IMPROVE YOUR DRONE PHOTOGRAPHY

1. Merge Your Shots

I recommend taking Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB) photos, which takes five photos instead of just one. Two will be underexposed to include more details in the highlights (the sky for example) and two will be overexposed to include more details in the shadows. Now Lightroom has this handy option to merge those five photos together into one HDR photo. It samples the best areas from all five photos, so you’ll end up with a photo that has all the detail you want in the highlights and also in the shadows. That’s what they call having a “maximal dynamic range.”

Now how do we do this? Very simple, you select all five RAW photos with ctrl +, clicking them individually or selecting the first one and then holding ctrl + and tapping the right arrow key. This will include the photo on the right into the selection. Do this until all the desired photos are selected (the background will light up grey). Then you right-click anywhere in the selection and chose “Photo merge” – “HDR….” A pop-up will open and Lightroom will create a preview.

In almost all cases you’ll want to have the Autoalign and Auto-settings checked. Below those are some buttons to play with the ghosting. Imagine a photo where a person or object (like a boat or car) was moving while you took that shot. As those five photos were taken at like a millisecond apart, if you line them up, the moving object will not be in the exact same spot. Depending on its speed, it will create a little or a lot of ghosting in