I don’t normally write reviews on equipment or techniques. There are many people who do it much better than I do. I did write a series of technical How To articles for eHow a few years back but when they stopped paying me, I stopped writing them. Since then I have been more concerned with creativity than technology.

I have been disappointed on how difficult it has been to create HDR images. I don’t travel that much with a tripod which has been a prerequisite to do these sorts of images. I have tried HDR plug ins but have been disappointed with the results. GIMP made a pretty good plug in but the images were usually noisy or ghosted beyond repair. However, today I tried the new Merge Photo tool on the new Lightroom.

I took this picture, edited and posted it in less that 30 minutes without a tripod! I used auto bracketing on the Nikon 5200 with three images one f-stop apart. Easy to use with a great how to video on YouTube that takes four minutes to watch. Once again Adobe products continue to amaze. Wait why do I need Photoshop again? Oh yah its bundled with Lightroom.

To see other images and buy apparel or prints, please visit my commercial gallery.

Lightroom HDR