves" tool, and made the photo a lot brighter.
    3. I saved the image with a different name next to the original.
    4. I undid the curves, with Control + Alt + Z.
    5. I did the curves again, but instead of making the photo brighter, I made it darker.
    6. I saved the image again next to the two other exposures.
    7. I opened all three exposures in Photomatix, and generated and tonemapped the HDR image.
    8. It worked! Yay!

    But is that the end of this tutorial?

    In fact you are still sortof creating 3 jpgs... And its a lot of work... And is Photoshop actually creating detail in silhouettes or blow out highlights? No... It cant do that, you cant just magically create detail where your camera captured nothing... Is Photoshop lightening too dark areas that still show detail? Or darkening areas that are just a little bit overexposed? Yes... And what does Photomatix do in comparism? Maybe you have noticed before that the HDR result is exposed even better or more equally than the darkest or lightest exposure you fed into it... (depending on your settings of course) Even if you really photographed three different exposures. So Photomatix brightens and darkens as well. It doesnt just combine.

    The tonemapping of Photomatix is a pretty strong tool to get some detail back into over or underexposed images, as long as there is detail in the first place. It wont turn a totally black silhouette into visible detail, and the same goes for a blown out overexposed white spot...

    Now that we know that first creating several exposures in Photoshop is not required, as this is basically the same thing that Photomatix does with its tonemapping, our list of steps changes to:

    1. Open the photo in Photomatix.
    2. Open the photo again in Photomatix.
    3. Generate and tonemap the HDR!

    So that saves you a lot of trouble and work! And who wants to do unneccesary work?

    To save even more time you can copy and paste all your photos in the same folder to create copies, and then drag the original and copy into Photomatix right away, instead of having to open the same image twice. Deleting all the copies afterwards doesnt take as much time as opening each photo twice in Photomatix.

    But are the tonemapping settings the same?

    Not always. Of course the settings depend completely on the result you wish to achieve. But in short, you have to do a few things to make sure not to get too much noise, and saturation. Apparently when working with 1 jpg, the noise and saturation get a lot higher than when I use three "real" separate exposures.

    Try the following settings in Photomatix:

    Luminosity: between -2 and +2
    Strength: between 30% and 60%
    Saturation: between 30% and 50%
    White clip: set slider about halfway
    Black clip: set slider about 1/10th from the left.
    Smoothing: High!!! This is really important...

    To reduce noise and halos:

    Smoothing should be on high (reduces noise and halos) and
    luminosity should be 2 or lower. Higher luminosity reduces halos, but
    creates a lot of noise. The lower you set the general Strength, the less
    noise and halos.

    I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial, and I hope it will yield some nice results. Finally you can take HDR shots with your cheap compact camera straight from your bike or out of your car window whilst driving past something! Or you can pay attention to traffic of course! :)

    For more tutorials written about HDR, Photoshop, and lighting, click here...

    Comments and faves

    1. ★

      Punk Dolphin, tonemap, fufefufe, kyleplastock, and 359 other people added this photo to their favorites.

    2. Christiaan Leever NL (81 months ago | reply)

      Compare HDR and original, but keep in mind, these are creative HDRs, and are not supposed to look as realistic as possible:


      Tutorial - HDR from 1 JPG

      Two more examples of HDRs from 1 jpg, with originals:



      Entrance to Castle Burgsteinfurt
      Entrance to Castle Burgsteinfurt



      Schiphol Amsterdam Airport
      Schiphol Amsterdam Airport

    3. Jaydot (81 months ago | reply)

      Ahh... there's hope for the RAWless :)
      Thanks so much for all that information.
      I'm just starting out on my PS-for-beginners lessons that arrived today - great fun - and I'll come back to this post at some point!

    4. Punk Dolphin (81 months ago | reply)

      Thank you. These are quite nice. All of the images. I've always heard about this, but never successful myself creating an image I would like from 1 jpeg.

      Now I'll try again using your tutorial.

    5. Christiaan Leever NL (81 months ago | reply)

      @ Jaydot: Yep :) Lucky us! I guess if you Photoshop around long enough you could achieve the same effect, but that might take an hour... I tried to recreate the image in this post in Photoshop, only from the original, and it took me at least 10 minutes, whilst the HDR took about 1 minute. And that was a pretty bad Photoshop recreation, I guess if I would want it perfect it might take 30 minutes in Photoshop.

      @ Punk Dolphin: Youre welcome! I guess there were some other mentionings of this possibility on Flickr, but I havent seen a tutorial anywhere, so I decided to write one since I have created HDRs from 1 JPG a number of times now...

    6. M Neal (81 months ago | reply)

      Could you post the original JPEG files so we could see the difference?

