A little before and after comparison.
The bottom image on the right is one of four bracketed photographs taken in February 2012 at the Grand Canyon that were merged using the NIK HDR Efx Pro 2, Adobe Lightroom 4 (LR) plug-in. After the HDR composite was created in the plug-in, it was automatically added as a new TIF file in my LR library.
In LR, the image was further edited . Final touches of cropping, dust spot removal, selective sharpening to create an enhanced sense of depth, addition of grain, use of graduated filters to bring out the sky with saturation, exposure, contrast and clarity were all completed in LR. The finished image at the top is the result.
Finally, the finished before and after composite was created using Lightroom's Print module to create the JPG file you see in this article. Click on the image to view a larger version.
Regardless if you like this level of processing of a photograph or not, the point of the exercise was to see how far I could take a photograph from what the camera recorded to the image I saw in my mind without the use of Photoshop. Future versions of Lightroom will further expand the range of options available to photographers to create unique images based on what our minds see before and after the shutter button is pressed.
One interesting footnote is now that NIK software has been purchased by Google, will we see this technology added to the camera software built into Android phones? This could make for some interesting phone camera photo options.
