Enfuse for real estate

e-books

Enfuse for Real EstatePhotography

By Simon Maxwell, ARPS

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CopyrightCopyright © 2014 Simon Maxwell. All rights reserved.Published by PFRE Media LLC.Text, photos and diagrams Copyright 2014 Simon Maxwell. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise copied without the express written permission of the copyright holder.

DisclaimerThe information provided in this book is for educational purposes only. The author and publisher make no warranty, express or implied, including the warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The author and publisher do not assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any information, product, or process disclosed, and do not represent that its use would not infringe on privately-owned rights. Use this book at your own risk.

All company names, product names, service marks, and trademarks referred to in this book are the property of their respective owners. Use of a trademark, service mark, or any other term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of the mark.

AcknowledgmentsI’d like to thank several people without whom this book would never have been realised. Larry Lohrman, of course, for his enthusiasm, vision, and commitment to making not only this project happen but also the vibrant online community that is PFRE. Ian Lohrman for the unenviable task of proofreading my initial drafts!

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Timothy Armes, the developer of LR/Enfuse plugin that acts as an interface to Enfuse which is open source software by Andrew Mihal and the hugin team lead by Pablo d’Angelo. This software has transformed the way I work.

The various photographers from the PFRE community and Flickr group, from the well known to the newly established, all of whose work has inspired and enriched my own pursuit and understanding of real estate photography.

Finally my wife Marian, for her unflinching support and tolerance of my pixel-obsessed vision of the world!

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Simon Maxwell ARPS, LBIPP is based in London, UK, and is a qualified member of the Royal Photographic Society and the British Institute of Professional Photographers. He has been involved with commercial photography since the late 1980s. Having made the switch to digital imaging, he now specialises in architectural and interiors imagery.

His clients include architects, interior designers, furnishings companies and property developers. He has had editorial features published in many leading UK magazines.

Simon teaches digital photography and presents online tutorials via PhotographyForRealEstate.net and his YouTube channel. He is passionate about exploring and sharing new technologies which enable photographers to improve the quality of their images and the efficiency of their workflow.

See more of Simon’s work at:

simoncmaxwell.com

About the Author

Simon Maxwell

http://simoncmaxwell.com/

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Table of Contents

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Introduction......................................................The Problem: Limits Of A Single Exposure......The Solution: What Enfusing Can Achieve.......Shooting Brackets............................................Creating Enfused Images - With LR/Enfuse.....Batch Processing - With LR/Enfuse.................Advanced Methods..........................................Enfuse-Flash Hybrid.........................................An Enfuse Shoot From Start To Finish.............Lightroom Presets............................................

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Introduction

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Welcome to the PFRE Enfuse for Real Estate photography course. I want you to get the very most out of this book. I

want you to be able to use Enfuse methods in your workflow to help you take your images to a new level of technical excellence, one which will wow your clients and, most importantly, enable you to feel good about your ability to crack the most demanding of real estate shooting situations. It’s not rocket science, but you do need to be methodical about your approach and to understand the process, so as to make it a truly useful and time saving tool. You’ve probably seen impressive examples already, maybe on the PFRE Flickr group gallery, of what the process of enfusing multiple exposures can achieve. After working through this course, similar results should be well within your capabilities, without taking prohibitively long to process. This course isn’t just about learning how to enfuse multiple exposures, it’s also about integrating this exciting solution as part of an efficient workflow.

How to use this bookThis guide has been developed with the busy photographer in mind. I believe it’s important to fully understand rather than just simply learn a new photographic technique, so I go in to some detail about the theory behind the Enfuse process. I am also aware that real estate photographers don’t have a lot of time on their hands! So, at the end of each chapter you will find a summary of the key points. I recommend skimming through all these summaries first, and in about 5 minutes you’ll have a great bird’s eye view of what we’re looking to achieve, without getting overwhelmed by details. Then you can cherry-pick which sections you want to work with, depending on your experience and inclination to get into the theory side.

We’ve never had it so goodThere has never been a more exciting time to be an interiors or real estate photographer. That’s right. You heard it here.

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Because, for now, one of the most difficult problems confronting any real estate photographer, how to represent a good range of tones in a contrasty interiors scene, has a solution in hand. It’s cheap. It doesn’t require any further investment in equipment and, more to the point, it’s repeatable and quick to execute.

A little history first. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and we (well some of us!) were shooting on film, I remember reading how Ansel Adams attempted to solve the problem of high contrast in a scene he was shooting. He was looking for ways to try to compress what they call a high dynamic range scene into the relatively small tonal scale available to negative film. Aside from his advocacy of careful negative exposure and development matched to the printing paper, he also explored to a lesser extent an interesting technique for reducing contrast in the field, i.e. at the time of shooting. This involved filling the frame of his shot with a grey card that was held so near to the lens it was totally out of focus. He would take a very underexposed shot of this grey card and then, recocking the shutter to the lens on his view camera, he would make a second exposure of the contrasty landscape he was trying to render. For example, a beach scene which included rocks with very dark shadows and at the same time the spray from the waves which was almost pure white in the final print.

What the primary “ghost “ exposure of the grey card did was to overlay some neutral, featureless exposure over the darker values in the scene. When the real exposure for the subject was made, the threshold of the film’s response had already been reached, or brought up to “room temperature” as it were (not dissimilar to preflashing the photographic paper under the enlarger to make it more responsive and reduce its contrast). So, those dark, poorly illuminated areas in the scene were now reflecting what little light they contained back onto a piece

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of film which already contained some tone. The effect was equivalent to using some fill flash at the time of the shot in order to just lighten the shadows slightly so that the tonal spread between them and the highlight was not as great.

In the examples above, exposing for the bright sea spray (Figure 0.1) leads to very dark shadow areas on the rocks. Making a very underexposed, out of focus pre-exposure of a grey card (Figure 0.2) helps to reduce the contrast of the scene, opening up detail in the shadows for a lower contrast result (Figure 0.3). Enfuse software works on a similar principle.

I remember trying this technique on a kitchen shot using colour negative film with some success back in 2002. At the time I was thinking what an amazing thing it would be if we could shoot interiors without having recourse to lots of supplementary flash light to fill in all those awkward to get at shadow areas. Well, not such a long time onwards, and here we all are (well most commercial photographers at any rate) shooting not only on digital but with methods that make the fix above seem very crude indeed.

Figure 0.1 Figure 0.2 Figure 0.3

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I include this anecdote because I want to communicate to you my continuing excitement about the post-processing tools that are now at our disposal as digital photographers. We can render scenes in ways which were almost impossible in the days of film.

And one of the most powerful of these tools is the ability to fuse multiple exposures of the same scene together via an automated process so that the very widest tonal detail becomes possible.

This is nothing short of gold dust to the interiors or real estate photographer who must cope with scenes of often unmanageably high contrast on every shoot. It’s also a real lifesaver for the commercial photographer who does not have the luxury of an army of assistants, digital techs, time and lighting to achieve a solution to the same issues.

So, I am inviting you to take a look with me at the Enfuse solution as applied, not to landscape, but specifically real estate imagery. And when you start putting this into practice in your workflow, spare a thought for the old timers who never got to work with this incredible addition to our photographic method!

Applying this process to real estate situations will enable you to create stunning, tonally rich images, which are full of detailed information.

What is Enfuse?Enfuse is open source software which takes a series of exposures ranging from very underexposed to very overexposed versions of the same scene and compresses them into a single image. This compressed image contains better detail in the highlights and shadow areas than a single exposure

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would. Enfuse uses a process called exposure fusion (See: http://research.edm.uhasselt.be/~tmertens/papers/exposure_fusion_reduced.pdf for complete details). It’s like being able to compose a tune on the piano which makes use of almost the entire keyboard rather than having to confine yourself to just one octave of notes.

Where once before you would have had to resort to some method to reduce the contrast of the scene (shooting at twilight, using reflectors, bringing in supplementary lighting in the form of either flash heads or hot lights), now you can simply shoot a series of exposures at one stop intervals and, at the click of the mouse, fuse all of these images together to create an image with a wider tonal range. This simply means a final processed image which does a good job of rendering the real extremes of light and dark that we encountered in the scene to be photographed. So, where once you had burnt-out areas of white, you are now often able to reveal texture. Where your single shot image resulted in blocked up shadow tones, you now can reveal interesting details and tonal separation.

This has huge implications for real estate and interiors photography. How often have you found that if you get your exposure more or less right for the interior of the room that the exterior and perhaps the area near the windows is blitzed to an unreadable white? Or, if you manage to get the brighter part of the room well exposed then you have to make do with dark, muddy tones in the darker areas. The Enfuse process is not a cure for all ills, but it does present a way you can resolve some of these difficulties. The resulting image files will look strong, professional and absolutely acceptable for real estate and many other purposes.

http://research.edm.uhasselt.be/~tmertens/papers/exposure_fusion_reduced.pdf

http://research.edm.uhasselt.be/~tmertens/papers/exposure_fusion_reduced.pdf

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None of the following shots manage to capture the complete range of the scene from light to dark. But Enfuse software can take them and use the very best tones from each shot to create a blended or fused result which contains detail throughout. See below:

Clients, for the most part, want to see clearly readable shadow areas and crisp, but well controlled, highlights. These are the elements of a shot which, aside from good composition, will help to impress your client and, more importantly, show off their property to great effect, free from the distractions of poorly rendered tones. Clients expect your pictures to show the kind of details that they can see with their own eyes. That means visible, properly exposed views through windows, well illuminated darker shadow areas, and discernible texture in

Figure 0.4

Figure 0.5

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brightly illuminated areas. Readability and an openness of tone are two key requirements of a good real estate shot. Some genres of photography allow for a more moody treatment of the shadows, or one in which highlights are rendered out to pure white. Not here! I maintain that the technical restraints and demands of real estate photography are actually far more stringent than many other forms of architectural photography. We are being called on to work minor miracles with each shooting situation and show what photographers using traditional methods alone would find very difficult to depict.

Editorial magazines may favour a moody shadows treatment for the right subject (Figure 0.6) or a more opened up shadows look with burned-out highlights to give a sense of natural light flooding through the room (Figure 0.7). Real Estate photography, however, needs to show the whole package: the unlit side of the bed and view through the windows (Figure 0.8). This is an enfused image created by mixing four separate exposures together. Notice that no fill flash was needed to light the near side of the bed.

What Enfuse is not: HDRIt important to state that Enfuse, as we’re dealing with it here, does not refer to HDR or High Dynamic Range processing. We will confine ourselves to what the developers of that program call

Figure 0.7 Figure 0.8Figure 0.6

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Enfuse or Exposure Fusion, which is a more modest process, easier and quicker to carry out, and which results in natural looking images.

True HDR processing of a series of exposures creates a very wide tonal range in the image file, but that range is too wide to represent on a normal viewing platform. An additional process known as tonemapping needs to be applied to the 32-bit image which is created in order to present an image with good shadow and highlight detail. In many cases the resulting tonal spread is in excess of what Enfusion methods alone can achieve. So why aren’t we covering it? Well, in the right hands, HDR processing can look very good indeed. But, tonemapping is a potentially complicated process which can frequently lead to strange colour departures, haloing and sometimes a certain milkiness in the image. The effect can often be a little surreal or even a bit psychedelic! Enfusion methods, on the other hand, while not extending to quite the full tonal spread of a really good HDR image, do not require the additional tonemapping, resulting generally in a more naturalistic rendition of the scene. This is important for real estate work where one is presenting marketing material for an item that is for sale or rent.

From a legal standpoint, if nothing else, the goal is to represent the scene fairly faithfully so that what is on the market is basically as described in the image. So, there is therefore a limit to what Enfuse alone can achieve. In itself it is a massive help and can generally be used without other methods to create very passable real estate images. However, for those really tough situations that we are called on to shoot, there are additional, more hybridized methods (like adding a bit of fill-in flash into the mix) which will help you to capture a wider tonal range than Enfuse methods alone, and yet still result in natural looking images. We cover these methods in Chapter 7.

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The above example shows the same image with a standard Enfuse (Figure 0.9) and a full HDR tonemapped rendition based on a preset (Figure 0.10). It’s an extreme example but it illustrates the tendency for full HDR imagery to become a bit surreal or “airbrushed” and to depart too much from the original scene. Colours are unnatural and objects can be rendered so shadow free that they almost appear to be floating or “cut out”. The shot on the left, while lacking the complete tonal range of the HDR version, is much more faithful to what was seen colourwise, and objects seem to be more “grounded” in the room, with no haloing or overall softness to the image.

There are many applications that implement the Enfuse algorithm but this book is going to focus on the LR/Enfuse plug-in for Adobe Lightroom which is the most effective and useful overall because of its integration with Lightroom.

The following is a quote from a post by Timothy Armes, the developer of LR/Enfuse, on the difference between Enfuse and HDR: (http://photographers-toolbox.com/blog/2008/12/lrenfuse- for-interiors/)

Figure 0.9 Figure 0.10

http://photographers-toolbox.com/blog/2008/12/lrenfuse- for-interiors/

http://photographers-toolbox.com/blog/2008/12/lrenfuse- for-interiors/

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“Exposure blending essentially involves examining a group of photos with varying exposures and creating a final photo, pixel by pixel, by choosing the best exposed pixel from all of the photos.

Note that this is not the same as creating an HDR (high dynamic range) image. To create an HDR image several exposures are also used, but the similarity stops there. An HDR image uses 32 bits per pixel, and these bits are used to store a floating-point value. We don’t wish to delve into the technicalities, but the result is that an HDR image allows for each pixel to contain practically any exposure value, so if the difference between the darkest and lightest parts of an image is 20 stops, this will be faithfully preserved in the HDR’s file format.

The difficulty comes when we need to display an HDR image on media that can’t display this high dynamic range, such as a screen or a sheet of paper. The dynamic range of the image needs to be compressed to fit within the dynamic range of the chosen media. Typically this is done by controlling a tone mapping curve that dictates how and where the dynamic range is compressed.

Are the end results of the two approaches the same? Well, sometimes they can be, but mostly they’re not. Here are the main differences:

1. Blending software is very easy to use but it can only produce natural looking images.

2. HDR software is more complex to use, but it’s possible to create all manner of ‘unnatural’ but often very interesting styles by playing with the tone curve.

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Most people find it very difficult to create natural looking images using HDR. We know we do.”

Note that Tim uses the term “blended image” to describe an image created with Enfuse but because the term “blended image” is frequently used to describe an image created in Photoshop by blending together a number of different layers, in this book we will use the term “enfused image” to refer to an image created by LR/Enfuse.

Hyperlinks in this bookBecause there is a good chance that you are going to be connected to the Internet while you are reading this e-book, I have added hyperlinks within the text. Hyperlinks are in blue and underlined. As you mouse over the blue text your cursor will change into the cursor shape you’ve set for links. Just click or tap these blue links and your browser will come up and take you to the website that I’m referring to.

