RAW HDR Merge Output

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
April 14, 2024
4 replies
713 views

I noticed that after taking a bracketed exposures and creating a HDR merge of the images the new file created loses some of the RAW edit tools. Is there a setting in Lightroom that will allow me to create merged photos and retain all of the RAW editing tools?

macOS

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JohanElzenga

Community Expert

What tools? The only tool I can think of is the 'Enhance' option (like AI Denoise), which is to be expected because the HDR image is indeed demosaiced.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

Rob_Cullen

Community Expert

A merge to HDR or Panorama creates a DNG file. But is not technically a "RAW" file. It is (in my simple language) more like a TIFF enclosed in the DNG 'wrapper'.

This might explain the limits of "RAW editing tools".

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.0, Photoshop 27.0, ACR 18.0, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0 .

Conrad_C

Community Expert

An HDR or panorama merge does demosaic the original raw files into a linear DNG file (I think I have that right), but just about all of the raw level edit controls should still be there. For the merged DNG, the range of adjustments should be the same as the original raws…it isn’t drastically restricted as it is when editing a non-raw format (TIFF, PSD, JPEG).

That’s why I asked for clarification about whether it was the tools themselves that are missing, or the adjustments made to the original raw files.

GoldingD

Legend

Generally some efforts to apply develop mods prior to a Photo Merge, either HDR or PANO, will be ignored during the merge. Oh a few can be helpful, like lens correction for HDR, and spot healing for PANO, but many (Tonality in HDR comes to mind) will be ignored.

see:

https://jkost.com/blog/2021/09/19408.html

Conrad_C

Community Expert

The tools should all be the same, but you probably won’t see any of the history or adjustments from any of the multiple source images. It kind of gets reset. Is that what you mean? If not, which tools are missing?

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