Hi Gary_sc,
Thanks for the reply.
I would use Bridge to browse to the RAW files that I want to use. I then select the files (say 5) with 1 stop between them. I right click on them and choose open in Camera RAW. ACR opens showing the 5 images, I select all five images and choose Merge to HDR .
I receive the message that all 5 images have been successfully merged. Align images and Apply auto tone and colour adjustments are both selected.
The image I am presented with shows no sign of any auto tone adjustments being applied and when I click on and off the auto tone selection there is no change to the image.
I also posted my problem on the Photoshop forum as a reply to others who were having the same problem.
I have used this function many times in a previous version of Camera RAW with fantastic results but this version just will not work as I have said on 2 different PC's running the latest Windows 10 and on a PC running Windows 7.
This is a very important function for me and I really would like it back.
Hope you can help.
Hi DS,
As far as the mechanics of your work within Bridge -> ACR, it all sounds absolutely correct. I needed to verify that to rule out those issues.
I was about to say I'm on a Mac and I've not observed ANY issues but I went over to the Photoshop forum and found the thread you mentioned and see that there are in fact Mac folks that are having issues as well.
The last comment in that thread by Dave mentioned reporting this as a Bug and provided the link. This is something that you should do. In addition, one of the other folks in that thread was identified as "Staff." That means Adobe and that means that this will get attention. The bad news is that it can take at least weeks to months for the problem to be verified in house, fixed, have the fix tested, and then disseminated for release.
HOWEVER, there are a few things to try in the meantime:
1) you did not mention if you work with the original raw files or if you convert them to DNGs. If you do work with the original raw files, please try converting them and see if that helps. [FWIW, I always convert to DNGs and I've not seen this issue. Coincidence or causality I do not know.]
You can download the free Adobe DNG Converter here [Note: if you use the "Get photos from camera" application from Bridge, you can convert on the fly during downloading.]:
Adobe Digital Negative Converter
One other thing to try is to use an earlier version of ACR. I found the following page that has earlier releases that you can download. If you scroll toward the bottom you'll see them.
Update information for older versions of Adobe Photoshop
Let us know if either of these things provides temporary solutions.
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Now, on another matter: if you are taking raw images, there is no reason to create images 1 stop apart. None.
I've been doing HDR for about 10 years now and I remember how people would brag that they took 10 images 1/3 stop apart, etc. etc. If you are taking jpg images, all you need is 2 stops and with raw you can safely do 4 stops between images. *
OK, so why?
It has to do with how much data is in an image. A jpg image is an 8-bit image. There is enough dynamic range in that 8-bits to safely capture everything in 2 stop jumps. However a raw image can be up to 12, 14, or 16-bits depending on the camera. So yes, you can use only 2 images instead of 3.
Here's another way to think about this. Think of a one foot ruler as an 8-bit image and you lay three of them out with 1" overlapping. You can easily and successfully measure out 22" with no problem. Now think of a 16-bit image as an 18" ruler. You can lay two of them out with 1" overlapping and capture 35".
I did an experiment bunches of years** ago where I took my camera, set it up on a tripod to remove one variable and took 9 images, 1/2 stop apart. (-2. -1.5, -1, -.5, 0, .5, 1, 1.5, 2).
I then processed them with the exact same settings of all 9,
then just 5: (-2, -1, 0, 1, 2)
then just 3: (-2, 0, 2)
There was absolutely no difference in any way on the appearance of the three completed images.
Please, once you are back and running, try this experiment, see what happens and please get back to me with your results.
*FWIW, I often still take the three (or 5) images 2-stops apart when I'm taking HDR simply because I'm not always fully sure I can get the dynamic range I want from one image. Since electrons are free I check and maybe even compare the single image and the HDR image and if I can't see a difference I toss the HDR and the DNGs that I now know I do not need and toss them.
**This was done long before Adobe had their "better" HDR capability within PS and long before ACR could do HDR. All testing was done with Photomatix.
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