Navigation links in this bookOn the Table of Contents page the numbers are links that will take you directly to the first page of each chapter. Just click or tap on the page numbers in the right-hand column. Also, the little blue underlined word “Contents” at the bottom right corner of every page is a link that will take you back to the Table of Contents page.

Keyboard shortcut conventionsThe convention we use in this book when listing keyboard shortcuts is as follows:

Ctrl+G/Cmd+G

The PC short cut is first and the Mac short cut is second.

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Summary :

• Please read through all the summaries in this guide. It’ll take 5 minutes and you’ll get a good overview of the book!

• Enfusing multiple exposures will in many cases help with the resolution of high contrast scenes which are the typical lot of the real estate photographer.

• Enfuse is an automated, time saving process which creates natural looking results. It’s not the same as more time consuming manual blending of exposures in Photoshop or the more extreme HDR (high dynamic range) 32-bit process which tends to produce unrealistic results.

• Enfuse gets its name via a combination of the words “En-blend” and “fusing” or “fusion”. Enfused images are not strictly “blended” but are “fused” together.

• Enfuse is very good at what it does but there is a limit to the total range of tone it can capture. The advanced section of this book includes methods to extend its capabilities.

Chapter 1The problem:

Limits Of A Single Exposure

The Problem: Limits Of A Single Exposure

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The camera vs. the human eye

Your camera sensor is an amazing thing, verging on the miraculous perhaps, but until science makes a few more

quantum leaps, a DSLR camera is no match for the extraordinary ability of the human eye to take in the complete tonal range of a scene containing many different intensities of light or luminance values.

In short, your eye is way smarter than your camera’s sensor. It’s capable of capturing far more detail than a single snap by your camera. Why? Because it’s not actually taking a single shot at all. Your eye is effectively a video camera, capable of making lightning fast adjustments in exposure, so that as you pass from very dark to very bright areas, the adjustments provide a seamless “pan” of the scene. As you look around a room, your eye is in fact reacting continuously to what it sees, making visual changes equivalent to automatic exposure adjustments, helping the brain to better understand the scene it’s looking at. Your human vision has an extremely wide field of view (it’s actually almost 180 degrees if you take into account the peripheral vision). The process of looking at a scene is more like scanning. Your vision chooses to focus on select elements of the scene in front of you and render those aspects properly. It performs complex exposure changes to tone down very bright areas and to brighten darker, shadowy areas, according to where its main focus is at the time. Of course there’s a limit as to how well it can do this. Sometimes we just cannot make out an object which is strongly backlit by the late afternoon sun, for example. But for the most part your vision far exceeds the camera’s ability to take in a wide tonal range.

If your human vision is the equivalent of a complete piano keyboard of notes, then shooting with a camera is like being asked to compose a tune with just one octave of those notes.


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When you take a single shot you can choose to play from a low or a high octave, i.e. favour the shadow areas or the lighter tones, but you can’t capture the whole range that a scene has to offer.

Sometimes, that apparent shortcoming of the camera can make for powerful, dramatic shots with a selective tonal range.Unfortunately, real estate clients don’t think like that. If they can see the view through a window and the unlit side of a piece of furniture at the same time they can’t understand why your camera can’t.

So, we have it tough from the outset. We’re trying to record a high contrast, or what they call high dynamic range scene, with a low dynamic range device, one that’s inferior to the device our client is using to view the same scene with, i.e. their eyes!

Let’s just look at this graphically for a moment. Compare by means of a scale of tones the relative ability of different capturing devices to match the world we see.

The lowest and longest scale represents the extent of our normal vision. It has a really wide spread before we reach the point at which we cannot make out any further tone at either the shadow end or the highlight end. Come up one scale and you will see the tonal extent of the typical scene we are likely to meet when shooting real estate work: a low light interior with a window looking out onto a much more brightly illuminated exterior view.

“...your eye is way smarter than your camera’s sensor. It’s capable of capturing far more detail than a single snap by your camera. Why?”


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We’re grading each of these scales in terms of stops of light, but the important thing to note is how the tonal “window” of captureable detail shrinks as we hold up an average DSLR to measure the scene (the third scale up). A DSLR is only going to capture about two thirds of the detail available in a room shot. And that figure of nine stops is actually a bit optimistic due to the problem of image quality fall-off at the shadow end of the scale. Go to the very top scale and that shows how our viewed and captured scene gets even more tonally compressed by the time the image gets printed. This is something to consider if you are shooting for an agent’s brochure.

So much for diagrams. Let’s see how the relatively short tonal “window” of our DSLR sensor shapes up when trying to capture a long tonal range scene like a room with a view. Figure 1.2 below shows a scene created with a standard Enfuse process which has managed to pull a lot of detail out of the shadow and highlight end. It equates pretty well to what I saw at the time.

Figure 1.1 Luminance scales


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But this is a fusion of nine separate exposures, full of rich tonal detail throughout, ranging from light to dark. The single shots tell a very different story. I have converted these shots to black and white to make it easier to see the levels, or tones of light, without the distraction of different hues. If you want to quickly check the tonal scale of your image in Lightroom, simply hit V on your keyboard. Press V again to restore colour to the file.

Let’s say we get our single shot exposure right for the lighter areas of the scene. So in Figure 1.3 below, we can see detail in the garden through the windows and in the well-lit kitchen unit at the back of the shot near the window. (Enlarge the photo and look at the blue spot in the upper window). But of course, there’s plenty more in the scene that we really need to record, and much of this has been plunged into darkness.

Figure 1.2


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Now below you can see the shorter tonal window of the camera superimposed over the long scale of tones from light to dark as contained in the scene. The scene’s brightness range remains the same. It’s just that the digital camera’s sensor cuts the tones off to black a little too early. So, when looking at the tonal representation of the scene and the capturing device, the camera actually clips the scene to black at what is in fact a middle tone of grey. It’s matching the higher values all right, but everything that is of a lower brightness or luminance level than that shade of grey is now simply blocked up black in our shot.

Figure 1.3

Figure 1.4


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Let’s see what happens if we take the other approach and try to align the tonal capture range of our camera with the lower, or shadow values, of the scene.

This time of course we are getting some much better detail in the darker areas. Have a look at the area of shadow to the right of the wall cabinets denoted with a blue spot and compare it to our first attempt. Here we have the opposite problem. We’ve placed the limited tonal scale of the camera too low on the scale of tones in the scene. Now the white clipping point of our shot, the point at which no further highlight detail can be extracted, is coming in at what is actually a light grey luminance level in the scene. This level should really contain better textural detail. All that interesting detail which is brighter than our brightest camera tone is blitzed to white (see Figure 1.6 below):

Figure 1.5

Figure 1.6


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“OK, so what?” you say. Our camera obviously can’t capture the whole tonal range of the scene here, so let’s place our exposure somewhere in the middle and see whether we can do better. And the result may look like this:

It’s probably a better solution than the other two attempts, but nonetheless, this time we have clipped the image at both the highlight and the shadow ends of the scale. I have put a blue dot on the front of the oven which equates to about the middle of the scale, or an area of average luminance.

Looking at the tonal placement below you can see that middle value in our camera’s scale aligning pretty much with the midpoint of the scene’s luminance range. If you squint your eyes slightly you’ll see the point at which the two tonal scales merge:

Figure 1.7


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As we have noticed, it doesn’t do a bad job. This placement of our exposure in the middle of the scale of tones to be photographed is the aim of most camera TTL metering. Alternatively, some photographers might have used a spotmeter to take a reading of that area on the oven and based their exposure on that reading in order to “peg” it to what they call mid-grey. That would cause that tone to come out at about a middle grey value in the captured result, whether viewed as an actual print or an on-screen image.

This approach works for many average scenes, but as we’re discovering, our work as real estate photographers is anything other than average! The best exposure system in the world, however carefully placed and measured, is not going to help us to resolve tonal detail at both ends of such a long scale of luminance values. In other words, any scene with a difference of more than about nine stops of light is immediately going to pose serious problems for a DSLR user. I’ll save you the bother of measuring each scene with a spotmeter to find out its brightness range in stops. Just assume whenever you’ve got a single window illuminating a room and you need good detail throughout, that you’re looking at more than nine stops. In plain English, that’s a tough nut to crack!

Let’s have a look at some high dynamic range scenes that we might find on a real estate shoot.

First we’ll examine a simple bedroom scene. The room is lit solely by daylight, passing through a single window beyond the

Figure 1.8


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bed. The far side of the bed is nicely illuminated. The bedspread on that side is being recorded as a crisp white which just contains texture. But the side of the bed nearest to us is very dark, with very little fill available from the wall behind the camera position. (For this shot I am not switching on that bedside lamp, which of course would have helped out a bit).

If I want to reproduce good detail in that shadow side of the bed I need to open up my exposure to let a load more light in.

This time we get to see the unlit side of the bed, but of course at the expense of the other side which is now blitzed:

Figure 1.9


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The scene is said to be high contrast or possessing a high dynamic range because the luminance levels are spread over a long scale, too much so for a single image capture to do justice to it.

Now, when I looked at that scene with my eyes I wasn’t aware of this very big “split” that occurred as my gaze passed from the window side of the bed to the less illuminated side. Although I was viewing the entire room, my vision was actually feeding back the image to my brain in small chunks, each of which was optimized for the high or low levels of illumination in the selected element of the scene. So, what I in fact “read” from the scene in front of me was more like this:

Figure 1.10


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This time the scene is a lot more readable. The image above has somehow extended the tonal range to show detail on the far side of the bed, plus the shadow side is more clear to the eye. This of course is the result of running an exposure fusion of seven exposures (I could actually have used a couple more for a greater tonal spread to pull a bit more of that window view in) and the result is a big improvement. It’s more balanced, with a gentler progression of tones from light to dark.

This is the typical problem we encounter in all interiors photography. It’s referred to as “contre-jour” (from the French meaning, “against the light”) and is the extreme contrast which results when you shoot towards a window. Elements facing the light are really bright, and elements turned away from it are very dark. Coupled with that, exterior views are of such a high level of brightness relative to the interior of the room, that it is very difficult to capture detail from them.

Figure 1.11


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A single shot is going to have a tough time recording anything like the tonal scale that a contre-jour scene challenges us with.

But it’s not only contre-jour scenes which present us with headaches. What about the big differences in brightness levels that can occur simply in the room itself which you are shooting?

Have a look at another bedroom shot, this time shot after dark. My only sources of illumination here are the bedside lamps and overhead spots:

Those same light sources are actually appearing in the frame. They are very bright in value and their spread is actually very concentrated and local. So, if I am to avoid real burn-out I need to go easy on the exposure as I did in Figure 1.11.

Opening up to breathe some life into the less illuminated areas like the head of the bed results in this shot:

Figure 1.12


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There’s useful detail in other less well-lit items (like the front of the bed, nearest to the camera). But by moving my camera’s available tonal spread down the scene’s scale and aligning its lower values with the lower values in the scene, I have pushed those already bright lamps (and the areas of wall that they are immediately illuminating) beyond the tonal range that is recordable by my camera. They appear blitzed-out and distracting.

Now, just as before, when I viewed the scene prior to shooting it, I didn’t see such drastically different representations of it as I scanned from the lighter to darker areas. Instead, I saw (or recorded in my brain) something more like this image:

Figure 1.13


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There’s a better compression of that very extreme tonal range going on here. The bedside lamps aren’t so burned-out, yet I have detail in the head of the bed and the bed frame, and the armchair is looking good too.

In real estate shooting situations we are often going to need to include lamps in our compositions. The presence of these very bright light sources should immediately ring alarm bells that we will likely to need to sacrifice one end or the other of our tonal scale unless we use some sort of method of extending our camera’s reach.

Imagine a room with a large sofa illuminated by a single window.As your eyes scan the room, your vision, although very wide, is actually choosing to focus selectively on one element or area of the room at a time. For example, you might choose to look at

Figure 1.14


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the view through the window and then move your gaze to the less illuminated shadow side of the sofa. As you do this, your eyes are adjusting and reacting to the lower-lit area. Perhaps there’s a black cushion on the sofa. Your vision is making a micro adjustment so that you can perceive texture in that very dark toned item (it’s not necessarily less illuminated, just of low luminance due to its light absorbing material). If you were to scan around the room through a telephoto lens with your camera set to auto exposure, your camera would be making similar adjustments to those of your eyes, closing down the light available when it’s too bright, and opening up to let more in when it is too dark.

But what happens when we pan out and try to show the whole room with the very bright view, the unlit shadows and the very dark objects as well? The camera’s meter can only make one adjustment and give it its best shot, as it were. Either the camera or the photographer, has to decide where it’s best to place the exposure. The eye, however, has the luxury of being able to continually make instantaneous adjustments so we can appreciate much more of the scene.

Why can’t the camera do this? Because it takes one isolated slice of the image at one very specific setting. The exposure that’s set, is only capable of recording, at best, nine stops worth of light. Looking at a room in three dimensions, on the other hand, is like watching a continually evolving movie full of micro adjustments with a device that can reveal a far better spread of tone than your camera ever could.

So, what if we were able to at least mimic this process of vision and take a series of shots at different settings which represented these very different areas, each with their own luminance levels created as a result of the light falling on them


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and their own ability to reflect that light? What if we could “play” almost the whole keyboard of notes rather than having to settle for just one octave? Well, thanks to Enfuse we can to an extent. And the results are pretty darned good! In the next section we’ll see just how good.

Summary:

• The camera sensor is far less capable than the human eye of recording a wide range of different brightnesses or luminance levels. Your eyes will do a far better job when viewing a low light interior with a window view, than your DSLR will, and your DSLR itself will capture a greater range than a print made from your shot.

• The eye “scans” a scene, making micro exposure adjustments as it goes. A camera has just one “take”, with a limited range of tonal capture at that.

• A scene containing a wide range of luminance or brightness levels is said to contain a “high dynamic range”.

• Shooting a high dynamic range scene with a single capture device is like having just one octave of notes to play from on a piano keyboard. Shooting multiple exposures at different settings gives us access to more of the tonal scale, or a whole range of “notes”.

• Any scene which is illuminated by a single window, or bright lamps with little additional daylight, is going to be a tough challenge for the camera sensor to record.

Chapter 2The Solution:

What Enfusingcan achieve

The Solution: What Enfusing Can Achieve

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OK, we’re going to start with a simple scene, one that contains a lot of the usual problems associated with an

interior shoot. This basement apartment has a large window which looks out to a courtyard (a plus in terms of marketability). So, ideally we’d like to see what’s going on out there. But there are no other windows in the apartment, which means that the interior is a bit dark. For now, I am not going to switch on any of the tungsten or artificial interior light, which would help to lighten those shadows a bit. I want to make the task as tough as possible!