    7. Λl℮Roda® (81 months ago | reply)

      Thats a pretty good tutorial Christiaan! Thanks for sharing!!!

      --
      Seen in my contacts' photos. (?)

    8. JimNtexas (81 months ago | reply)

      This is very helpful to this rank beginner.

    9. Christiaan Leever NL (81 months ago | reply)

      @dday859, originals added! :) Please advise what you think of the difference!

      @AleRoda®, Thanks!

      @JimNtexas, thanks! Glad you enjoy it :)

    10. strollerdos (81 months ago | reply)

      you can just turn the jpeg into a 16 bit tiff and tonemap it - messing around with the curves seems a laborious way of achieveing the same effect.

    11. /\ltus (81 months ago | reply)

      Most, most cool; well done!! Your reference to my shots is a big honor; thanks!!

      Gonna try your tips on some .jpg shots this weekend!

    12. hinderik (81 months ago | reply)

      Interessant om te lezen; dat geklooi met curve layers is idd nogal tijdrovend. Hier had ik er ook nog even een 'discussie' over www.flickr.com/photos/33223374@N00/253533003/ waarbij de optie om een raw te creeren vanuit jpg werd genoemd, waarna daarmee de hdr gecreeerd kan worden.

    13. M Neal (81 months ago | reply)

      You seem to be much better at doing this than I am. Thank you for posting the originals, it really helps to show what can be done from one JPEG. Thanks for the great tutorial.

    14. snd1 (81 months ago | reply)

      Nice shot! Very good tutorial, thanks a lot!

    15. Christiaan Leever NL (81 months ago | reply)

      @ strollerdos: Why would you bother to turn it into a 16 bit tiff if you can use a normal jpg? Did you read on past the part where I wrote about the curves? Maybe I should just remove that part from the tutorial, as it is not really relevant.

      1. Open the photo in Photomatix.
      2. Open the photo again in Photomatix.
      3. Generate and tonemap the HDR!

      I dont mess with curves (anymore)! As you can read if you read on :)

      @ Altus, thanks :) and you deserve the honour! Your shots are cool :)

      @ hinderik: bedankt voor de link, leuke discussie, zie mijn reply daar.

      @ dday859, well, I wasnt good at it in the beginning! I have posted about a 100 HDRs soon though, and thats only 5% or less of the ones I have already made. Some of them I tonemapped several times. Just keep trying, and you will get better :) See one of my first tries... ahem.


      @ snd1: Thanks and youre welcome! :)

    16. neodelphi (81 months ago | reply)

      thanks for the tutorial bro. now i'm making some great result of our 1 JPG file processed on photomatrix.

      keep it up!

      regards,
      neo

    17. peribanyez (81 months ago | reply)

      Thank you for sharing :)

    18. Christiaan Leever NL (81 months ago | reply)

      Thanks for the comments! Loking forward to seeing the result neodelphi! Let me know when its done :)

    19. peribanyez (81 months ago | reply)

      Hi Cristiaan L.

      You could see your advice results in my photostream... I have a nikon coolpix 4600. So I can't have RAW files. I like HDR whith 3 xp or more, but is hard to carry out the tripod...

      I tried to follow your tips in sigles jpg and... :) I have two nice photos whith lovely colors and better shadows.

    20. Pétursey (81 months ago | reply)

      Helpful tutorial !!!! I like the schiphol pic....I'll have to try that myself on the way to work !!!!

    21. Christiaan Leever NL (81 months ago | reply)

      @ peribanyez, nice! Cool that you showed the comparism aswell!

      Check out the difference on peribanyez results!

      @ petursey, Thanks! :) Do you work at Schiphol?

    22. Pétursey (81 months ago | reply)

      Nee ..in Amsterdam Zuid..dus moet ik twee keer per dag in Schiphol overstappen !

    23. Christiaan Leever NL (81 months ago | reply)

      Oh cool! Dan zou ik maar snel zo een foto nemen en bewerken :)

    24. zatz0r (81 months ago | reply)

      thank you very much, great tutorial

    25. Christiaan Leever NL (81 months ago | reply)

      Youre welcome zatz0r! :)

    26. Jessica New (81 months ago | reply)

      I've been seeing all of these cool (HDR/photomatix) & I don't even know what that is.... Then I stumbled across a few of these tutorials explaining EVERYTHING!! Yours is one of them. And you teach us how to do it with one jpg, which I will be trying (I don't have a tripod, yet)! THANKS! I can't wait to learn this "new" technique.... SWEET... I like the airport picture & the cottage picture....

