So you worked endless hours on a Image. Now you want to do the same thing to another image or you want to go back and fine tunes what you did but you can’t remember what it is you did in the first place. Today we’ll talk about how you can store some of that information in 4 different popular programs: Photomatix Pro, Photoshop, Lightroom and Nik HDR EFEX Pro.
Photomatix Pro
Now of course most of you know you can save a preset of your favorite Tone Mapping setting. Well if you don’t know, You can. Simply while in Tone Mapping Module, go down to presets and drop down to Save Preset and then Name it what you would like “My Killer Tone Mapping” etc.
But did you know you can save the settings you used on EVERY image you tone map? Yes, Yes you can. After you tone map an image and go to save it. In the save dialog box there is a check box for “Save Tone-Mapping Settings” .
This will save the one mapping settings you used for that particular image as a .XMP sidecar file in the same folder that you save the HDR image in. When you want to use those same settings again. Simply open your 32 bit HDR Radiance image, or recombine the images you want for the image and then in the preset area of the tone mapping module, Drop down the list to Load Settings and open the XMP file that you want to use.
Photoshop
This is a little known feature of Photoshop that I learned from Eddie Tapp. Did you know you can save to a text file or right into the Metadata of your image (or both) every single click you did on any image you worked on in Photoshop? Well you can. Simply go to your Preferences ( Edit > Preferences or Ctrl/Cmd +K) and on the general Tab at the bottom, Check the box for “History Log”
Then in Adobe Bridge, You can view every thing you did to an image or if you use the text version, check the text log for the file name you want to see. Now you can’t go back and change the history but at least you will know that you used a Levels adjustment with these settings and you can duplicate that.
Lightroom
This of course is fairly well know but we will review it anyway. In the develop module of Lightroom, with the left panel flyout open, You can see the History of any image and the nice part is you can return to any state of that history. If you want to save any particular state of editing to quickly switch between. Simply go up to “Snapshot” and add a snapshot of that state or any other state of the image.
Nik HDR EFEX Pro
In Nik HDR Efex Pro. If you want to save a preset of what you may have done for an image. In the left Preset panel; Click Custom and the + symbol and add a preset with the name you want. It will then show it amongst your custom presets. If you want to load a preset that someone else has made, simply go to the bottom of that panel and click the arrow for Load Preset and navigate to where you have that preset stored and apply.
Hope that helps
PT