So, here is a straight shot where I have tried to place my exposure somewhere midway between the fairly well-lit courtyard and the less illuminated interior. And the result of course, is neither one thing nor the other!

Note: I have included an ©Xrite Colour Checker card on the

Figure 2.1


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sofa here (I wouldn’t normally go to the trouble to do this for a real estate shoot) to demonstrate how the Enfuse process can be carried out without any colour distortion (a problem that is sometimes associated with full HDR methods).

Suppose I weighted my exposure in favour of that useful courtyard area. The result would be this:

It’s a better rendition of the exterior, but of course, the interior suffers badly, from dark and gloomy shadows, muddy tones and no real indication of the interior space. This is never going to sell the property!

So, if we can’t have everything, how about sacrificing the exterior in order to at least show off the interior well and make it feel as bright as possible. Let’s lighten up that exposure a bit. See Figure 2.3 below.

Figure 2.2


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Not bad for the near side of the interior. The sofa is more readable too. But look at the tiled floor on the left of the picture. Despite that it’s part of the interior, it’s so close to the window that it has been blitzed to white. And of course, our courtyard is barely visible, all bleached-out and lacking in colour saturation. Now, in some circles, an image like this (with perhaps a little highlight recovery carried out to the RAW file) can have its place. Many shelter magazines or editorial features whose prime interest is the décor of a place rather than its spaces and facilities tend to favour this look. Because the exterior is blown-out to white, the viewer’s focus is pulled back to the interior. The mirror, table, sofa and artwork are the main interest. In addition, there is a sense of bright, crisp daylight passing through the space. This was far from the case at the time of shooting and is totally due to the overexposure. This approach enables

Figure 2.3


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editorial photographers to work with very little in the way of supplementary lighting, relying more on reflectors to throw some light back into select areas. It’s not incorrect, it’s just showing elements of a property which are different from the standard real estate goal. In this respect, real estate photography is much closer to architectural photography in terms of what it is aiming to describe.

So, there’s the problem: how do you get the best of both worlds and show a full range of detail throughout? Your client, I guarantee, will want to see all areas clearly described in your shot.

Here’s a picture which was created without any additional lighting, carefully placed reflectors or post-processing local adjustments. In fact, it was assembled automatically in the background while I was able to get on with some administrative work! This is the result of the automatic processing on its own:

Figure 2.4


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It’s the result of running Enfuse on a series of shots taken at different exposures, seven in this case. It’s not what I would call perfect yet (it’s a bit low in contrast) but, straight out of Enfuse software, it is in many respects a massive improvement. Let’s look at the problem areas. First, the side of the sofa that is furthest away from the window is now taken to a nice tone, clearly readable and still maintaining the directional feel of the daylight. And at the same time, the courtyard information is now all there, plus the floor tiles are showing up nicely with clear textural detail.

What I like about this method, as opposed to coming in with a blast of flash to brighten up the interior, is that the sense of natural light has been preserved. Look at the shadows cast by the legs of the low table. They’re coming towards us and “obeying” the effect of the daylight coming through the window. In the same way, there is a gentle shadow on the arm of the sofa at the far right of the picture, again bringing some three dimensional form to that object, while still brightening things up. Very often, real estate images can be overflashed or, in the case of full HDR, items are rendered so shadow-free that they look as though they are cut out or floating somehow. A little shadow is a good thing, but blocked up areas of black are not! Now, with careful positioning of an indirect off-camera flash (maybe bounced into an umbrella or shot through a soft box) I might have succeeded in duplicating this effect. But, it would have taken at least several minutes setting it up, positioning it, taking a test shot and so on. Plus there would be other variables to worry about.

For a natural effect I would not place my fill flash directly behind my camera, which would have killed the sense and direction of the natural light at work here, but to camera left, almost at a ninety degree angle to the window. This way the less


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illuminated areas are filled but the transition from light to very dark is rendered less extreme. That’s all very nice if you have the time, but I suspect I would have run into difficulties with that mirror running along the sofa wall. I guarantee my light stand would have shown up reflected in it! This can be fixed by taking two shots, with and without the lightstand and flash in place, opening them in Photoshop and using layer masks to remove the offending reflection. But that requires a lot of extra time.

Furthermore, the colour temperature of my flash may well be very “cool” in relation to the light coming through the windows, resulting in a blue tint to the foreground. I might have needed to gel my flash slightly to match its temperature better to the daylight. While many would regard this as the “proper” way to create a well-lit composition, I think you’ll appreciate by now that it would be very time consuming, and complete overkill for real estate work. When you can achieve a relatively natural result like the one above, with no secondary shadows, unwanted reflections or unnatural colour casts to worry about, it really becomes a “no brainer”. That is why I certainly do not regard Enfuse as somehow a second best or “beginner’s” option. It is very much a professional and effective solution to many situations which would actually be very difficult to light with a combination of daylight and flash alone.

Adding some extra contrastNow, there is one frequent observation about enfused images

“What I like about this method, as opposed to coming in with a blast of flash to brighten up the interior, is that the sense of natural light has been preserved.”


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and that is that they tend to come out of the works looking a little low in contrast. What the process has actually done is to, very usefully, reduce the really bright highlights to a more manageable level, and to open up the dense shadows to reveal more detail. The result is an image which lacks the sort of extremes of light and shadow which blight the single capture above, where I tried to place my exposure somewhere in the middle of the tonal scale. It can be a bit of a shock to see the image suddenly containing tonal detail throughout the scene. Which is why I don’t believe in removing or lightening up all of the shadows. Plus, most enfused images can benefit from a little increase in contrast or slight brightening after the exposure fusion, which can very quickly be applied to your file in Lightroom. And, provided you follow a fairly systematic approach (I’ll show you exactly how to do that later) you will usually find yourself applying very similar adjustments to your enfused files, which you might be able to save as a convenient preset. Have a look at the two images side by side. Figure 2.5 is the straight auto run result and Figure 2.6 has simply had a slight brightening and increase in contrast applied:

In the adjusted shot, the sense of crispness has been restored. And yet, despite the increase in contrast and brightness, the detail is all there. The floor tiles that were so blown-out in the original are still looking good. The enfused image file contains a wealth of information. If you want to follow some simple global



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brightness and contrast adjustments with some more precise local adjustments to the highlight and shadow areas, you can really can take your images into exciting territory in a matter of minutes. But for real estate purposes, a simple contrast adjustment is generally all that’s required. With this method, which is quick to shoot, requires no further investment in equipment, and which can be set to run automatically, you are looking at a solution that can really mean the difference between your working profitably or not.

Add the Enfuse solution to your toolkitIn this guide I am going to take you through this process in depth. And you are going to get good at this stuff. Good and quick.

You’ll be able to add the Enfuse solution to your existing skills, perhaps even using it on the majority of the real estate images you produce. You’ll wonder how you managed before, and I think you’ll be as amazed as I was at not only the quality of your images but also by the amount of time you will save.

While Enfuse is not a cure-all, to my mind it represents a massive leap forward for real estate shooters in particular and for many architectural and interiors photographers too. I invite you to give it a try, put it through its paces and, armed with the information you’ll find in this guide, make it an indispensable part of your shooting and processing workflow.

In the next chapter I’ll show exactly how straightforward it was to create an image like the shot above.


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Summary:

• A single exposure can rarely contain sufficient detail, from bright exterior views to less well-lit interior features, for real estate photo marketing purposes.

• Enfuse offers a quick and efficient solution to this age-old problem.

• Enfuse, unlike full HDR, which requires careful additional tonemapping, will usually maintain good colour fidelity for natural looking results right out of the box.

• Applying some simple contrast increasing adjustments to your enfused images can really make them pop.

Chapter 3:Shooting Brackets

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The Enfuse process requires a series of images (brackets), from as few as three to as many as nine or ten, which are

shot at similar increments, usually a stop apart. The result is a set of brackets which covers the whole tonal range of the scene, from the very bright highlights to dark shadow areas. These incremental shots are known as brackets because they offer options several stops above and below, or lighter and darker, than an optimum or average exposure for the scene.

Essentials for shooting bracketsThe main problem with shooting multiple exposures is camera movement. To be successful, any exposure fusion process is going to rely on perfect pixel for pixel alignment of the source images. LR/Enfuse includes options to align images prior to post-processing, but this can take up extra time, can’t be guaranteed to be perfect, and you will lose some of the original frame area as images are necessarily straightened up. It’s much better practice to get it right from the start in-camera. And with a few simple steps it’s easy to ensure this. Incidentally, I would observe most of these steps when shooting single shot interiors as well.

Even if your camera is capable of shooting multiple exposures in rapid sequence without your having to touch it, (known as Auto Exposure Bracketing or AEB), there is still the risk of misalignment of the resulting shots. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to ensure your images are nicely aligned and your final enfused image is not spoiled.

1. Use a good quality tripod and don’t fully extend its center column, which makes it less stable. It’s better to extend the tripod legs, starting with the thickest sectioned ones first. Extend your tripod so that your camera is a little below waist level and then use the central column for fine

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adjusting the height. This will ensure you are using your tripod to its best advantage. Something like the Manfrotto 190, a light and small tripod which comes in a carbon fiber version, can be very useful for interiors. It has a relatively small footprint and can be rock solid if set up properly.

2. Use a cable or remote release. The act of pressing the shutter release on even the most solidly tripod mounted camera can result in movement and vibration. While you could use your camera’s self timer set to a short duration, that is going to involve a lot of standing about and staring into space if you are shooting nine exposure sequences of every room in a shoot! A remote release will enable you to let the camera settle, kill all the vibrations and then safely shoot your exposure. A cable remote release is a must have!

3. Switch off any image stabilisation functions on your lens (vibration reduction for Nikon users). I made this mistake with my first Canon camera and couldn’t understand why my images were unsharp even though the camera was tripod mounted. It turned out that my zoom lens was set to image stabilisation, designed to counteract user movement when shooting on a solid tripod, and it was continuing to make micro adjustments during the exposure.

4. Switch off autofocus. It’s better to focus manually on the most important area of your subject. This area is generally about two thirds into the room, i.e. towards the back of the scene. For an interior, this is where the viewer’s attention tends to be drawn. When you shoot without autofocus, be very careful that your lens’s focusing ring does not move after you have set it. With autofocus switched on there is a risk that each exposure will contain small variations in the actual focused plane, and chances are, the autofocus will choose an incorrect area to focus on. This runs the risk of

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softening the edges of objects in your enfused images.5. Shoot with LiveView if at all possible. The LiveView

function, while really useful for a whole host of other reasons we’ll go into, flips the camera’s mirror out of the way so that you are reading the scene on the camera’s LCD screen. It’s what happens when you take the shot normally and the SLR mirror flips out of the way. This cannot help but create “mirror-slap” or vibration. It’s not a problem for general, hand-held shooting at decent shutter speeds, but very much a concern with tripod-mounted shots and the long shutter speeds you are going to be using for many interiors which are fairly low light.

6. Use the lowest ISO on your camera. Choose an ISO setting of 100 (some Nikons only go down to 200 ISO). Why the lowest possible? Surely when shooting low light interiors we want to make the camera sensor as sensitive as possible so that we can use some shorter shutter speeds. True, but higher ISO settings result in lower image quality. The higher the ISO, the more digital noise in the shadows and midtones. Some sensors are very good at higher ISO settings but in general you will always get better image quality and noise-free results with the lower settings. Your shutter speeds will be a little longer as a result but that’s not the end of the world. If you are in a rush, then a slightly higher ISO can be set, but for the best quality stick with the lowest setting. The only time you might consider upping the ISO is if you are shooting flash with your brackets and want to get more benefit from a low powered flash. More on that in a later section, but for now we are working with existing light only. If we need to use a 4-second exposure for a shot rather than 2 seconds, that’s not a huge price to pay for better quality!

7. Let everything settle down before you shoot. This is not always possible but especially important if you are

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on carpet or in a house with old floorboards. If you shift your weight or move a little between shots you may find that the floor or carpet gives a little. So, decide where you are going to stand and stay there with your feet firmly anchored for the duration of the sequence. Wait a moment while any residual vibration dies down. For urban locations, if possible, wait until any traffic has passed by. The same goes for other people, clients, stagers, dogs or teenagers! You can be a little authoritarian about this. It’s your shot and it needs to be good!

8. Be critical and don’t be afraid to reshoot. If you think or suspect that anything might have moved during your sequence, then erase the files in your camera and start again. If the idea of erasing files in the field makes you nervous, what I do is to take a single shot with my hand just in front of the lens so that when I review the files I know that there is a clear break between sequences.

9. Be very careful of things in the scene moving between shots. Your camera might be solid as a rock but things like birthday cards, newspapers or notes stuck to refrigerators can get blown into different positions between exposures by a breeze coming through an open window or from a cooling fan. It happens! Beware of hanging mobiles and pendant lights which can also cause problems! These things can of course be fixed to an extent by manually blending a single exposure in Photoshop over the enfused shot, which is going to contain multiple ghosted images. However, as always, we are looking to minimize our time spent in post-processing and it is better to spot these things in the field.

What about remote control camera devices? If you really feel happier not touching your camera between exposures, or want to operate slightly faster, then you can use

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a device like the CamRanger to remote control the camera’s settings. However, I strongly suggest that you don’t spend money on such a device until you have tried running some multiple exposure fusions and see how implementing good practices and a steady approach (not a bad thing for shooting RE in general!) can ensure that your images are aligned, even if you do adjust camera settings between shots. There are also options in Enfuse to align images which are slightly out of register. They take a little extra time but mean that the shot can usually be salvaged.

Shooting brackets in manual with histogramThe aim of a bracketed sequence is simple: to capture a series of shots which contain readable highlight detail at one end of the scale and clear open shadows at the other. While you can use auto bracketing methods to achieve this, we’re going to start with a fully manual method which is precise, effective, and makes use of the histogram function on your camera.

The histogram is simply a graphical representation of the tones in your image file. It changes according to how those tones progress from light to dark in your image. The key to “reading” it is to remember that the vertical axis refers to quantity, and the horizontal axis refers to level of brightness or luminance. So, the more vertical lines you have towards the right of your histogram, the brighter the tones are going to be, while the more those spikes are bunched up to the left of the histogram, the darker the image will be. It’s a good gauge of whether your image is over, under, or plain averagely exposed. And it is of real importance when it comes to ensuring that the whole brightness range of your subject is safely covered by your bracketed sequence.

