Opening 16/bit TIF in LR.

[Martin van Gog]

Hi,
Recently I pick up HDR-photography. Making the images different not from the normal way. Just take a bracket series of images. The difference lies in post-process. There are several specific, software applications available.
They all have in common is that they work in 32-bit mode. And so their output is. There are specific file formats, such as * .exr. But there is often a 32-bit TIFF option too. There is no other way, besides JPEG (But I do not consider that as an option.). There is a plug-in available in Photoshop to open those 32-bit files.

If I save a file in Photoshop in 16-bit TIFF or PSD, I can not import such a file in LR. What am I doing wrong?
Please provide from an answer. THX.
Martin, the Netherlands.

 

[Gnits]

I just did a test import of a 16 bit psd file to Lr with no issues.

I do not see why you should have a problem, other than normal hygiene import considerations, such as duplicate files, moving images to disks that are full or do not have write permissions etc. Maybe make sure the file is not open in Ps as you import in case the file might be locked.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I'm a bit confused. First you talk about 32 bit files, and then suddenly the problem is importing a 16 bit file?

 

[Gnits]

I am able to import 32 bit tiff but not 32 bit Psd. I found this on the Adobe documentation....

 

[Ian.B]

no answers; but that would have to be a massive file Martin
I still feel many get overly worried about using jpg after the heavy editing has been done. Many labs will make files into jpg before printing --- and you might be surprised how small they make them

 

[Johan Elzenga]

My question is what exactly do you do in that software, and what do you want to do in Lightroom? A 32 bits file only makes sense for the not yet tone mapped HDR, so importing that into Lightroom would only make sense if you plan to do the tone mapping in Lightroom. If that is your aim, then why use third party HDR software in the first place? Your personal info says you use Lightroom CC2015.0 /6.0 (why haven't you updated to the latest version?), so you can use Lightroom's built-in HDR creation option.

If you do the tone mapping in the HDR software however, then there is little reason to keep the result in 32 bits. A tone mapped image may just as well be 16 bits, or even 8 bits. After all, the heavy lifting of tones (and the reason you need 32 bits) is done.

 

[Tony Jay]

My suggestion is to use 3rd party software to do the merge and then import a 32-bit TIFF into Lightroom and tone-map there - if you are insisting on using 3rd party software in the first place, of course.

The other alternative is just to use Lightroom's own merge to HDR option.

The bottom line is that tone-mapping HDR images in Lightroom is ridiculously easy (especially compared to nightmare of trying to do it in Photoshop, for example).

Tony Jay

 

[Hoggy]

I third the option to do the HDR merging in LR (unless you want the artsy look). I've just recently been re-visiting & comparing the merging between LR and PS (merge to HDR Pro), and even if the brackets are only 1 stop apart, the LR version (16-bit floating point, scene-referred) is far, FAR more elegant. The LR ones show fully gradual transitioning - no bands/posterization whatsoever. Whereas the PS ones I definitely notice where it masks areas - they show heavy banding/posterization where the masks start & stop.

And if you do end up using LR, then you may want to upgrade to the latest version if you're info is correct. The merging quality was significantly enhanced in, IIRC, version 2015/6.2. So much so, that I went back and re-merged all the ones that were done in prior versions.