# HDR + PS Camera Raw Filter



## mackguyver (Mar 24, 2015)

I have never been a huge fan of HDR for my own work as I have rarely been able to achieve realistic results. Between the halos and the garish colors, even with "realistic" settings, I just haven't been happy. While searching for something the other day, I found a tip about using ACR with Adobe's Photomerge, so I played with that. I got a great result, but when I converted from 32 to 16 bits, it's all gone and I get a fake looking photo all over again. I decided to try Nik Merge to HDR Pro 2 since it's installed and found the ghost removal and such to be quite a bit better. I set all of the settings to realistic and set the Flat to Drama slider to Flat. I then converted the 16-bit result to a Smart Object and used the Camera Raw filter to tweak the photo until I got the results I wanted. I couldn't believe how easy it was and I can still tweak all I want. It works with other HDR programs as well, naturally, and I finally have a decent result for the photo below. It was processed in ACR first with the lens profile and then the 3 results were merged in Nik.

I can't believe I'm just figuring this out - so I thought I'd pass it along for anyone else who hasn't tried it.


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