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Figure 3.1 shows the in-camera histogram for an averagely exposed image. The horizontal brightness scale is separated by thin, pale vertical lines. The left side refers to the darker end of the scale, while the right side represents the lightest tones. The peaks and troughs represent the number of instances in the recorded image containing a brightness level for a given point on the horizontal brightness scale. If you have LiveView then this is a bonus because you can check the histogram as you go along. To do this, select LiveView from your camera menu. Then select to display your camera settings and the histogram superimposed onto the live preview. This is usually done by pressing the INFO button for your camera LCD screen. It should look similar to this:

Figure 3.1

Figure 3.2

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Figure 3.2 above is of my 5DMkII with LiveView, with exposure simulation set (“Exp.SIM” in the LCD). The camera exposure metering is set to manual and I am working at f11. I am shooting RAW (not essential) and have set white balance to AUTO. You can see the shutter speed I have manually selected, 1.6 seconds, at the bottom of the window. Most importantly, the histogram appears at the top right so that I can visually check what’s happening to the tones of the file.

Look through to the courtyard and you will see areas of featureless white, corroborated by the histogram, which shows these higher value tones touching the far right side of the display. These tones are in the danger zone, and this shutter speed would be too overexposed to use as the opening shot in my sequence. The histogram in Figure 3.2 above is set to show the brightness levels in the image file. It’s a simple and clear readout of what’s going on. Now, if your histogram looks like this...

...it means it is set to RGB mode, providing you with a readout

Figure 3.3

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of how each of the red, green and blue channels are looking. You’ll see that they are showing the same highlight clipping that is going on but it’s less clear than the simple brightness representation above. So, in your menu, probably under Playback, you will see the Histogram settings. Select this and then scroll down to select Brightness rather than RGB:

Incidentally, I don’t find the Highlight alert warning function which appears on some LCDs that helpful. You’ll see above that I have disabled it. If areas are blitzed it’s more important to see precisely where they lie on the histogram and do something to control them than have red areas show up in your LiveView. If the information overlay gets in the way of your focusing or composing you can simply press the INFO button a couple of times to get rid of some or all of it.

Personally, I like to see the aperture and shutter speed readout below the image. I recommend setting your camera meter to manual and selecting an aperture of about f5.6-f8 for APS-C sized cameras or f8-f11 for full frame sensors, assuming you are using a wide-angle lens. The beauty of this method is that once you’ve set this aperture you can leave it as is for most room shots. You’ll need to locate the dial which controls the aperture manually. On a Canon, it’s the thumb wheel at the back of the camera.


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If you have LiveView, your camera will show you a very good approximation of how the scene is looking at your currently selected shutter speed. Remember, the only adjustment we are going to make is via the shutter speed dial (on a Canon that’s on the top of your camera on the index wheel). Simply rotate the shutter speed wheel and observe how the image gets lighter or darker.

Depending on the last settings used on your camera (e.g. an exterior shoot with a very short shutter speed) you may need to flick the wheel a lot to get to a viewable image. And you will also see the histogram shifting as you make your adjustments.

When the LiveView image is in the right general area, is when you need to start carefully adjusting your shutter speed in small increments to get to the starting point of your sequence. Your camera manual will show you how to set these increments for half or third stops. Note: brackets for enfused shots tend to be in whole stops, so it might be a good idea to set these increments to half stops, so that you only need to rotate two clicks for each bracket. For single shooting you may prefer third stop increments as these will afford more precision.

What if your camera doesn’t have LiveView? Don’t worry! Simply take a shot at your working aperture, using an estimated shutter speed or one based on the camera meter’s suggestions, which will most likely be to underexpose, especially if a very bright window appears in the shot. Then playback the image and press the INFO button again a couple of times to bring up the file’s histogram (in Brightness rather than RGB mode), alongside the recorded thumbnail. This is called “CHIMPing” (Checking on the Image Playback).

Either way, take a look at the brightest tones in the histogram

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and estimate by how much you need to increase or reduce the shutter speed to pull them safely under control. You should initially aim for quite a dark, underexposed image favouring the lighter tones in the scene, like the view through the window. If you have LiveView you can just go on turning the dial, but if not you will need to take another shot and see how you are doing. It actually doesn’t take long and once you have that opening shot’s shutter speed established, you won’t need to check back again in this way until you get to your final shadow exposures.

However, you will need to remember that the shots you take to whittle down that starting exposure may not have been deleted from the camera by the time you get to the post-processing stage (and I do not recommend deleting shots in the field). Once you have decided on the best exposure to start your series with, simply take a shot with your hand in front of the camera and then shoot your exposure sequence as normal. It’ll be far easier to locate the right shots to use later and you can delete the test shots in post-processing.

So, how far do you need to adjust the shutter speed to ensure the lighter tones of your scene are safely captured? Whether you use LiveView or CHIMPing, this question is a lot easier to answer by using the clear readout of the histogram than by relying on the low resolution JPEG preview displayed on the LCD screen.

To illustrate, let’s begin our sequence seriously underexposed and select a short shutter speed (1/80 second in the case of this very dark basement apartment). Looking at Figure 3.6 below and working from the top left image along, you can see the shutter speed alone being increased, i.e. made longer, in one or full stop increments (representing a doubling of the amount of light hitting the sensor each time). As we increase the shutter

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speed, you will see the tones moving incrementally to the right in the histogram.

The shutter speeds are from top left to bottom right : 1/80, 1/40, 1/20, 1/10, 1/5, 0.4, 0.8, 1.6, 3.2, 6, 13, and finally a full 25 seconds. We are after an exposure which places the highlight tones safely within the histogram. Looking at the histogram close up, there are five key zones separated by some pale vertical lines. Here’s the histogram (Figure 3.7) for the shot taken at 1/10 second.

It’s a dark shot with the majority of the tones bunched to the left, or shadow end, of the histogram. You can see the brightest tones of the image just register

Figure 3.6

Figure 3.7

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in the middle of the fourth zone from the left, i.e. with about 75% brightness. This would be a good starting point for our series. Or you could push it one stop further and still have those highlights safely contained. Here’s the histogram (Figure 3.8) for the shot taken at 1/5 second. The lightest tones are just reaching into the 80% plus segment.

Remember that some higher values do not actually need to show detail, a lamp which appears in a shot for example, or the specular reflection of the sun in a highly reflective object. All these can be taken to pure white, as we do not normally expect to see detail here. If you base your highlight exposure on these really bright tones, then it is going to make your primary shot very dark indeed, which means all the others in the series are going to follow suit and you may well need upwards of nine shots to get detail down at the shadow end. This could push the exposure fusion software beyond what it’s capable of achieving.

So, in a normal situation you would adjust your shutter speed until the histogram looked roughly like the one above and then begin your exposure sequence, opening the shutter speed one stop for each shot. Of course, as the preview image gets lighter, the lines in the histogram move towards the right. What were darker tones in our underexposed version become middle to light tones in the lighter version. At about the midway point, with an exposure of 1.6 seconds, our histogram is looking like this. It shows nicely grouped middle tones, but nonetheless clipping

Figure 3.8

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at both the shadow and highlight ends of the scale. Below is the sort of image that such a histogram will turn out (Figure 3.10):

Of course, it’s looking OK for the midtones (have a look at the grey squares on the test card: this is a theoretically “correct” average exposure) but the shadows are way dark and the brightest tones are so overexposed that there will be nothing left to work with in them.

Figure 3.10

Figure 3.9

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We need some more shots in our sequence at longer exposures but how far do we need to go? For our really overexposed shots, which are going to help bring life to the gloomy shadow areas of our scene, we need to look to the other end of the histogram and ensure it looks similar to the target highlight shot, but in reverse! We’re now looking for the shot with the histogram that actually shows little or no information in the far left segment, or lowest 20%, and yet contains sufficient tones in the second 20-40% zone. The histogram in Figure 3.11 corresponds to the shot taken at a full 25 seconds and is what we are after. The lower values are safely recorded and, of course, the higher values have been pushed off the scale. The shot taken looks like Figure 3.12 below.

We have a few tonal values coming in at pure black (the books in the shadow area at right) but the greater majority of our tones are pushed up the scale, accounting for the bunched up lines hugging the right of the histogram. There is no need to run any

Figure 3.11

“The main problem with shooting multiple exposures is camera movement. To be successful, any exposure fusion process is going to rely on perfect pixel for pixel alignment of the source images.”

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more exposures than this one. This time you are using the histogram just to ensure that your darkest shadows at least register in that lower 20%. Anything more is overkill, wastes time and can actually lead to image degradation caused by flare or sensor bloom. More on this later!

The good news is that we don’t need to be so precise about these overexposed shots. There isn’t the harsh cut off point with shadows that there is with digital highlights. A little detail, if noisy, can usually be pulled out of darker areas, especially if you are shooting RAW. Just make sure that the majority of your histogram tones are well over to the right and you’ll know that you have safely recorded the shadow areas of your scene.

So there we have it: a reliable and logical way to ensure that every series of brackets we take is going to cover the entire brightness range and all the important tones in our scene. In the next section we’ll take that material and enfuse it into one great looking file!

Figure 3.12

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How many brackets are enough?So what’s the optimum number of brackets or shots in an exposure sequence? You may be tempted to think that more is better, and shoot the nine exposures that are recommended for every situation you encounter to ensure that you get the widest tonal spread possible in your image. You could certainly shoot in this way, and it would mean you could set your auto exposure bracketing facility once for the shoot without having to think about it again. As convenient as that sounds, I hope to show in this section how that can result in poor quality images and longer post-processing times.

First, there is a real risk when creating more and more overexposed shots, i.e. shots taken at longer and longer shutter speeds, that the most overexposed ones will contain flare. More accurately, it is called sensor bloom. Your digital sensor receptors can only accommodate a certain amount of light. Think of them as buckets. When they fill up, that’s it. There’s no reserve tank and the water just spills over. Well, a similar thing happens with light. The tone on the image soon cuts out to pure white and eventually that light just spills over to the neighbouring sensors, corrupting and degrading the image quality there. It’s not the same as the flare you get from shooting into the sun. That type of flare is the result of non-image-forming light, and is often characterised by a spectral pattern in a shot. We’re talking here about areas of white that are so blitzed that they start to halate and spread featureless white bloom into other areas which do contain some detail. And dark areas that are adjacent to much lighter ones, e.g. the unlit side of a sofa on a wooden floor with very reflective finish, are going to be much more affected by this.

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Take a look at this eight exposure sequence which includes a backlit foot stool on some very reflective floorboards. I have placed my target highlight exposure, a little generously perhaps, in order to get tonal detail in that net curtain.

By the time I am getting detail showing up in the unlit side of the furniture some serious burn-out occurs in the lighter tones. Here’s a closer look at the final shot:

Figure 3.13


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Notice how you can make out a white circular area on the foot stool. This is classic flare from overexposure showing up in dark areas which have been taken way high in value. This could pose problems in our final image and the software is going to have to work pretty hard to restore detail to those very burned-out floorboards. For the enfused version in Figure 3.15, I opted not to include this really overexposed shot (Figure 3.14) in the set and instead applied a stronger than usual shadows adjustment to the image. The area of “bloom” is less obvious. Sometimes less is more!

Sensor bloom from serious overexposure will cause image degradation in your final shot. As I will show in the batch processing section, you can always shoot your maximum nine or ten brackets as a matter of course and then, with the advantage of being able to scrutinize your images on a large monitor, you can make the call later as to which brackets are selected for the final exposure fusion. But that takes time and getting it at least half right during the shooting stage, where you have the scene in front of you, can help to streamline your post-processing. It’s also better photographic practice!

If your scene really contains such extremes of brightness that your overexposed shots are starting to reveal flare or sensor bloom, then unfortunately, it means you are at the limit of what the software can handle. It’s time either to use a little flash to throw some light into those very dark areas, thereby reducing the tonal spread that the software has to contain, or to use a white reflector of some sort, to lighten those areas a little. A simple collapsible white reflector in the shot above would have worked wonders. Or, ask yourself whether you really need to see detail in every single shadow area. You may also be able to work with fewer exposures and lighten those shadows in post-processing manually, rather than using a very bright bracket that is going to introduce flare to the fusion.

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The other consequence of shooting and fusing too many exposures is a very low contrast result which then needs to be increased in contrast to look its best. Suppose your scene is fairly contrasty and you know it’s going to need to be enfused. But it’s not as contrasty as some scenes and maybe doesn’t warrant the “whole nine stops” treatment. Too many brackets at the underexposed end of the sequence are going to lead to some very murky, detail-rich highlights, while too many shots at the shadow end will lighten the shadow areas up considerably.

While shooting many exposures of such a scene probably won’t lead to the appearance of flare, it will likely result in a very low contrast image once they are enfused. A little spark to the highlights and a few dark shadows are actually a good thing for an image. These form the ends of the tonal scale which help to create a sense of the progression from light to shade in an image. Over-enfuse and you kill this feeling resulting in lots of information but no real sense of presence to the image. Such images are just plain dull!

The enfused image below was run from perhaps too many separate exposures (considering there were large windows to my left providing additional fill), resulting in a very flat scene. Quite a large contrast adjustment needed to be applied to bring back some vitality to the image (Figure 3.17). There’s detail enough in the reflections of the windows in the polished floorboards, but they are better separated for the spike in contrast.

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If you find you need to carry out serious contrast adjustments to pull back some sort of spark to your image, you run the risk of clipping detail and causing jerky tonal progression. This is not the end of the world but it’s an inefficient way of working. As above, if you want to shoot all nine exposures in the field and hope to cover your tonal scale, that is one approach, but remember to think carefully when it comes to grouping your images pre-Enfuse. It doesn’t take a lot of time and will enable you to achieve more consistent and more predictable results, which require less post-processing acrobatics than simply running all nine exposures for every exposure fusion.

If you work with the manual method and use your histogram to pinpoint where your sequence should start and roughly end, you can ensure that your highlights are safely covered by your exposures without being overaccounted for. You also have the option of overallowing for the shadow end and then choosing what to include at the post-processing stage. That will mean your exposure fusions always start with a consistent highlight level to work with, and your results will generally fall into a predictable pattern, making post-Enfuse corrections a lot more straightforward.


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Summary:

To ensure your images are properly aligned:• Use a sturdy tripod and raise the height using the legs

rather than allowing the central column to be fully extended.

• Use a cable release: it’s better and quicker than the camera’s self-timer.

• Switch off any lens image stabilisation/vibration reduction functions.

• Switch off autofocus and focus manually on a point usually two thirds of the way into your shot.

• Shoot with LiveView if possible: this kills “mirror slap”.• Let everything and everyone settle down before you shoot.• Stand in the exact same place while you shoot your

sequence. • Watch for items in the scene which might be blown about

mid-sequence: close doors and switch off fans if they are a problem.

• Let the camera settle between shots if you need to touch its controls (manual operation).

• Use a remote control device to change camera settings without touching the camera (optional).

To ensure best image quality:• Set the lowest ISO on your camera.• Set your aperture to the optimum for your lens for a decent

depth of field and good image quality: usually the middle of the scale.

• Don’t rely on image alignment functions in your exposure fusion software!

