Nicolas,
I have chosen just the very first 3, as they would be daunting a challenge for me!
…
Here, the challenge is not merely to re-expose all parts of the image to be well lit! Far from that. Its' far, far more difficult. This work requires a lot of labor, experience and artistic judgment, dealing with feelings about human behavior and perception.
Obviously a bowl of fruit is critical, but if all is lit perfectly, the image would lose a sense of reality.
One has to imagine and then devise "conceptual filters" that divide the entire complex scene into co-existing zones in equilibrium and harmony.
It would be so easy to use LR or Photoshop or anything else, to stack the exposures aiutomatically and then there would be a dead, synthetic look, geometrically correct, but lacking in life.
So how much effort does one need to spend to get these results? What are the stages in your process?
Asher
Well, the automatic stacking never brings you a perfect image as a start, one have to rework it after the merging process.
As you know I always shoot raw, the great strength of Lightroom is that the software produces a DNG file then one is still working on a raw file and a so rich raw full of mater to work with.
BTW Antonio, LR doesn't care about pre-adjustments on each file, it merges the original untouched files, you have to make your adjustments on the dng.
When the dng suits one's wishes, it is exported as a 16 bit tif file to be reworked in PS with layers to reintroduce from one of the original file (also exported as a 16 bit tif) some elements that moved during the multi shots… It may be a different one for each model and another one for the background (boats always moving!)
The most difficult part is to deal with sun beams when the boat moves a lot, but these sun beams do bring life!
When that work is done, one have to correct dust spots, real spots, fingerprints on glasses, model's skins etc. but this has nothing to do with HDR…
The post on such images, depending of the shooting conditions may last 20 minutes to 4 hours of work. Each!
The Lightroom ability to merge HDR is a real help !
Oh, and BTW Antonio, I always use a tripod for all interior shots : )