HDR or RAW?

 The two images you see here are very similar. If you look very carefully the photo below has more detail in the front doors than the one to the left. If I keep looking at larger versions of the two I would probably find other places where a difference was visible. Still if I decided to print one very few people would be likely to notice much difference. The image below is HDR created from 5 separate exposures while the image to the left is is the middle exposure of the 5 adjusted in Lightroom.

Below is the Basic Panel in the Lightroom Develop Module. All of the horizontal sliders start in the middle with the exception of the first two which are automatically set to the white balance as the shot comes from the camera. So if you have set the white balance or if the camera has done it for you in the automatic mode that is how it is set. You may change it if you like but in this case I left it as it was. I did think the image was a little too bright so I adjusted the exposure by minus about 1/3 of a stop, which is the -0.36 you see.

The contrast slider was not moved at all and remains at zero. The next four sliders were where most of the work took place. Here I usually start from the bottom up with the Blacks slider. Hold the Alt key down and when you press the left mouse button on the slider the image turns solid white. Slide the Blacks slider to the left until tiny bits of black or color start to appear and then stop.

Use the same procedure for the White slider. When you hold the Alt key and press the left mouse button on the slider the image turns solid black. This time you will slide the slider to the right until tiny bits of white or color appear and then stop this control. You have now expanded the tones of the image so that you have pixels that are as black as possible and some that are pure white.

The next control is Shadows and for this no Alt key is used. As you slide the control to the right darker areas of the image lighten and as you can see I slid it as far as it would go for this shot.

The Highlight slider when slid to the left darkens only the brightest areas and here I again went all the way, this time to the left.

As I was making these edits I was comparing them to the HDR image I had created first and was attempting to make it as close as possible to that image. You would not be able to do this with all HDR images. The light to dark contrast in this image was not extreme to start with and the HDR image was adjusted to look realistic. HDR software can bend the tones of an image so that normal editing could not possibly duplicated. Most HDR users prefer to keep the images looking realistic. I sometimes go for an extreme look.

The HDR image was created from five images processed in Photomatix and the editing of the single image was done in Lightroom 5. Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and many others could have been used. In these editors the Levels control takes care of the Whites/Blacks settings and the Image>Adjustments>Shadows/Highlights does what the separate Shadows and Highlights control does here.

One thing to note is that the original image was RAW. RAW images contain much more tonal information than JPEG images and give you more range in the slider adjustment in both Lightroom and other editors.

As usual please comment, and questions are welcome.