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When Shooting Brackets:• The maximum number of exposures generally

recommended for an Enfuse is nine.• Shooting too many brackets and overexposing images can

lead to flare or sensor bloom, and image degradation.• Don’t use all nine exposures if your scene doesn’t require

them! Your result will be very low in contrast and will require post-processing adjustments to restore some spark.

• Shoot enough exposures to safely capture good highlight detail and open up shadows sufficiently by checking the histogram and/or image playback.

• You can shoot all nine shots in the field and then choose what to include in the exposure fusion in Lightroom.

Chapter 4:Creating Enfused Images -

With LR/Enfuse

Creating Enfused Images - With LR/Enfuse

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The brilliance of Lightroom: why you need it

If you want to increase the efficiency of your post-processing workflow dramatically, and this goes for all shooting methods,

not just Enfuse, there’s one big change that you need to consider. If you’re not already using it, take a look at Lightroom. Download the free Lightroom one month trial at: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop_lightroom#. Don’t worry if you find learning Lightroom a daunting prospect. Though it has more features than most photographers ever get to use, you can get started with it quite easily. It can be used as an “ingester” or converter of raw files, or if you shoot JPEG, use it as an importing and organizational tool. You can be modest about how you use it in the early days, and there are many good, free tutorials online to help you get started. Not only is Lightroom a great way to store your images and videos, it lets you carry out sophisticated adjustments to your images and batch edits to groups of images. This will increase the efficiency of your workflow dramatically!

Most importantly for our purposes here, are the two third-party plug-ins for Lightroom which will run the exposure fusion process directly from Lightroom and then automatically reimport the files back in to Lightroom for you. It’s really this time saving batch functionality, combined with it’s image adjustment benefits, that makes exposure fusion a viable time saving possibility for real estate photographers. You can also run Enfuse from programs like Photoshop, which is now only available on a costly licensed basis. The overview below will be applicable to those options as well.

But believe me when I say that Lightroom is the key to your working profitably. It’s one of the best investments you can make for your business. Hold off on that full frame DSLR for the moment and get Lightroom. The increased profits it facilitates

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop_lightroom#




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will mean you can afford that new camera with all the bells and whistles not so far down the line. So at least download the free trial, if you haven’t already, and follow the workflow steps I show here to see how this great piece of software can be used to enhance your workflow.

Installing your Lightroom Enfuse plug-inThe most popular Enfuse software application is the Lightroom plug-in LR/Enfuse (http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/lrenfuse.php). It enables you to run your exposure fusion program from directly within your folder of shoot images from Lightroom. Installing this plug-in is a straightforward process, but it is worth being systematic about where you store so that in the event of a change of computer or a data loss you will be able to reinstall these features.

Note that LR/Enfuse is available on a donation basis which allows you to make use of it immediately with limitations and then upgrade to the full version later.

After downloading the LR/Enfuse plug-in follow the following steps:

1. Locate the downloaded file: it will have the name LREnfuse.lrplugin.4.31.zip (the version number may be different on yours).

2. Unzip the file: the unzipped file will be called LREnfuse.lrplugin.

3. Move the plug-in file to the .../Lightroom/Modules folder: this folder has different names in different operating systems:• Mac OSX: Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/

Modules• Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\

Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Modules

http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/lrenfuse.php

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• Windows Vista, 7, 8: C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Modules

4. Enable the plug-in in the Lightroom Plug-in Manager: In the Lightroom menu bar select File>Plug-in Manager... then select the plug-in you want to activate in the left-hand column of the dialog box and click the Enable button at the lower right-hand side of the dialog box. Then press Done to get rid of the Lightroom Plug-in Manager. The Lightroom Plug-in Manger dialog box is shown below in Figure 4.1.

That’s it, the LR/Enfuse plug-in is ready to use!

Importing your bracketed files into LightroomTo run our LR/Enfuse software we need to import some bracketed files into Lightroom. You can import both RAW and JPEG files into Lightroom, so if you are not yet shooting RAW this won’t stop you from shooting JPEG brackets and working

Figure 4.1


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on them for now. I do urge you though to start shooting RAW. RAW files contain a lot more tonal detail than JPEGs, and you can adjust them after shooting without loss of quality, while JPEGs are processed in-camera and do not really allow for much further adjustment.

Using the import preset that came with this bookAs RAW files will need some pre-Enfuse adjustment, we can seriously speed this process up with an import preset. That’s what the file EnfuseIMPORT.lrtemplate included with this e-book is. See the Lightroom Presets on page 143.

Here is what the EnfuseIMPORT.lrtemplate preset does:

1. Sets white balance to As Shot.2. Does not do any exposure or contrast adjustments. 3. Sets Sharpening amount to 75.4. Sets Noise Reduction to 25.5. Enables lens profile corrections causing Lightroom to

recognize what lens was used and load the lens correction profile for that lens.

6. Uses the profile selected in 5. to remove chromatic aberration.

Here’s how to use the preset:

1. In Lightroom choose File>Import Photos and Video...2. In the Apply During Import options on the right of the

interface, locate the Develop Settings tab and click the triangles to reveal the drop down menu of all available presets. From the User Presets select the Enfuse Import preset.

3. Then complete your import as usual.


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Enfuse for Lightroom step by step

Step 1: Select the brackets you want to process.In the Lightroom Library module, select the thumbnails of the files you wish to enfuse by clicking on the first in the sequence, then holding down Shift and clicking on the last one. To display your thumbnails I recommend setting the preview area to Grid and prioritizing the sort order alphabetically first (setting the sort order to Ascending or A_Z), then by Capture Time. This will ensure your brackets appear in the order you shot them and it will make it easy to identify shots you think may be too over or underexposed. They will appear at the start and end of the sequence. You can always double click on a thumbnail to view the image at a larger size and make sure it is what you want (the histogram appears in the top pane).

In Figure 4.2 above I have just selected seven of the available brackets as the earlier ones are too dark. The selected files are highlighted in grey.

Figure 4.2


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Step 2: Execute the LR/Enfuse plug-in.

Select File>Plug-in Extras>Blend exposures using LR/Enfuse.

Step 3: Select the configuration options.This Combine Photos Using Enfuse dialog box will be displayed automatically when doing Step 2.

There is not much to change here other than the

Figure 4.3

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enfused image preview sizes which will depend on the size of your monitor. The default of 800 pixels works for most situations.

Step 4: Select the Auto-Align options.

Be careful about setting this option. It is really intended to be used for bracketed sequences which have been shot hand-held and will definitely require some alignment. Using the Auto-Align option will seriously increase the processing time of each image fusion, and if you are shooting on a steady tripod this should not be necessary. Leave it unchecked for usual real estate work. You can also use Enfuse to combine or focus-stack series of images focused at different planes to spread the depth of field. Our work won’t require this either, so the advanced options below can be left unchecked.

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Step 5: Select the Enfuse options.

I recommend leaving the Enfuse settings on default with Exposure Weight at 1.00 and Saturation at 0.2. We will definitely need to make some adjustments in contrast and possibly saturation to our enfused image but it is much easier to apply these to the enfused file when back in Lightroom. You can run tests with the sliders here but it’s unlikely that you will come up with a “one size fits all” setting that works with every type of image you take. The TIFF file generated by Enfuse can comfortably handle further adjustments and running the plug-in directly from Lightroom makes this a breeze.

Step 6: Select the Output options.

This is where you will define what type of file Enfuse will generate and where it will be located. So I advise setting it to Create Blended Image in the same folder as the primary image in the set.

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This makes it easier to locate later. (Do not check Batch Mode, we’ll cover that in the next chapter).

For Filename, you can choose to rename your files if you wish to distinguish them from the bracketed shots. But I find it preferable to leave the filename of the primary image as the name, which will ensure it appears next to the brackets when Lightroom is set to sort images by filename. If you wish, you can then append something like _e to the filename in the Append box to make it obvious to spot. However, if you choose TIFF in the format box then your output file is going to be saved with the extension .tif anyway and will be immediately noticeable in your series back in Lightroom. Hit J on your keyboard to display the filename and extension over each Lightroom thumbnail, and the enfused TIFF file will be clear to see. For bit depth, choose 8 bit rather than 16 bit. Of course, 16-bit files will really choke up your disk space and are only required when you think

Figure 4.7


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you are going to perform really extreme adjustments such as shadow brightening after the Enfuse process. Setting 16 bit does not make for better quality images. I set Compression to None. If you really want to work in 16 bit you could choose the Compression options here. For Color Space, I choose ProPhoto, simply because that is the colour space employed by Lightroom.

Other options here are Adobe RGB and sRGB. The ProPhoto colour space has a very wide range in comparison. Chances are you will be supplying images for your clients in the web-preferred sRGB space but when you export images from Lightroom it will convert the ProPhoto TIFFs to other colour spaces anyway. I have also set Photoshop’s colour space to ProPhoto in case I want to retouch files in Photoshop and bring them back into Lightroom. So if you prefer to have Photoshop operate in Adobe RGB mode, output here accordingly.

What’s really important is to set Enfuse to Reimport Image Into Lightroom. This brilliant time saving feature means your processed file will be ready and waiting in Lightroom for adjustment and export to the client. Do not set anything in the next field. Select Open Blended File In only if you plan to carry out further optimization or retouching of the enfused file in Photoshop.

Finally, it’s useful to check Copy all metadata from the primary file to the final image. You may want access to all the EXIF data further down the road. I would recommend checking Except and Shutter Speed as shown though. The shutter speed is actually going to


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be misleading, as your blended file will be made up of several shots taken at different shutter speeds! What is helpful to know though is what aperture was used, as that will be common to all brackets, and the focal length. Note that what you check here is excluded from the processed file’s metadata, so just check Shutter Speed.

Don’t press the Generate Preview button. That is to check if you are hoping to nail the shot with Enfuse’s adjustment sliders.

You will see the progress monitor in the top, left-hand corner of Lightroom as the Enfuse plug-in does it’s work. If you have set Lightroom’s general preferences to play a sound as images are imported, you can get to work on something else and wait for the alert. If you don’t see your TIFF file immediately in Lightroom, the simplest thing is to ensure that All Photographs is selected in the Catalog section of the navigation panel,

and that your preview area is set to sort according to Added Order and from Z to A.

The most recently added shot to your Lightroom catalogue, i.e., your enfused TIFF file, will then come up as the very first image in the preview pane. If you want to see how it compares with the bracketed sequence, leave the TIFF file selected, then set the sort to Capture

Figure 4.8

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Time and you will see how well the enfused file has blended your bracketed sequence (this is why it’s important to embed all EXIF data in the enfused file).

TroubleshootingSometimes you may receive a “failed to import” message from Enfuse:

This doesn’t mean that Enfuse hasn’t run. It means the enfused file has not been reimported into Lightroom. It’s rare that this happens. Sometimes my external drive, where my images are stored, goes into standby and Lightroom cannot access the files. That’s one cause of this error.

To recover from this, you just need to import the file manually. So in the Library module in Lightroom, click the Import tab and select the folder from the shoot. This is why it’s good to set Enfuse to store the processed file in the same folder as the bracketed images. This time you will simply be adding the file to your catalogue:

All the bracketed shots will be greyed out, assuming you have Lightroom’s import preferences set to Don’t Import Selected Duplicates.

Figure 4.10

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Just remember NOT to run any development presets you might have applied to standard bracketed files at their original import. Set the Develop Settings to None. Metadata settings can be applied as usual.

You don’t want to apply an Import preset, like you used above designed for RAW files, to the TIFF file. That would sharpen the images twice.

Post-Enfuse adjustments in LightroomOne thing I find about running Enfuse is that it is actually quite exciting to see the enfused files appearing in Lightroom as they are reimported. It reminds me slightly of going to the lab to pick up my processed transparency films. Even though with digital one has probably got a good idea of the composition from the brackets or exposure sequence, there is still something a little special, intriguing even, about seeing these really rich files coming up on screen, that have somehow managed to include such an apparently untamable tonal range.

Figure 4.13

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Having said all that, when you run your first blends you may be disappointed initially. That’s right. The enfused files can actually appear a little soft, underwhelming even.

Have a look at the example below which is a five exposure blend and straight out of the works as per Enfuse’s standard settings.

First we’ll examine the five exposure sequence which contains detail from the white walls down to the dark floorboards and dark kitchen units. For this scene, without a window view or really extreme contrast, there’s no real need to shoot more than that.

And the following is what Enfuse made of these five images:

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Now, I know from experience that this is going to provide a great starting point for further development, but right now the image is flat and uninteresting. “Why is this?” I hear you ask. Wasn’t the point of Enfuse methods to create stunning images with the minimum of hassle? Well yes, with reservations. It’s best to regard the enfused shot as a raw file with real potential to be worked on in order to create an image not only with very long tonal range but also interesting and dynamic local contrast. Well, with an enfused file, which is composed of the very best of a series of exposures and which has apportioned high-bit depth to the darker areas, there really is a great deal of potential for additional processing. Unfortunately, Enfuse’s strength can become its weakness. By creating an image with such a long tonal scale without any deep shadows or bleached highlights, the results straight out of Enfuse can come across as a little bland and lacking in local contrast, like this one.

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So how do we take the enfused shot to something with not only good tonal range but also some pizzaz and, more to the point, how do we achieve that as quickly as possible so our time in post-processing is kept to a minimum?

I am hoping to show you that it doesn’t take much to achieve this. Provided your working methods are moderately consistent, you can use Lightroom’s preset function to batch adjust your enfused shots to get them very quickly looking strong and full of impact, if not the first time, then certainly after a few clicks/adjustments.

We’re going to use some simple controls in Lightroom which might normally be applied to an image with a nice long tonal scale but a lack of local contrast. The first thing is to define what you are after, which is a good idea when analysing any image, and go forward with a plan. Otherwise the risk is that you eat up time moving Lightroom sliders backwards and forwards until the image “looks more or less right”.

Define your goal first and then use what tools you have to achieve that. So most enfused images will require a certain brightening and a bit more contrast. Now, the simplest adjustment would be to increase the contrast slider and that would be one solution, but I hope to show that there’s a more sophisticated approach which can nonetheless be applied efficiently to your blended images.

I think you’ll agree that the whites in Figure 4.15 are a little bit muddy with the only really crisp highlights being the lit side of the bowls on the table. These are nearer to the light source, which is a large window behind me and the tiny specular reflections of that window are in the wine glasses themselves. These areas are registering as pure white but with all that wall


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area coming in as a medium gray I think we could be doing better. The whole scene just needs a bit of lift.

Lightroom adjustments to the enfused resultOK, with some very simple adjustments in Lightroom, plus 0.25 Exposure to brighten the image and plus 25 Contrast to restore some sparkle, we get this:

This looks a whole lot better, with a good range of tones and no loss of shadow detail, despite the increase in contrast.

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What about the simple addition of plus 15 Clarity?

The Clarity slider in Lightroom is a great tool because it basically increases the contrast of an image but in the middle of the tonalscale.

