Question about group selected HDR Merge

[robertb65063360]

I'm working with stacks in Lightroom- anywhere from 3 to 7 exposures in each stack. When a single stack is slected for an HDR merge, I get a preview window with deghosting optoins. However, when I select all stacks and HDR merge as a group- I have no deghosting options. Does Lightroom use the previously selected deghosting option for all merges? If not, is there a way to tell lightroom which degree of deghosting to use before a group selection HDR merge? 

[gary_sc · Accepted solution]

As good as LR is, there's no way for LR to know "how much" deghosting to apply. In addition, all the settings are sticky. So if you do a one-off with whatever settings you want, you can then run the process to automatic with those settings. If you want custom settings for each one, than that's a one-at-a-time process.

[robertb65063360]

Ok, awsome. Thank you, Gary! I usually end up merging any exterior shots (wind and blowing trees) individually. 

[GoldingD]

Does this involve using aa plug-in?

[gary_sc]

Hi David,

Nope, not at all. 

In Lightroom or ACR, if you have raw or jpg images that have different exposures based on shutter speed (not f-stop). They should be 2 stops apart (e.g., -2. 0, +2) and select them so they are all active.

Then in Lightroom, press Control-h (that's for Mac, sorry I do not remember the PC key here) and the h key, you will get an hdr image. If you do not need to set any shadow issue (aka moving object like a dog) than you can press Shift-Control-h. In addition, if you have a whole bunch of these images, you can select them all, right click on one of the images and select Stack -> select "Auto stack based on Capture time" This will make a bunch of stacks based on how fast the shutter went before the next set of images. Then you can select all of these stacks, press Shift-Control-h and go get a cup of coffee. When you get back they will all be waiting. Hint: be sure to set the check box to stack the iamges. it will clean up the mess of images into stacks.

Let me know if this makes sense. I'm going fast here.

[GoldingD]

Depending on LrC version, you can set up the stacks, leave them stacked, the go into Photo Merge, select HDR, and merge them. It used to be merging multiple sets would bog the computer down, and at some point freeze. But that got fixed, supposedly.

Now one issue, are you going the menu route to start the merge, or a keyboard shortcut, wrong keyboard shortcut will skip the previews.

Ctrl+H

vs

Ctrl+Shift+H

[GoldingD · Accepted solution]

One reminder, the settings you see in the preview screen, deghosting, etc, carry over from previous merge, so set up one merge, modify as you feel fit, then return to merge via batch. Hopefully they are all similar enough to use the same setting.

[robertb65063360]

Ok, this is how I suspected it worked. Thank you !