THE BEST HDR PROCESSOR FOR LAYERING YOUR ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHS

[@ArminHirmer]

I use NEO occasionally, quite good for the price though. And imho your book is a must for everyone interested in architectural photography, even seasoned photographers will find useful tips inside. And it is inspiring to grout and put your tips into practice and see how wonderful they work. So, thank you again Steven

[@stevenbrookephotography]

You are so welcome, as always.

[@ronwise37]

I'm so glad you made this video. I've been shooting real estate for years but have only been poking around at Neo for about six months. I'm excited to give the HDR module a try. Thank you for all of the info you put on your channel!

[@stevenbrookephotography]

Thanks for your note. Knowing what is possible with NEO has changed my workflow in the field, giving me much more flexibility in the times of day I can shoot.

[@fredfinke2583]

I use both; love both!

[@ps.photos]

tnx for tuto...however (1 yr later i see) i cannot find edit-open in... system keeps saving picture in Tiff..and i dont want that...How to get rid of that?...thanks!!

[@stevenbrookephotography]

Luminar default of a merged file going into Photoshop is a TIFF file. If that's not what you want simply save it as a JPEG whatever else you want. There may be a way to change that default in Luminar, but I've never wanted/needed to do that.

[@ps.photos]

@@stevenbrookephotography tnx for taking the time to respond..i do save as jpg but still it saves as tiff...it just eats my space.. and i cannot use the hdr merge option now, which i regret as it does a good job and can edit in Neo...they told me once to install catalogue on external drive. that way the tifss go there....but it failed...(or i did :-) ) tnx again!!..piet

[@tomhauer5876]

I have been waiting for this one. Do you use a preset for number of brackets and stops or do you set the brackets manually? If preset, what are your number of brackets and stops between brackets? Thanks.

[@stevenbrookephotography]

Thank you for your question, Tom. (No presets for anything! Everything manual.) This is my approach for over 95% of my work, for interiors or exteriors. And knowing that I have Luminar Neo as a RAW processor makes this even more efficient. (1) ISO is set to 100; typically, my f/stop is set to f/11 or f/16 for exteriors; f/22 for interiors. (2) With LIVE VIEW on, I adjust the shutter speed to give me a good mid-point exposure. This is usually on the slightly under-exposed side. (3) I then make my 13-exposure bracket, going from 2 stops under, to 2 stops over, in thirds. I can see what I’m getting, so I made sure that I have one exposure that covers the deepest shadows and one that covers the brightest highlights in which I wish to retain details. Shooting in 1/3 stops ensures that I am completely covered. I don’t mind having some unusable exposures at either end of the bracket. I always start my bracket at the darker end and work up. (4) Then, in BRIDGE, I pick the exposures that I want to merge, looking for highlight and shadow details as well as for my best mid-point exposure. That can be as few as 2 or 3 exposures, or as many as 5 or 6, depending on the scene. (5) Then, I bring them into LUMINAR NEO and follow the workflow I have shown in the video. If, during processing, the merger isn’t giving me exactly what I want, I go back and review which exposures to merge and start over. If you are new to the program, you should experiment and expect some trial-and-error to achieve exactly what you want. (6) Finally, I bring the merged image into PHOTOSHOP.

[@tomhauer5876]

​@@stevenbrookephotography This is exactly what I wanted to know. I am using a medium format camera for interiors.. The output is 50 mb/file. Bringing seven files in will take quite a bit of storage. Is there a way to minimize this? I am grateful for all you do to help me and others.

[@stevenbrookephotography]

Tom, My raw files (Canon 5DS) are also about 50-60 mb. I have yet to bring more than 5 files into LUMINAR. Usually, 3-4. You can certainly try to be more selective in which files to bring in. Usually it's one for the brightest areas (windows, fixtures), one for the darkest (dark furniture, deep exteriors shadows), and one or two for the average mid-tones. (BTW, I use Toshiba Enterprise 16TB stand-alone drives, so storage isn't a problem; and my iMAC has 32GB of RAM, which has always been sufficient.) Clearly, LUMINAR requires some computer strength. The program is powerful.

[@tomhauer5876]

@@stevenbrookephotography Thank you so much.

[@stevenbrookephotography]

YOu're welcome, Tom. Please let me know how this works for you.

[@thegroove2000]

It works with single images as well.

[@stevenbrookephotography]

It does. I have used these procedures with a "hopelessly" under- or over-exposed image and most often it will rescue it.

[@mikepenney5726]

Unfortunately NEO has rendered Mac PRO Xenon processors obsolete... So buying a new computer is required... So one of the following (or a combination) will do the job: Lightroom, Aurora, NIK, and ON 1 or Photoshop layers...

[@stevenbrookephotography]

NEO does require some computer horsepower. This is not unexpected given how powerful the program is and what you are asking it to do.