If we pushed the contrast slider alone much further up then we would risk pushing both our delicate highlights into blitzed white and our subtle shadow detail into featureless black. The clarity slider is like a sharpening filter applied to the middle tones of the image. It adds a bit more contrast where it finds distinct tonal edges without creating the artifacts and noise build-up that can occur with oversharpening. If you look closely at details like the fabric of the chairs you will see its effect at work. It actually restores some of the local contrast of objects which can be lost when so much of the global contrast is compressed by the Enfuse process. By using a combination of the Contrast

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and Clarity sliders you can really make your images sparkle and enjoy a long tonal range at the same time.

Is there anything else we can do to get the very most out this Enfusion? Well how about just raising the shadow values to open up those dark floorboards? With an adjustment of plus 25 applied to the Shadows slider, Lightroom can lighten the shadows preferentially, that’s to say it won’t push all the tones up the scale in the way that the Exposure slider will. Applying it we get this:

Now we’re really getting something showable which makes the very most of the data contained in the enfused file. Remember, these were quick adjustments applied to the whole image rather than selectively applied controls.

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The Basic Lightroom development module adjustments in the right-hand side panel look like this:

I find they aren’t a bad starting point for an enfused file. Chances are, you will need to brighten it a bit and increase the Contrast, Clarity and Shadows slightly. So why not get all these controls moving via a useful preset in Lightroom and then fine- tune their effect if required? For many shots they will be on or near the money. Clarity can be a really interesting refinement and you can experiment with different settings to see which benefit your images best. A preset would include all the usual Basic Tone controls plus any Clarity settings.

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Syncing Lightroom adjustments to multiple photosYou can sync these Lightroom adjustments to multiple files to speed things up. Here’s how:

1. Select all your processed TIFF files in the Lightroom library module.

2. Set Auto Sync in the develop module3. Select your Enfuse post-process preset to apply it to all the

files you selected in 1.

Figure 4.20


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Summary:

• The brilliance of Lightroom: why you need it.• As an importing and organizational tool.• Dramatically increases the efficiency of your workflow.• It’s the key to working profitably.

• Installing your Lightroom Enfuse plug-in. • Downloading from photographers-toolbox.com.• Unziping• Moving the file to the /Lightroom/Modules folder.

• Importing your bracketed files into Lightroom.• Using the import preset that came with this e-book.• LR/Enfuse step by step:

1. Select the brackets you want to process.2. Execute the LR/Enfuse plug-in.3. Select configuration options.4. Select the Auto-Align options.5. Select the Enfuse options.6. Select the Output options.

• Troubleshooting.• Post-Enfuse adjustments in Lightroom.• Lightroom adjustments to the enfused result

• Exposure• Contrast• Clarity

• Syncing Lightroom adjustments to multiple photos.

Chapter 5:Batch Processing -

With LR/Enfuse

Batch Processing - With LR/Enfuse

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Speed is of the essence

There is absolutely no point in investing your time and money in new exposure blending software and multi-exposure

shooting if you are finding yourself spending longer processing each image than you did with previous methods. Time is money to any photographer, but that adage is doubly important in the field of real estate photography because there is more price competition than other types of photography.

If you are spending upwards of 5 minutes processing time per image, then the chances are, by the time you have factored in all your other time spent on the job and your direct and indirect costs, you are effectively working for an alarmingly low rate. My reason for writing this guide was not only because I believe the Enfuse approach has enabled me to raise the quality of my images, but also that it has helped me streamline my workflow. I am actually spending less time post-processing than I did before and thereby increasing my profitability.

This guide is not just about creating pretty pictures, it’s also about finding the best techniques and methods to ensure you are running your business as profitably as possible. One of the best ways to improve profitability is to increase one’s speed of operation. Whether you want to spend the time you will save on post-processing with the kids, marketing your business or shooting more assignments is up to you.

So, you may have been thinking as you covered earlier sections, that all this shooting of multiple images and enfusing is going to lead to a lot of post-processing time. Sure, a photographer working with flash methods alone is maybe going to get away with less time post-processing, but consider how much quicker you can potentially carry out a shoot just taking ambient-only exposures. You won’t have to set up multiple flash units. I hope


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to show that the time you save in shooting is a trade-off for post-processing time. You can still be generating top quality results with the minimum of time post-processing.

However, if you slavishly run each Enfuse manually and wait around for the process to do its thing, even from within Lightroom, then your post-processing of enfused images is going to slow you down overall. I will show you in this section that it doesn’t have to be like that. There is a way to increase your efficiency massively when working with the Enfuse process.

Organizing your images with stacksSo why is Lightroom so useful when it comes to processing the multiple exposures you are going to be shooting to create your enfused images? While that in itself is a help, as it enables you to run your chosen Enfuse application from directly within your folder of shoot images, these plug-ins also enable full batch processing of your images. That’s right, hit a button, walk away and you can come back to find all that Enfuse processing carried out and the results waiting for you. This is such a time saver. A bit like dropping your films into the lab in the olden days!

Provided you are organised about how you import your images to Lightroom, you can set this batch process to run when you are off doing other tasks, like other shoots, driving home from a shoot or even sleeping! Imagine being able to come back to your computer and find all your bracketed shots already enfused and waiting in your shoot folder. You are then simply looking at applying a few post-Enfuse adjustments to your images to make them look their best.

Many of these tweaks will be similar. As we have seen, enfused


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shots can usually benefit simply from a bit of increased contrast. And thanks to Lightroom’s synchronise command these refinements can be applied to whole groups of images with a single click. I apply a single basic preset to my enfused images and add individual adjustments if need be. Very often the basic preset is on the money. Your goal should be to spend just 1 or maybe 2 minutes maximum on each enfused shot in order to arrive at a set that is ready to deliver to the client. And guess what? Lightroom will enable you to do that!

Now we’re going to look at how to run the batch process to make your workflow really streamlined and efficient.We’re assuming your brackets are ready to be enfused.

LR/Enfuse batch processingEnfuse’s plug-in for Lightroom integrates so well with the existing structure of Lightroom that it’s almost impossible to consider any other option for batch processing. The key to this method is to group your images into what’s known as stacks, Lightroom’s term for convenient “bundles” of images. This is where we group the exposure series we will use to run our enfused blends. Stacking your exposure sequence together will enable Enfuse to process the correct images. It’s a smart program but it’s not that smart. It doesn’t know where one sequence begins and another ends! We need to tell it which shots are part of which room or exterior shot. And just as importantly, we need to decide which shots to exclude from the blend (for now).

When you view your bracketed exposure sequence on your monitor, you may feel that the brightest, or darkest, shot in the sequence is just too extreme to be of use to Enfuse. It’s much better to shoot it at the time and have it handy in case you need it. Overexposed shots can often reveal flare in the


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enfused result while very underexposed shots will simply lead to a veiling of the brighter values in your image. I don’t advise deleting anything until you’ve run Enfuse and are happy that you have the best shot possible. We need to be able to group the brackets we do want into a clear package. Also, when you view your bracketed exposure sequence on your monitor, you may feel that the brightest, or darkest, shot in the sequence is just too extreme to be of use to the Enfusion. It’s much better to shoot it at the time and have it handy in case you need it. Overexposed shots can often reveal flare in the enfused result while very underexposed shots will simply lead to a veiling of the brighter values in your image. I don’t advise deleting anything until you’ve run Enfuse and are happy that you have the best shot possible.

By using stacks you can simply exclude those questionable exposures from your processing. If necessary you can come back and add those versions to the stack and run the blend again. Stacking images may initially seem like a chore, but you’ll get fast at it and it’s a very smooth and efficient way to get your images neatly organised and ready for the time-saving automated process.

Let’s get stackingSo it’s simply a case of going through your shots systematically and deciding what’s going to be included in that first, and hopefully only, pass. Everything I am suggesting here is aimed at making the process as quick, easy, and repeatable as possible.

Your first try out with this method may take a while, the second a little less time, and soon you’ll find it a breeze. The number one cardinal rule to note for stacks is you can only create them


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with images that are in folders! Those of you who use collections in Lightroom will be disappointed to hear that you cannot create and reference stacks with images that are in collections of images. This is not to say that collections cannot be put to good use at a later stage in our workflow.

To be absolutely safe, make sure you have All Photographs selected in the Navigation pane. Usually your images from a shoot will have been shot at the same time and you will have imported them into the same folder fairly recently, so selecting all images will ensure they all displayed without having to navigate to the folder itself in Lightroom. You can also select Previous Import in the Navigation pane, but its better practice to select All Photographs, as you might have imported shots from more than one card and this method will only show the most recently read card.

If you return to a shoot on another day (e.g., for a twilight shot or better weather exterior) and haven’t processed the images from the first visit yet, then ensure when you import the additional files into Lightroom, that you place them in the original job folder. Then in Lightroom, go to that folder in the folder list to ensure they all come up as a group in your thumb strip. If you find that the images you want to work with were shot days apart with other work in-between and they have gone into different folders, then simply locate the new images in the Preview pane with All Images selected and then drag and drop them into the relevant folder. Only move images into different folders and/or rename those folders from within Lightroom! If you mess with folders outside of Lightroom, say in Windows Explorer or Mac Finder, then Lightroom’s thread of reference to the original images will be lost and you will have to re-establish the links to the images. I’ve done it and spent hours fixing it!


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Be organised about your folder structure and folder naming in Lightroom. You can create folders and subfolders to help identify images more easily, but I don’t advise creating too many nested subfolders. I have one major folder called Commissioned, referring to my commercial work, and I then group folders of shoots within it named with clients’ initials and part of the property address (see Figure 5.1 below):

Before you do anything else, ensure your Lightroom preview area is set to show thumbnails and set the thumbnails nice and large to make it easier to assess images (you can hit Shift and Tab at the same time to give yourself as much screen real estate as possible). On the toolbar below set Lightroom to sort images in Ascending Order (i.e. A-Z) and by Capture Time. If you shoot with two camera bodies, ensure that the time set on both cameras matches exactly! Otherwise your shots may become mixed up using this method.

Figure 5.1


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This will place your shots obviously in the order they were taken and help you judge each sequence logically without missing anything that shows up later in the thumbnail sequence. It will also make it easier to spot sequences that should be deleted, because something moved or you needed to change a prop etc. When you see a very large group of maybe 18 identical shots or so (i.e. way more than a usual Enfuse bracketed sequence), then you know that’s a case where you perhaps had second thoughts but didn’t erase the files in-camera.

When you see such images, select the first file and (holding down Shift key on your keyboard) click on the final image, then simply hit X on your keyboard to mark them as rejected, rather than deleting them entirely from your hard drive and/or Lightroom just yet. The thumbnails will be conveniently greyed-out, making it easier to stack the images you do want. If you shoot exposure sequences as I suggest from underexposed, highlight biased versions, to overexposed, shadow preferential ones, then by sorting your images by capture time, you will

Figure 5.2


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be able see the incremental jumps neatly displayed from light to dark. With Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) you’ll see the base exposure first, then the overexposed frame and then the underexposed frame. You may find that when you see the shot on your large, calibrated monitor rather than the camera LCD, that a really overexposed frame might be more than is necessary to bring out detail in your shadows. Or, it may contain too much flare, in which case, it’s easy to either reject or simply exclude it from the stacked collection. The same applies for a dark frame. It will be at one end of the sequence and simple to isolate.

So, having decided which bracketed exposures you need to include in the enfuse is just a matter of selecting them all (Shift-Click) and packaging them up neatly so they are distinct from other shots. Lightroom calls these bundles “Stacks”. With the right images selected, simply hit Ctl+G/Cmd+G on your keyboard to create a stack of images. Or go to Photo from the top menu in the Library module, choose Stacking and Group Into Stack. Unfortunately, you can’t stack images from within the develop module, so I recommend doing your adjustments first, marking rejected files, then go back to the Library module and stack all required groups together.

Figure 5.3


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The images then appear in a stacked group (Figure 5.4) starting with the first image in the sequence and showing the number of shots contained in it. The stack can be expanded or contracted, as required, either by choosing from the stacking menu again, (see Figure 5.3 ) or by simply clicking on the small number indicating the shots in the stack.

I suggest the following method as a quick way to get the stacking done:

1. Set your preview area to display thumbnails as large as possible (about nine or twelve to a view).

2. Examine your shots which will probably begin with the darkest shot i.e., shortest exposure first.

3. Click on the first thumbnail you want to include and then select subsequent images in the sequence with the Ctl-Option/Cmd-Option key, clicking on each image as you go so that all the selected thumbnails appear with a grey border. Or you can simply hold down Shift and click on the

Figure 5.4


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final image (which will be the very light, longer exposure for the shadows) to select all shots in one step.

4. Hit Ctl+G/Cmd+G and Lightroom will create a stack of images.

5. If you wish, you can hit X on your keyboard to mark unused shots as rejected but, as long as the key shots for the blend are packaged up into a stack, you don’t really need to bother.

6. Use your scroll wheel or mouse pad to move further down the series of thumbnail images and repeat for each bracketed set.

7. If you find the thumbnail view too small to really assess the shadow detail in an image for example, simply double click on the thumbnail image to pull it up full size in the preview area: then select Grid View in the toolbar to return to the sequence. Believe me, this process becomes as fast as scrolling through your shots the first time you view them. Soon you will have a nicely organised thumbstrip with stacks of images appearing at regular intervals with your excluded shots (if any) appearing in-between them.

8. You’ll soon have a bunch of stacks viewable in your Lightroom preview area. From the Photo menu you can set Lightroom to display these stacks closed or expanded, which is useful to keep things tidy.

9. Make sure all images from the shoot are selected using Shift-Command or Cmd+A/Ctrl+A to select all. Then simply, as you would do for a single enfused blend, go to the file menu, and select Plug-in Extras and Blend exposures using LR/Enfuse. The familiar Enfuse interface appears, but this time, in Section 4 Output, we are going to check Batch Mode (Blend all Stacks containing at least one selected photo) (Figure 5.5).


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10. All your other settings can remain as is for your single blends. We’ll be producing an 8-bit file from each stack and, as always, setting the blends to be reimported into Lightroom. One thing to note: I don’t usually choose to check the Stack with Originals in the After Blending options below (see Figure 5.6). I find the TIFF file that is generated is straightforward to locate, and furthermore, if for whatever reason I decide to run the blend for that stack again, I don’t want to find the blended TIFF file then being re-enfused as part of the set.

11. Hit Enfuse Images at the bottom of the menu. You will see at the top left of the Lightroom workspace the progress monitor displaying the Enfuse process: exporting TIFF files, enfusing the stacks, and copying metadata to the files.

