What makes it HDR?

[Abby Rose]

From what I read online, PS Elements does not support HDR. (I'm using the free trial of Elements 8 right now and doing lots of experiments... next is the free trial of CS4. I have an excellent student discount, so I'm trying to decide which one to buy.) But say you bracket some shots and combine them on PS Elements. Why is this "pseudo HDR" and not true HDR?

I'm more than a little confused. :scratch: This seems to be the place to ask.

 

[Bynx]

If you place your bracketed shots on layers in PS Elements then you must manually separate the different exposure values. The HDR feature of CS3 or CS4 or the HDR software like Photomatix will do the separation based on the light values of the pixels. A bit here a bit there until the whole image has the best exposure values for all areas of the image. Its a lot easier than doing it manually. I dont like the term pseudo. If it looks like an HDR then its an HDR. That means that there is some image in the highlights and the shadows as well. And the Dynamic Range has been covered, which is the whole point of it anyway.

 

[Abby Rose]

Ah, I see now. Thanks!

 

[Dominantly]

PSE 8 has a photo merge, HDR-ish feature built into it. You can Google for some tutorials.

 

[Abby Rose]

Will do. Thank you both!