Photoshop CS5 was released in April I believe. Usually I don't like upgrading things on my computers because because often times it breaks things, or plug-ins and other things aren't available right away for what you need to use. I was anxious to try this out because of the HDR Toning adjustment capability. For those that don't know, HDR Photography (High Dynamic Range) is a method that's used to bring out other tones and variations in the image that are captured by the camera, but not necessarily brought out correcly at the time of exposure. There's a long winded explanation behind the 'actual' process of shooting this way and editing it later. But, the bottom line is, is that now there's a 'backyard' way to do this in the latest version of Photoshop that I think is pretty damn cool. Tutorials on how to do this and which settings to use are starting to pop up all over the net, so I'm not going to waste time with that. What I can do is show you what I did in less than a few minutes of editing.
The photo to the left is the familiar shot I had of a train engine. Nothing wrong with photo in particular. The one next to it was adjusted using the HDR Toning adjustment. It makes the highlights brighter, the shadows darker, and detail more readily seen. It's a more vibrant photograph.
It's fun to play with the settings and see what you can come up with. I'm sure I'll be messing around with it more in the future.