What you will find, though, depending on your computer’s processing power, is that it may be difficult to do other things in Lightroom itself while Enfuse is running. It’s better to let Enfuse do its thing and then work in another program. I often get my invoicing prepared for the job while this is taking place

Figure 5.5

Figure 5.6


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(sometimes I have a beer too!). Eventually you will hear the good news sound of a series of beeps which indicate the reimporting of the enfused TIFF files into Lightroom.

Here is how to set the sound Lightroom plays when it imports a completed image: Preferences>General>Completion Sounds>When finished importing play>Choose sound

You will see in Figure 5.6 above, that I have saved my batch 8-bit settings as a preset which appears at the top of the Enfuse interface. By clicking on the drop-down arrows on the right you can save and custom name your settings. I suggest creating individual presets for different situations such as: one for single image blends when you are not using stacks, one for when you want to run Enfuse additional times and one for batch Enfuses when you are using stacks.

Locating images after Enfuse processingLocating your Enfuse output files is simple. With Lightroom’s navigation tab set to show All Images, set your image preview area to show thumbnails (Grid View) but this time set the sort function to show Added Order (direction can be either A-Z or Z-A). Of course, all the recently added files (i.e., just the TIFF files reimported into Lightroom) will be displayed. You should see the .tif suffix in the file info on the border around the thumbnail. Hit J on your keyboard once or twice if you can’t see

Figure 5.7


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it (see Figure 5.8).

Later on I’ll be talking you through a great system for colour labeling your work that makes life much easier, but for now you might consider labeling these TIFF blends with a colour (select them all and hit one of the colour labels in the tool bar: I use Green for “Good to Go”). This will make them really easy to locate rather than having to look for the .tif extension.

Running Enfuse againHave a good look at the TIFFs. We know we’ll need to run a few post-processing adjustments, but in some cases you may want to run Enfuse again with more or less bracketed exposures. In this case, unreject the greyed-out, bracketed shots you want to use. Select the shot and the stack, and regroup into the stack via the Photo Menu or Ctl+G/Cmd+G, or just drag and drop it into the stack. Or you might want to remove one or more of the existing stacked exposures. If so, select the image and then go to Photo>Stacking>Remove From Stack. Then run Enfuse again with just the affected stack selected. You will need to add a new suffix to your processed TIFF file so that it is named

Figure 5.8


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differently from the recent one, otherwise it can cause problems for Enfuse. Nor will it be reimported into Lightroom if your import settings are set to avoid duplicates. Add something like “_ee” to the pre-existing filename.

Blurred enfused imagesIf any enfused images seem blurred, when all your bracket shots were clearly sharp, then they may be slightly misaligned as a result of slight movement of your tripod at the time of shooting. If so, reject the TIFF and then rerun Enfuse in batch mode for the affected stack(s) ensuring that Image Alignment is set this time.

Figure 5.9


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Summary:

Batch processing/stacking workflow• Import all job files to one folder, or move relevant files into

one master folder but within the Lightroom folder panel ONLY.

• Set image sort on the toolbar below the preview area to Capture Time and A-Z for ascending order.

• Set preview area to display thumbnail images by clicking on Grid View in the toolbar. Press Shift+TAB to hide all other panels and filmstrip. Enlarge thumbnails via toolbar to a decent size.

• If you shoot exposure sequences rather than auto brackets, then your darkest (highlight preferential) shot will be first in the series. Use the first shot which shows good detail in the highlights.

• Hold down Shift and select the best shadow exposure, the one that shows sufficient detail, which will be near or at the end. Be careful about enfusing really overexposed shots.

• Double click the image to inspect it in more detail.• Highlight the relevant shots for the Enfuse (grey outline

around thumbnails).• Hit Ctl+G/Cmd+G to create a stack or go to

Photo>Stacking>Group into Stack.• A stack is created which can be shown compressed or

expanded.• Optional: click unused images from the sequence outside

the stack and hit X to mark as rejected without actually deleting from your drive. The image thumbnails appear greyed-out.

• Repeat until all shots are stacked into their relevant groups, using the scroll wheel on your mouse or mouse pad to move through the thumbnails.

• With all shots in the folder selected (whether in stacks or


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not), run Enfuse with the following options checked: 1. Batch mode (Blend all Stacks containing at least one

selected photo). 2. Create blended images in the same folder in the

stack. 3. Reimport image into Lightroom. 4. Leave Stack With Originals unchecked.

• Set file naming if you wish to add a suffix like “_e”.• Optional: save these batch settings as a preset in Enfuse.

8-bit output is recommended.• Optional: set Lightroom to play a sound when images are

reimported.• To locate images after Enfuse runs, simply set sort to

Added Order. Enfused files will appear in a bunch at the start of your folder’s images. Press J on keyboard once or twice to scroll and display the .tif identifying suffix in the grey surround.

• Optional: with all freshly imported TIFF blends selected, assign a colour label to make them easier to identify. Revert sort order to Capture Time and the coloured labeled blends will appear next to their relevant stacks. Inspect results, and if necessary, rerun selected stacks with bracketed shots either added to the stack or excluded. If processed images appear soft, rerun just the affected stack with the Auto-Align function checked.

• For any reruns, add a short identifying filename suffix to the file in Output options to distinguish it from the first blend.

Chapter 6:Advanced Methods

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Increasing tonal range with pre-Enfuse highlight recovery

There will be times when a straightforward Enfuse won’t cut it. You will encounter situations when the tonal range of the

scene really pushes Enfuse software to the limit.

For example, consider a tungsten lamp placed very close to a wall so that the wall surface is really brightly lit. If you were to spot meter that hotspot of light, it would be way higher in luminance value than your very darkest shadows and also a lot brighter than a white wall that’s simply been illuminated with window light. While it can be useful to switch on the tungsten or artificial light in a room shot to provide extra illumination and possible shadow fill, those bright point sources of light can create pools of very high local contrast. It’s asking a lot of the Enfuse software to cope with dark paneling in a library shot and also capture detail in a wall that’s been illuminated in the same shot by an uplighter. Have a look at the bathroom shot in Figure 6.1. You can see the problem with hotspots of light creating burn-out on the tiled splash back. It’s a problem even in the darkest bracket:

When artificial lamps are located some distance from a wall the intensity of their light tends to fall off rapidly and become “filled” by the other light sources, both natural and artificial, which may

Figure 6.1

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be illuminating the room. But when they are placed near a light toned wall or close to a white bed pillow, the combined effect of their very intense light and the reflectivity of the adjacent surfaces, can create some unmanageable hotspots of light, or spikes in the histogram, which are going to need some careful exposure and processing to render correctly. Nothing lets a shot down more than blown-out lamps or hotspots. While it’s OK for some areas to be represented in your shot as featureless white, (specular reflections of a light source reflected in wooden surfaces, for example) sometimes we want to see detail where we expect it. If there is a wallpaper pattern which suddenly disappears due to the halo from a wall light, then our brains would normally want to see that continue.

So...how can we be sure to capture the widest possible tonal range in a scene without resorting to time consuming full HDR tonemapping, flash filling of shadow areas, or even manual blending of exposures? Well there’s a simple and fairly quick adjustment that you can perform to your RAW files prior to running Enfuse. It’s simply a case of reining in the highlight values on each shot by applying a strong negative highlight adjustment:

This is something that you can apply very quickly to all images in your sequence by using the synchronise tool in Lightroom.

Figure 6.2

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First, select the darkest shot in your sequence and, in the Lightroom Develop module, move the Highlight Recovery slider all the way to the left (See Figure 6.2). Then select all the other exposures and hit the Sync button at the bottom of the develop panel. Select Highlights from the Basic Tone options in the Synchronize Settings menu to sync this one adjustment to selected photos.

All your brackets will appear considerably darker than before:

This method will work, and it’s quick.

Figure 6.3

Figure 6.4

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Alternatively, a more precise method

1. Begin with the bracket that starts to show burn-out in your target area.

2. Move the Highlight slider to the left until you retrieve a bit of texture in that area.

3. Repeat for the progressively brighter exposures. There will come a point where there is no detail to be retrieved.

This is just a more precise way of working and you’ll get pretty quick at it. Whichever method you choose, this is really going to make life easier using your enfusing software. I have tested this method extensively.

In Figure 6.5 above, you can see the same file but with the highlights pulled in on the version at right. There is generally a full stop to be gained by this method without the requirement to shoot a really dark bracket. This means less brackets and quicker processing time. Figure 6.6 below shows the enfused results as applied to a straight set of brackets and a set to which a negative highlights adjustment has been applied to all brackets.

Figure 6.5

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Take a closer look at those hotspots below in Figure 6.7.

In the highlight contracted version on the right the tile texture is clear to see without the distracting burn-out. This effect doesn’t seem to be achievable by simply throwing darker and darker

Figure 6.6

Figure 6.7

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brackets at Enfuse. There seems to be something to be gained by giving it the minimum number of images to enfuse. By using the highlight recovery slider on a RAW file you can ensure that you use a minimum number of brackets to cover your required tonal range. In fact, after running the highlight recovery you may find that some brackets become unnecessarily dark and you can exclude them from the series to be enfused.

The enfused result may require a little bit of highlight recovery itself depending on how it comes out, but like all enfused composite shots, you are starting from a really tonally rich file which will be able to handle some pushing and pulling, whether adjustments are global or local. I guarantee the result will be better than running a straight fusion of the bracketed shots and in many cases those hard light sources will be nicely rendered so that you’re all set. This method can also be used to cope with bright exterior views.

I now run a negative highlights adjustment to all my files as standard practice and have incorporated this into my usual import preset. To edit a preset, choose a file which has your required preset adjustments and simply Ctrl-Click on the preset name and select from menu those elements you want to add from the menu.

Summary:

• Increasing tonal range with pre-Enfuse highlight recovery. This can be done by making a strong negative highlight adjustment.

• A more precise method. Move the highlight slider to the left until you retrieve

texture.

Chapter 7:Enfuse-Flash

Hybrid

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What does adding flash do for you?

There is another way to help Enfuse out with situations of really extreme contrast and that is to add a little fill flash

to some or all of the brackets. While this may seem to be contrary to using Enfuse, the addition of a single, manual fill flash bounced off the ceiling or wall is very effective in reducing contrast and improving colour accuracy.

Basic setup for shooting Enfuse-flash hybridThe flash setup for Enfuse-flash hybrid is very simple:

1. Mount a manual flash in the hot-shoe of your camera or on a light stand.

2. Set the flash to manual mode.3. Set the flash to about 1/2 power. The size, number and

brightness of the windows will determine what power is best. Start out with some trial and error and you will quickly get a feel for what works best.

4. Bounce the flash off the ceiling or a wall (white walls/ceilings work best).

5. Another alternative is to bounce the flash off the inside of a lighting umbrella. This approach may be called for when there are no white walls or ceiling to bounce off of.

Whether you use the flash on-camera, on a light stand or bounced off an umbrella probably won’t make a huge difference in most situations. Here are some of the considerations for which you choose:

• With on-camera flash you have fewer placement options for bouncing the flash off walls because the camera and flash are located together.

• With a light stand you have many more options for which wall you bounce off because the flash can be moved

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around independently.• With an umbrella you can deal with situations where there

are no white walls or ceiling to bounce light off of.

What you need to shoot Enfuse-flash hybridThe most important piece of gear is the manual flash. If you already have a flash, find out how to put it in manual mode. All flashes have a manual mode.

If you don’t already have a flash, one of the most popular manual flashes for real estate photography is the YN-560-III which sells on Amazon for $71 USD. It is readily available, inexpensive, reliable and works on Canon, Nikon, Pentax and Olympus and most other brands.

Here is a list of gear recommendations depending on which way you choose to use your manual flash:

On-camera flash1. Just the flash - Yongnuo YN-560-III

Flash on a light stand1. The flash - Yongnuo YN-560-III.2. Wireless remote trigger that mounts in your camera’s hot-

shoe - Yongnuo RF-602/603 (choose the right one for your DSLR)-About $15 USD.

3. Light stand - Any light stand around 2 meters in height - About $15 USD.

4. Flash mounting bracket to connect flash to light stand - Fancier studio flash bracket holder studio tilting bracket - About $5 USD.

Flash with an umbrella1. The flash - Yongnuo YN-560-III.

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2. Wireless remote trigger that mounts in your camera’s hot-shoe - Yongnuo RF-602/603 (choose the right one for your DSLR) -About $15 USD.

3. Light stand - Any light stand around 2 meters in height - About $15 USD.

4. The umbrella - CowboyStudio 43 inch Silver Photo Studio reflective umbrella - About $20 USD.

I suggest that you start out with just the on-camera flash to get the feel of the Enfuse-flash hybrid method. Chances are it will be all you ever need for 80% to 90% of your shoots. Angle the flash head about 45 degrees so the light bounces off the ceiling and into the room. Or angle the flash 45 degrees behind the flash if there is a white wall to bounce off of behind the camera.

An example of what Enfuse-flash hybrid can doFirst lets start by looking at a standard set of eight bracketed shots shot without flash.

Figure 7.1

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I am shooting from the unlit side of a large bed in a narrow room with a window beyond me. The dark walls behind me mean there is very little natural fill-in light. The bracketed sequence of seven shots shows what a wide spread the Enfuse software needs to cover in order to get detail showing up in the unlit side of the bed and the bedside table (the Enfused result is highlighted in yellow). Enfuse has done a very good job, with the help of some shadow lightening in post-processing. The result (Figure 7.2) is very natural looking, with some shadow still being cast in a way which makes sense given the light source beyond.

However, let’s take a look at another approach. For this set of brackets I am simply allowing a small flash head to be bounced into a white reflective umbrella on a stand behind me and slightly to camera left. Its output is not great; about 1/4 power. This is just enough to raise those shadows slightly. I allowed this flash to fire on manual power for each bracketed exposure in the sequence. Here are another seven brackets and the enfused result highlighted in yellow (Figure 7.3):

Figure 7.2

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Remember that the flash is putting out the same light in each shot. However, you can see in the earlier shots in the sequence that where the shutter speed is shorter, the flash appears much more dominant than the daylight, and the result looks a bit heavy-handed and unnatural. By the time the daylight or ambient light is being exposed more accurately, in about the fourth shot in the sequence, there is a nice ratio, or balance, of flash to daylight. This shot could actually be used by itself, although at the expense of some shadow clipping and highlight burn-out.

Moving on to the final shots, the lightening effect of the flash on the shadows becomes totally diluted by the long ambient exposure. It’s the darker shots where the highlight detail is being preserved that really benefit from the flash’s effect. By brightening those shadows slightly, it is helping to reduce the extreme tonal spread that Enfuse has to cope with. Figure 7.4 below, shows the flash/ambient enfused image.

Figure 7.3

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Compare the version with and without flash below in Figure 7.5. There is a noticeable crispness to the flash shot (you can see the reflection of the flash burst in the bedside wall lamp). The unlit side of the room has just a bit more lift and sparkle than the ambient-only version. While the ambient shot is acceptable, for commercial or selling purposes, the version with a little flash added may win out in terms of impact and clarity.

