Creating HDR images with PhotoShop CS5

As is the case with most things in PhotoShop, once you know how to do something it is easy--unless you don't do it every day and forget!  This is just a quick how-to for creating images with CS5 (the same instructions will work with CS4 as well although the interfaces are a bit different).

(Remember, you can click on the images below to enlarge)

The easiest (and preferable method) is to use Bridge.  I know a few people who have never learned to use Bridge--don't be one of them!  With bridge you simply select the images you want to merge into and HDR and then select Tools; PhotoShop; Merge to HDR Pro:

This technique will merge the selected images and bring up a dialog box that allows you to "fine-tune" the image:

One particularly useful tool is the "Remove ghosts" checkbox shown above.  Checking this box will eliminate "ghosts" due to leaves blowing, people moving, etc.

There may be times when you would prefer to have a finer control over the image.  In such cases you can load the individual images into PhotoShop layers and then :
    1)  Select all levels
    2)  From the menu select: "Edit; Auto-Align Layers"
    3)  Upon completion select: "Edit; Auto-Blend Layers"
    4)  Check the "Stack images" button
At this point you can see what parts of each image are used in the composite and can presumably adjust the layer masks.  Note that this is the same procedure used to stack images to increase the depth of field such as in photomicroscopy.