The New York Times has an interesting article on HDR - High Dynamic Range photography. HDR allows photographers to combine multiple exposures to bring out the full range of tonal values in a scene, retaining detail in dark shadows as well as bright highlight areas. The results, like these mouthwatering images by photog Kris Kros, are sometimes hyper-realistic, making a photograph look like a hybrid photo-cum-painting. There are several programs for rendering HDR images, including Photoshop CS2. If you're interested in trying out the HDR features in Photoshop CS2, here are the basics:

The trick is to take several shots of the same scene at slightly different exposures and merge the images into one 32-bit HDR file in Photoshop (CS2 only). Shoot in RAW format. Be sure to use a tripod so your camera doesn't move between shots. Bracket exposures by changing shutter speed one stop for each shot, without changing your aperture. In Photoshop, choose File>Automate>Merge to HDR, and browse to your bracketed shots. Choose 32 bits as the bit depth if you want to retain all of the tonal information. Photoshop will merge the multiple exposures into one 32-bit file.

The merged image may look washed out at first because an HDR image contains a larger dynamic range than your monitor can display. You can adjust Photoshop's preview of the merged image by choosing View>32-bit Preview Options and adjusting Exposure, Gamma, and Highlight Compression settings there. These settings do not affect the image -- only the way it appears on your monitor. To adjust the image itself, choose Image>Adjustments>Exposure. In the Exposure dialog box, use the Exposure slider to adjust the highlights, the Offset slider to adjust shadows and midtones, and the Gamma slider to adjust , well, the gamma. Save the 32-bit file in Radiance (.hdr) format. If you want to manipulate the image further in Photoshop, convert it to 16 bits so you have access to more tools and features. You can print the 16-bit file, or convert it to 8-bit for printing.

Automator World has posted a Photoshop Action Pack for Mac OS X 10.4's Automator, an app that allows you to automate many OS and application functions. The actions you can add to Automator workflows is fairly extensive:

• Add IPTC Captions to Photoshop Documents
• Apply Unsharp Mask to Photoshop Documents
• Apply Watermark to Photoshop Documents
• Assign Color Profile to Photoshop Documents
• Close Photoshop Documents
• Extract IPTC Captions from Photoshop Documents
• Flip Photoshop Documents
• New Photoshop Document
• Open Images in Photoshop
• Resize Photoshop Documents
• Rotate Photoshop Documents
• Save Photoshop Documents
• Trigger Photoshop Action
• Trim Photoshop Documents

The action pack is provided free and looks like a handy addition to any Mac + Photoshop user's workflow.

The O'Reilly Network has taken the wraps off of Inside Adobe Lightroom, a new site featuring articles, a blog and a podcast covering Adobe's professional photo management app. Tips on color correction, adding music to slideshows, how to migrate images from iPhoto  and more are all on the menu, so swing by and find out how much you really didn't know about Lightroom.

[via Daring Fireball]

Ray Robertson, of Scripting Matters fame, will be leading "Automating Adobe Creative Suite 2 with AppleScript," a three-hour, free seminar covering - you guessed it - how to use applescript to automate Creative Suite.

From Scripting Matters' site, it sounds like Ray is a one-man applescripting machine with clients ranging from small business to large corporate. While the seminar - including a CD with example scripts - is free, registration for the March 23rd event is required by email. Check out Scripting Matters' press release for more information.

[via MacScripter]

A second version of the fantastic and free Photoshop CS2 Automator Actions has been released - and I am once again smitten. If you aren't familiar with Automator, it's an application Apple includes with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger that allows you to, well, automate the Mac OS X operating system. Think: "like actions in Photoshop, but for my entire OS." Automator allows you to easily drag and drop actions to create workflows that move information and files in and out of multiple programs, manipulating it along the way. As icing on the cake, Automator actions that you create can be shared with anyone else using Tiger, opening the doors for über-automation with your colleagues in the workplace. Check out Apple's Automator details page for more information if you need help wrapping your head around the concept.

This suite of Photoshop actions from Complete Digital Photography brings Photoshop into the automation party, offering a list of actions, options and features far too long to list here. The total list of Automator-enabled actions is now up to 68 with version 2.0, and new actions include, but are not limited to: Change Resolution, Color Balance, Dust and Scratches, Maximum/Minimum, Open Raw Data, Polar Coordinates, Posterize, Radial Blur, Resize Canvas, Smart Blur, Threshold, and much more. A series of bug fixes has been implemented as well, but check out the post at Complete Digital Photography for the full details of how these actions can fit into you Tiger Photoshop Automator workflow, and make sure you download the right set for either CS or CS2.

Photoshop Automator Actions 2.0 is donationware, and I urge you to toss at least a few dollars into the hat if you take a liking to these most excellent tools.