Figure 7.4

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Look at the difference in rendering of the sheets, pillows and cushions in this closer comparison below. The ambient-only is on the left and the flash/ambient is on the right.

My approach is to make use of the ambient light alone for most

Figure 7.5

without flash with flash

Figure 7.6

without flash with flash

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shots, but when I am really shooting into the light with very dark shadow areas, then this is the time to consider the flash option.

It doesn’t take a lot more time and you don’t have to carry out complex calculations. Just set your flash to manual power and bounce it off a white surface or an umbrella so that its effect is indirect. Check the effect on the image playback and then run your brackets with the shutter speed dial only in the usual way, allowing your flash to fire each time. Allow enough time between exposures for the flash to recycle. You obviously can’t use this method with the rapid shutter release of any auto exposure bracketing (AEB) functions your camera may have. Consider also shooting one additional exposure in the middle of the range without flash so that if your flash is reflected in a picture or window, you can use this shot to manually blend over the flash/ambient version via a layer mask in Photoshop.

Summary:

• What does adding flash do for you?• Basic setup for shooting Enfuse-flash hybrid.• What you need to shoot Enfuse-flash hybrid.• On-camera flash.• Flash on a light stand.• Flash with an umbrella.• Example of what Enfuse-hybrid can do.

Chapter 8:An Enfuse Shoot

FromStart to Finish

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In this chapter we are going to take a complete shoot and go through the process of import, sort, batch Enfuse and export,

all from within Lightroom. It will show you just how efficient the Lightroom/Enfuse system can be. I’ll also cover a suggested colour labeling system which I use to help me stay organised, but this is of course optional.

ImportThe first way to speed things up is to ensure that when you import your shoot images into Lightroom (preferably directly from a card reader so that you are only performing the operation once) you run a develop preset at the same time, by selecting it from the Apply During Import tab in the Import control panel.

This is our standard import preset (IMPORT.lrtemplate) which will apply all the standard initial adjustments to your RAW files, saving you a lot of time. Noise reduction, sharpening and lens profile corrections, will all be batch applied to your files so that as soon as they appear in the Lightroom preview area you will be ready to start the next step.

As mentioned earlier, you may wish to modify the import

Figure 8.1


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preset to include a negative highlights adjustment in order to reduce the number of images you will need in each Enfuse. You will need to import your newly shot files to a folder and I recommend creating a new or sub-folder with the client name first, perhaps abbreviated, and the property name to make the folder easier to locate later.

Colour code the unprocessed imagesWhen the import is complete your images will appear in Lightroom and you can set the preview area to Grid View to see all the thumbnails. I give all these files a blue label to denote that they require processing. I select all the thumbnails using Ctl+A/Cmd+A and click on the blue label from the colour labels which I have set to appear in my toolbar. On the toolbar, I also check that the sort order is set to Capture Time so that all the bracketed files appear in the order in which they were shot. This really helps when it comes to stacking later but is good practice anyway.

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You’ll see that Lightroom lists all these files in the Navigator pane as Previous Import:

I find it is better to choose All Photographs just above it, or better still, navigate in the folders tab below to your actual job folder. Why? Because when you run Enfuse and the enfused TIFF files are reimported into Lightroom, they will be stored next to the source files. Lightroom will only show the most recently imported source files, not these newly created enfused images, if the Previous Import option is checked. Many people think in this case that the TIFF files have not been reimported. It’s easier to select your job folder, which is why it is worth importing images job by job and creating a new folder for each job.

Figure 8.3

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Set white balanceThe only other adjustment you are going to need to make to your files before enfusing is White Balance. And this is something that cannot really be automated. You could, if you wished, set Lightroom to apply Auto White Balance on import as part of the import development preset. I prefer to leave it set to As Shot.

There is a risk though with Auto White Balance that shots taken in the same room will come out a little differently. It’s better practice to check the first image in a room shoot, make an informed decision about the white balance, and then paste this adjustment to all the other files depicting that room or area. Choose a shot from the middle of the exposure sequence rather than the dark images at the start of the sequence if you have been using my method (See Figure 8.6). If you use auto bracketing then the chances are that the first image in your sequence will be a good one to white balance from.

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Move into the Develop module for critical work if you wish, but there is also a quick develop facility accessible from within the Library module.

This is very useful if you wish to stack images after white balancing, and since you cannot stack within the Develop module itself, you don’t have to change modules. I advise sorting all your white balancing first and then stacking.

White balance is a subject in itself that would require many chapters. So if you don’t feel confident setting it, then start with Auto White Balance in the Basic Adjustments tab and see how your image looks. It often does quite a good job. You may then wish to fine tune it by moving the temp slider first (in the Quick Develop tab it’s controlled by arrows, for smaller or larger increments). Temperature adjustments control the cool blue or warmer yellow cast to an image. Then work with the Tint slider, or arrows, to adjust the green or magenta bias of the image. For

Figure 8.6

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the image shown here I needed a lot of plus magenta to combat the strong green cast. These settings will more than likely work for shots taken from other angles in the same room and many times it will work for other rooms on the same side and floor of a property.

Having established a look you are satisfied with, you’ll be pleased to know that you don’t have to manually apply the same adjustment to all the other files! The thumbnail of the file you have adjusted is highlighted in light grey in the thumbnail strip (See Figure 8.8). This is known as the “most selected file”. You need to select all the other files to which you want to apply these white balance adjustments by holding down the Shift key and selecting the final file to adjust, or use the Ctrl+Alt/Cmd+Option key and click on the other files. Remember to include the first files in the sequence which lie before your most selected file or they won’t be white balanced.

Simply hit Sync in the Develop module (see Figure 8.9 below) or if you have remained in the Library module and are doing this with the quick develop tools, click Sync Settings rather than Sync (see Figure 8.10 below).

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Then in the Synchronise settings which will appear, click Check None if necessary to clear it and then check the White Balance check-box only (see Figure 8.11). Hit Sync and all your selected files will be updated with the new white balance. Pretty smart!

If you choose Auto White Balance and are happy with the result, don’t be tempted to sync this with other files. It will apply auto adjustments to each and every file, not the specific settings it has established for your working file, and chances are you will get different settings applied in each case. Simply adjust one of the White Balance sliders very slightly so that your adjustments are recognised as a custom adjustment rather than auto and then sync those settings to all files in the set.

Move on to the next shot or area which will require a different white balance and repeat the process. Don’t waste too much time on getting white balance perfect on your source files. You can always perform a final white balance on the enfused TIFF if necessary.

Figure 8.9

Figure 8.10

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StackingNow we are ready to stack our images. Return to the Library module as you cannot stack images in the Develop module. If you have created a Lightroom collection for your images you will be able to create stacks within the collection, but Enfuse cannot recognise them when it comes to batch processing. You will need to be in the actual job folder or with All Photographs selected in the Navigator pane for the following.

This is the process I use for stacking: 1. Start at the beginning of the image set and check the very

dark highlight file. 2. If I feel the file is too dark, as a result of the negative

highlights adjustment for example, I flag it as a reject by pressing the X key. The thumbnail then becomes greyed- out. You may want to examine the very overexposed files in the sequence at 1:1 ratio to check for flare and shadow detail.

3. Then select the first usable file in the sequence (see Figure 8.12). It’s easy to spot as it will follow the greyed-out superfluous ones.

4. Then hold down Shift and click the final usable file in the sequence and hit Ctl+G/Cmd+G to group these into a stack.

This process actually becomes very quick, assuming you have

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done all your white balancing prior to it. But if you are going into the Develop module for each shot to carry out a white balance, then back into the library to stack a group of images and repeating, then it is going to take more time.

After you do the above process for each set of images, you will have a series of stacks set to collapse, each one showing the number of exposures contained within them, with some greyed-out rejected files in-between them. See Figure 8.13. Don’t worry about deleting the rejected files in-between them.

Select all the files and stacks, including the rejected files (Enfuse will simply ignore them when set to batch process stacks). If you have the actual job folder selected in the Navigation Folders pane this is a breeze as you can just hit Ctl+A/Cmd+A knowing that only your recent job files are going to be selected. If you have All Images set in the Navigation pane, then you will need to select the first shot required, hold down Shift and select the last shot, ensuring of course that your sort order is set to Capture Time.

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Run LR/Enfuse on stacked imagesNow we run the Enfuse plug-in, in batch mode, without any alignment set and ideally saved as a preset (Figure 8.14) Images are going to be reimported into Lightroom (see setting suggestions in Chapter 4).

Now hit Enfuse Images and take a break while LR/Enfuse processes! Don’t try to work on other things in Lightroom while Enfuse works on the files as the Enfuse process is pretty memory intensive. The progress monitor will show you how things are coming along. A thirty shot job is going to take at least an hour to process. This is when I tend to invoice the client and answer emails. Listen for the great sound of the files being reimported into Lightroom!

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Locating enfused filesWhen the blends have been reimported into Lightroom they will appear next to their respective stacks if your sort order is set to Capture Time. The date and time metadata from the prime source file has been retained in the TIFF so they will be spread throughout your shoot series, making them difficult to locate (see Figure 8.15). You have to look for the .tif suffix rather than the RAW file suffix that appears after the filename overlaid on the thumbnail (click-J on you keyboard if the file info is not showing).

To make the enfused images easier to find, simply set your preview area sort order to Added Order and from A-Z . All the TIFF files will appear conveniently in sequence (Figure 8.16) (I have hit J on the keyboard again to reduce the file information). You could also choose to filter your folder by file type and set it

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to show TIFF files only, but this is a longer method. You’ll enjoy seeing how much better they all look than their single shot counterparts!

I then select all of them with the Shift key and this time click the red square to make them show up much better if the Preview pane is then set back to Capture Time sort and the TIFFs appear within the RAW images and stacks again. The red label denotes that they are enfused TIFFs ready to be post-processed. There’s no need to start creating separate collections for your enfused images if you use this simple labeling technique.

Figure 8.16

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Post-Enfuse general adjustmentsAs we know, enfused images straight out of LR/Enfuse can be a little soft in contrast so we’ll select all the red labelled TIFFs (easy with the sort order set back to Added Order) and go into the Develop module to make a fast batch adjustment. Simply hold down Ctrl/Cmd and click on the Sync button at the bottom of the Develop pane to change it to read Auto Sync.

Go to your presets folder and click on the post-Enfuse preset and these contrast increasing settings will be applied to all files. Remember to set the Auto Sync button back to Sync when you’re done! If you don’t yet have a preset in place, simply go to the Basic Development tab and apply as a suggestion some plus Contrast and plus Clarity and perhaps a little Shadow lightening as a starting point.

As you do this you will only be able to gauge the effect on the first image in the sequence, so bear in mind that these

Figure 8.18

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adjustments need to be very general for now. For the most part though, they will improve your images. Post-Enfuse specific adjustments Make sure Auto Sync is off, then start with the first shot and make fine tuning adjustments to each image with the develop controls. Here’s your opportunity to adjust the white balance you set earlier. You can apply a crop or perspective control adjustment to each enfused image that needs it rather than to all the source files. Aim to spend no more than 2 minutes maximum per image. Time is money and the Enfuse process with a little post-process contrast batch-applied should bring your images very close to being deliverable for real estate purposes.

As I complete each image, I hit 8 on my keyboard which assigns a green label to the thumbnail. This is quicker than going back into the Library module and clicking the green square. If I have to take a break from doing specific adjustments, I can easily tell where I’m at in the sequence. All the red files have yet to be processed (Figure 8.20).

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There is a lot you can do with Lightroom’s controls to make images look good prior to supply, but there will be times when you might want to export a file into Photoshop to perform complex retouching, sky burning or other adjustments. In this case I externally edit the file in Photoshop (from the Photo menu: Edit In) and then mark the reimported file with the green label to prevent confusion.

Back up and deliver the shootNow it’s time to get the processed files off to our client and backed up to the web. I have plug-ins to enable me to create client galleries on both Smugmug and Photoshelter, which provide me with a convenient double off-site back-up and nice method of client delivery at the same time. But if you don’t have web back-up sites to upload to, you could simply export your green labeled files out of Lightroom to burn a disk for your client.

It’s just a case of choosing all the green labeled files to deliver or back up. This can be made easier in the Library module with the actual job folder checked, by simply clicking on the coloured label filter panel so that only the green labeled files appear in the Preview pane.

You can, if you wish, create a collection of these optimized files for later reference or simply hit Export to save a high res set for delivery to your client (Figure 8.22). Here I am burning a disk of full size JPEG images with the useful Lightroom Export preset:

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Once I have delivered or uploaded my files to a client gallery, all those green labels get changed to purple so that I know that they are safely backed up. Then I can look at my files and see which, if any, are yet to be processed (red labels), or which have yet to be uploaded to an off-site cloud back-up (green labels).

In order to keep my hard disk manageable I can then come back, set the colour label filter to blue only and delete all the rejected images plus the original bracketed files used for the enfusing. If you consider that you might be shooting upwards of five RAW files for each final image you produce, you can see that shooting for Enfuse can quickly clog up your hard drive!

Figure 8.22

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Using the colour labeling system will enable you to stay on top of things and prevent your Lightroom catalogue and preview files folder from becoming too huge.

Summary:

• Importing your files.• Colour coding the unprocessed images.• Setting white balance.• Stacking in Lightroom.• Running LR/Enfuse on stacked images.• Locating enfused files.• Post-Enfuse general adjustments.• Post-Enfuse specific adjustments. • Backing up and delivering the shoot.

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Lightroom presets included with this e-bookThere are two Lightroom presets included with this e-book. Either or both of these presets can be downloaded from the following page: http://photographyforrealestate.net/lrpresets/

1. EnfuseIMPORT.lrtemplate - This Lightroom preset does the following:

• Sets White Balance to As Shot.• Sets Sharpening amount to 75.• Sets Noise reduction to 25.• Enables lens profile corrections which will cause Lightroom

to recognize what lens was used and load the lens correction profile for that lens.

• Uses the selected lens profile to remove chromatic aberration.

2. EnfusePP.lrtemplate - This preset does the following:

• Exposure: +25• Contrast: +25• Shadows: +25• Clarity: +30

Once you have downloaded these presets, to use them they each must be placed in the correct Lightroom folder. To find the correct folder on your machine, click on Lightroom>Presets>Show Lightroom Presets Folder...and then put EnfuseIMPORT.lrtemplate in the Import Presets>User Presets folder and EnfusePP.lrtemplate in the Develop Presets>User Presets folder.

http://photographyforrealestate.net/lrpresets/

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Publications by PFRE Media• TheEssentialGuidetoLightingInteriors, by Scott Hargis.This classic

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• PhotographyForRealEstate, by Larry Lohrman. A guide to photographic aspects of getting started in the business of real estate photography.

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