I've seen a number of different posts on these forums about trying to do this and I never really found a complete and suitable solution. It also has really annoyed me that adobe never implemented this (and it's not possible to do with actions because the action just runs a script and you can't record the HDR toning settings, the dialog always pops up, its in the script). So I finally had some time to get my hands dirty with ExtendScript and I have created a fully featured script complete with UI that allows batch creation of HDR tonned images in photoshop.
The code I got working from various snipets of code I found around the 'net and single stepping through the MergeToHDR.jsx script that is built into photoshop.
This has only been partially tested on photoshop CC on a mac. Hopefully I made it portable enough and it will work on windows and older versions. I don't think the MergeToHDR script has changed much in the last several versions (and that is mainly what I call to do the work) so I think it should work. If you have issues please let me know.
My motivation for this script was coming up with a way to do batch HDR toning for timelapse and so this script's features lean toward using it for that end. I really didn't want to buy another separate program for doing this like photomatix, when I knew it should at least be possible to do in photoshop.
I uploaded the script to github:
https://github.com/davidmilligan/PhotoshopBatchHDR/blob/master/Batch%20HDR.jsx
How to use:
- Drop the script in the '[photoshop folder]/presets/scripts' folder and restart photoshop if it is already running.
- The script should appear as a menu item under File>Automate>Batch HDR...
- A dialog will appear where you specify all the settings for the batch
- Input Section:
- Click browse and select the source folder that contains the images to be merged/toned
- Specify "Number of Brackets" this is how many separate images to group into a single HDR output image (the script will group the images in the source folder in order based on this parameter). You can use a value of 1, which means each image in the source folder is separate and will be toned and output. (I find that many times when shooting RAW, 14 bits is ample to capture the full dynamic of the scene, so I do not waste storage space and shutter acutations using more than one exposure, just make sure to ETTR, also post-processing with this script will be faster)
- If there are other files in your source folder (for example .xmp files) that you need to exclude you can specify a filte. For example: *.cr2
- Typically for timelapse you are using a tripod and do not need to have photoshop align the images, but I provided that capability for anyone who might need it b/c it was easy to enable. Note that enabling this will make the process MUCH slower.
- Toning Section:
- These settings are all the same as the photoshop HDR toning dialog for "Local Adaptation"
- To preview what your toning settings will look like you can select any file(s) in your sequence by clicking "Select File(s)..." under "Preview". The file(s) you select will open and merge (if more than one file). When that's finished you can click the "Update Preview" button to apply the current toning settings and see what they will look like (I can't do the fast, automatic previews like the builtin dialog, sorry - somebody from adobe want to show me how to do this?)
- You can see what the settings will look like at another point in your sequence by clicking the "Select File(s).." button again. (I recommend previewing a shot near the beginning, middle, and end of your sequence)
- The dialog prevents you from using anything in photoshop while its open so I provided a zoom to allow you to zoom in on the preview
- The tone curve you must enter as a comma separated list of points (sorry, ScriptUI is not really adequate to create the graphical histogram overlay for the curves like in the builtin dialog). The points are grouped into x,y pairs so for example: x1,y1,x2,y2,etc. Typically you will start with 0,0 and end with 255,255 (note that 255 is the max, full white). Like the curves tool, x represents the input and y represents the output
- Output Section:
- Click browse and select a folder for the script to save the output files to
- The rest of this section should be self explanitory. NOTE: If you select to output 32bit files, the toning will not be applied, the files will simply be merged into a 32bit HDR image and saved.
- Once you have specified the input and output folders the OK button should be enabled, when you are ready, click OK to start the process
- Go watch a movie or take a nap, this is going to take a while. The script will display a progress window showing you how far along the proces is (the photoshop progress windows may occasionally appear on top of it, I usually just move them up a little so I can see both)
Limitations:
- Only the local adaptation method is supported. It's really the only one I ever use, and I didn't really feel like implementing the other ones, but feel free to modify the script yourself to add this support
- You canot load or save presets from the builtin toning dialog. The format of the preset files is binary and would require reverse engineering of the format and it would be very difficult to read to the files in javascript anyway. If it were xml, it would be much easier, alas it is not. Feel free to grab a hex editor and do this yourself. For now you'll just have to copy all of the values of a preset by hand into the dialog if you want to use a preset. If I have more time this is something I might work on.
- Preview is slow because it has to do the actual full toning, I don't know a way to do the fast real time previews like the builtin dialog.
- I don't think the "Cancel" button on the progress window really works, once running, the script is too busy to register a click, anybody know how I might fix this?
- There may potentially be some ways to improve performance of this script in certain scenarios, IDK, but I'm just glad it works
You're welcome Adobe, you can send me a check at:
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Please hit me up with comments/suggestions,
David
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