    27. Christiaan Leever NL (81 months ago | reply)

      You might also be interested in the normal HDR tutorial, also describing Photomatix. Click the photo to go there:

      Edit Away

    28. cyanatic (81 months ago | reply)

      Although I try using multiple exposures as much as possible, this tutorial was very helpful. I was using the old "under/over-expose in PS or Gimp and make copies. Thanks!

    29. Christiaan Leever NL (81 months ago | reply)

      I'm glad it was useful to you cyanatic!

    30. Wejeros (80 months ago | reply)

      Genial, it's a good way!!!

      Look at this one!

      Generated HDR Vieille voiture a Cholula

    31. ivokiwi (80 months ago | reply)

      thanks for the tutorial. now i'm making some great result of some 1 JPG file processed on photomatrix
      great !

    32. Christiaan Leever NL (80 months ago | reply)

      Thanks for the comments Jeronimo and Ivokiwi.

      I think that car of yours turned out nice, a bit on the bright side, but still probably more interesting than the normal version.

    33. Johny Day (80 months ago | reply)

      Thanks for the tutorial but here where I blocked
      1. Open the photo in Photomatix.
      2. Open the photo again in Photomatix.
      3. Generate and tonemap the HDR!
      Step #2 open the photo again ??? I might be suffering from a brain cramp but I don't get it ??
      sorry , Help !

    34. Christiaan Leever NL (80 months ago | reply)

      Might be a bit cryptic :) Sometimes simple can be complicated. You just open it, and then you open a second photo, but just select the same one again instead of a different one. So you open the same photo twice in the same program, and then tonemap those! :)

    35. Christiaan Leever NL (80 months ago | reply)

      Thanks Ryanz777, I did that sometimes with 50 x 3 exposures or so, but then also automatically let Photomatix apply light tonemapping already. I've once tried to let Photomatix generate all the 50 HDRs as well and then tonemap one by one by hand afterwards, but then I prefer doing it the way I do it nowadays. I have 6 x Photomatix running, and just open photos simultaneously in each, generate HDRs in each, etc... all at the same time so I never have to wait for my pc to generate or save or whatever :) Thanks for taking time to comment!

    36. gawd (80 months ago | reply)

      Here's my attempt:

      Original Pseudo-HDR

      It's far from perfect, but for a first try, I like how the sky looks more vivid.

      Thanks for the tip!

    37. Christiaan Leever NL (80 months ago | reply)

      Keep trying! :) People usually dont turn out so nice in HDR I think, it makes their skin too red. See his face :P

    38. Johny Day (80 months ago | reply)

      Thanks ill try that , Photomatix really dosent like me , I sware

    39. Christiaan Leever NL (80 months ago | reply)

      Lol :) Dont worry. It didnt like me in the beginning either. You have to give it lots of attention and use it about 100 times a day, then it becomes your best friend and does anything you want.

    40. antonious (www.anthonyaphoto.com) (80 months ago | reply)

      This is the best i could do... LOL! i stink!

      any ideas as to how to make this work... here is the original and the HDR (if you could call it that)

      well id add the photos if i knew how to add them here.. lol im just awful huh.. anyone help a brother out? how can i post my 2 pics into this comment?

    41. Christiaan Leever NL (80 months ago | reply)

      Hi Antonius :)

      You can add the photos by first going to your own photo, then clicking the "all sizes" button just above the photo. There, select "small" at the top, and then copy and paste the text under: "1. Copy and paste this HTML into your webpage:"

      It will look like this:

      Tutorial - HDR from 1 JPG

      Let me know if it doesnt work and I will come by to your photostream :)

    42. neutral_force (79 months ago | reply)

      Hey Christiaan really thanx for this tutorial!

    43. Christiaan Leever NL (79 months ago | reply)

      You are very welcome :)

    44. Stefano Prigione (79 months ago | reply)

      Wow! Great tutorial from an hdr guru!!! Thank you!!

    45. Christiaan Leever NL (79 months ago | reply)

      Thanks emeedibi :)

    46. dilworthdesigns (78 months ago | reply)

      Thanks so much for the tutorial. Here is my first stab at it...

    47. Christiaan Leever NL (78 months ago | reply)

      Nice result! Im sure the clouds would have been overexposed withou the tonemapping! :)

    48. silverxraven [deleted] (78 months ago | reply)

      Nice! I'm just starting out with Photomatix, this will help a lot!

    49. _sarchi (78 months ago | reply)

      will this go above the best.. in your opinion christiaan.l

    50. Christiaan Leever NL (78 months ago | reply)

      Thanks silverxraven!

      Sarchi, I am not quite sure I understand what you mean?

      This is in my opinion not anywhere near my best shots, as I prefer a lot more colour! :)

    51. _sarchi (78 months ago | reply)

      I'll re-phrase it.. best of the worst.. linked_

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