I shoot a lot of images (~30%) using auto exposure bracketing for HDR use. I am trying to develop a reasonable workflow for handling these images and would appreciate any advice or input. I shoot 5 shot AEB with my Pentax K20D and 3 shot with my IR converted K100D. The key things I am looking for are to use batch processing wherever possible and to generate sample mapped files for evaluation with little effort.
1. Copy files from camera to local disk
2. Run exiftool to set keywords to indicate AEB. (Lightroom as appalling EXIF capabilities)
- a. exiftool.exe -if "$ExposureMode eq 'Auto bracket'" "-ExposureMode+>keywords" *.pef *.dng
3. Load images into LR as normal
4. Use a smart collection to identify the 3 and 5 shot AEB images that have not been processed and export them to a directory as original format.
5. Update the exported files with a Keyword to indicate they have been processed
6. Run Photomatix in batch mode, producing an HDR file and two TIFF files (compress and adapt)
a. The two TIFF files are just for evaluation. They give you an idea of how the image will turn out for evaluation purposes.
7. Load two TIFF files into LR, setting keyword to ‘HDR Processed’
8. Move TIFF files through my normal rating system, except that discarded HDR TIFF files are deleted, not just marked to be ignored if they are not good enough
9. To edit the HDR file, select the TIFF and use a custom .NET application that will locate the merged 32 bit file and open it in Photomatix for tweaking the mapping, producing a final TIFF
- a. If the 32 bit image is incorrectly merged, go back to the original files and remerge. (A custom .NET application should be able to find the original RAW files and start Photomatix with them. I’m not sure if I can do the same thing to load them into PhotoShop from .NET)
10. Import final TIFF into LR, deleting temp copies
11. Edit final TIFF in PhotoShop
This workflow does work, but is painful. Any suggestions?