HDR with Photomatix, Photoshop

Okay, so HDR has been around for a while now. But I must say, after finally downloading Photomatix and messing around with it, I'm finding that some old, boring photos that I took back in the day look amazing in HDR/pseudo-HDR! This grassy cliff taken in Iceland was a pseudo-HDR, meaning I did not take multiple exposures, but only one. Much like Camera RAW, where one can take the Recovery and Fill Light sliders all the way to the right to get some funky effects, Photomatix does much the same thing but with much more control. After processing it there, I move over to Photoshop to add finishing touches.

A before-&-after image.  It's still not in a final stage, but you can see what I started with here.  Just a single exposure.  Digital processing began in Photomatix, then did a photo-illustration in Photoshop. 

I love adjustment layers.  They take up minimal space in a Photoshop document, and are non-destructive.  When I hit 25-30 layers, or when my computer begins whining for more memory, I'll start merging layers that I'm not working on anymore and save my document to a different file name.  I'll still have all the layers if I need to go back and edit, but will free up some RAM by merging most of them down.  Make sure you save to a different file name the second you merge layers, or you'll be sorry!  A second & third hard drive, one kept off site, are no-brainers as well.