HDR

I know I said that HDR's are kind-of gimmicky but here we go anyway. Here is a 3 exposure HDR of my book shelf. Notice how the ceramic piece holds full detail without burning out while the shadow area behind the bookend little old man holds detail as well. That's the purpose of HDR. To combine images of various exposures and take the best detail from each. CS5 took a huge leap this time. You pick your images, go: File > Automate > Merge to HDR Pro and Photoshop will assemble them into one massive image. They open in a window that gives you a whole bunch of options including 32, 16 or 8 bit and different ways to modify the image. Hit okay and you should end up with a flat file that you can continue to perfect. As a studio photographer, I prefer to light my sets so that all the detail I want is fully visible in one capture but for a quick grab shot this does a great job. Oh - I handheld this image with my D700 set at ISO 1600 and Photoshop removed the ghosts and made it perfect(almost)