[JGen]

First of all, hello to everyone on this forum!

I hope to contribute when I can and look forward to having some good discussions about photography with those of you on here.

I recently purchased the Pentax K-3 II and have been really pleased with it so far. Obviously I've been experimenting with all the features on it and I've come across a quirk that I can't seem to figure out on my own!

I've taken some RAW file pictures in HDR mode and I'm pretty impressed by how they've turned out after being processed solely by the camera however, I'd still like to adjust some of the levels myself and when I open the images in Photoshop they revert back to a single image with a single exposure. I wonder if there is a way to open the pictures in Photoshop as they appear on the camera / Windows photo viewer or will I just have to manually create my own HDR image from scratch?

I'm using Photoshop Elements 10 and have added a couple of images so you can see what I'm talking about.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Jonty

Attached Images

   

[Tas]

First of all, hello to everyone on this forum!

I hope to contribute when I can and look forward to having some good discussions about photography with those of you on here.

I recently purchased the Pentax K-3 II and have been really pleased with it so far. Obviously I've been experimenting with all the features on it and I've come across a quirk that I can't seem to figure out on my own!

I've taken some RAW file pictures in HDR mode and I'm pretty impressed by how they've turned out after being processed solely by the camera however, I'd still like to adjust some of the levels myself and when I open the images in Photoshop they revert back to a single image with a single exposure. I wonder if there is a way to open the pictures in Photoshop as they appear on the camera / Windows photo viewer or will I just have to manually create my own HDR image from scratch?

I'm using Photoshop Elements 10 and have added a couple of images so you can see what I'm talking about.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Jonty

G'day Jonty,

Welcome to the forums, plenty of photography discussions and groups to participate in around here so please enjoy your time. Something that might interest you is the post processing challenge, this is the current challenge: Post Processing Challenge #216 Lazy Sunday - PentaxForums.com Hopefully you'll drop by and give it a go sometime.

To answer your question, I'd have to say I don't really know but would expect that the in-camera processing is not going to appear in Photoshop, however I could be wrong in which case I hope the right person drops by to provide that info.

My suggestion would be to open the in-camera HDR file in the Pentax DCU program that came with the camera. I've not tried this myself but it is likely to recognise the in-camera processing and from that program you can export a TIFF to Photoshop to work further on the image.

Good luck and I guess I'll see you around.

Tas

[Keith23]

I've taken some RAW file pictures in HDR mode and I'm pretty impressed by how they've turned out after being processed solely by the camera however, I'd still like to adjust some of the levels myself and when I open the images in Photoshop they revert back to a single image with a single exposure. I wonder if there is a way to open the pictures in Photoshop as they appear on the camera / Windows photo viewer or will I just have to manually create my own HDR image from scratch?

As I understand it (and always ready to be corrected), HDR mode takes three photos and in-camera processes them to be one, which is saved. If you want three images to do HDR with (as I often do), you need to set the camera to 'exposure bracketing': it's easily done via the 'timer button'.

You will then need to import the three images into Photoshop to do HDR. Photoshop itself does not have, IMO, the best HDR function; there are others which I think are better. One is, I think, 'Dynamic Photo HDR' but the one I mostly use is Photoshop plugin that last year was released free but I cannot remember the name!

[C_Jones]

As was said, the bracket method will provide the individual files.

---------- Post added 04-07-17 at 11:16 PM ----------

You can also use "Extended Bracketing", which unlike "Exposure Bracketing", takes multiple images with one press of the shutter, whereas "Exposure Bracketing" requires the user to press the shutter for each image.

[stevebrot]

I've taken some RAW file pictures in HDR mode and I'm pretty impressed by how they've turned out after being processed solely by the camera however, I'd still like to adjust some of the levels myself and when I open the images in Photoshop they revert back to a single image with a single exposure. I wonder if there is a way to open the pictures in Photoshop as they appear on the camera / Windows photo viewer or will I just have to manually create my own HDR image from scratch?

As noted above, Adobe does not support Pentax HDR. Both Windows photo view and the in-camera review use one of the preview JPEGs embedded in the DNG. Work-arounds include:

• Create your own series of bracketed exposures and process them to HDR using any of a number of tools that are able to do the required merge
• Process the RAW in-camera to 16-bit Adobe RGB TIFF and import the TIFF into Lightroom, Photoshop, or whatever
• Use the Pentax Digital Camera Utility to process the RAW to TIFF
• Use a command line utility like dcraw or ExifTool to extract the preview JPEG, assuming that the JPEG is adequate quality
• Use the command line utility dcraw to extract the bracket DNGs from the container DNG and use those as the basis for an HDR merge using Adobe's software

Steve

[Adam]

As I understand it (and always ready to be corrected), HDR mode takes three photos and in-camera processes them to be one, which is saved. If you want three images to do HDR with (as I often do), you need to set the camera to 'exposure bracketing': it's easily done via the 'timer button'.

You will then need to import the three images into Photoshop to do HDR. Photoshop itself does not have, IMO, the best HDR function; there are others which I think are better. One is, I think, 'Dynamic Photo HDR' but the one I mostly use is Photoshop plugin that last year was released free but I cannot remember the name!

Only in JPEG. In RAW, 3 separate exposures are saved in one massive file. You'll have to re-process that file in ACR to get the desired effect.

[Pentax Syntax]

As stevebrot mentioned, if you like the HDR effect you are getting, just save the RAW processed file as a TIFF instead of a JPEG. Although JPEG is the default, TIFF is almost loss-less and you can change all of the levels and other parameters in photoshop, Lightroom or other image processor. I use that approach all the time. TIFFs are much better than JPEG for your purposes.

[JGen]

Hey thanks a lot for your replies team!

I think in future I will just take multiple photos at different exposures to create my own HDR work. May take a little bit longer but obviously I will have more flexibility with the editing process. Watch this space!

Have a good day everyone