How to make HDR images from jpegs on CS3?

Question: How to make HDR images from jpegs on CS3!?

I tried making some HDR images using photomatix pro 3, but i always end up with grain in the dark areas!. Can anyone link me to a tutorial for how to make hdr on CS3 or explain how to avoid the grain when making them using jpegs!?
Thanks :)Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

Grain is because your using Jpegs!. It's not grain it's Jpeg 'artifacts' which are exaggerated by the Photomatix (and any other HDR including Photoshop's 'Merge to HDR') process!.

The way round this is obviously shoot Raw and open as a 16bit file if your camera allows it, take 3 separate bracketed images, in other words give the program as much valid data as possible for when it creates the 32bit HDR file, lot's more processing, but quality is what your after with HDR!. When your camera does the Jpeg processing from Raw it 'dumps' half the information, then goes on to compress the file which adds the 'artifacts' and its non recoverable!.

Go into Photoshop and press Ctrl + K (or File>Preferences) and in the File Handling dialogue box check the boxes 'Prefer Camera Raw for Jpeg Files' and 'Prefer Camera Raw for Supported Raw Files' (you will have to close down and restart Photoshop), after this if you right click on a Jpeg or Tiff file in Bridge there is an option in the drop down menu to open in the Raw Converter!.

This is lossless, but it is still only an 8bit file, so can be 'pulled apart' by the scale of manipulation you can do there!.

If your compact camera happens to be a Canon there is a site here

http://www!.digital-shot!.com/50226711/hac!.!.!.

That has hacked the firmware enabling it to save the Raw file (and a whole lot more), this doesn't touch the cameras firmware in any way and you can easily revert it back to original, The site has all the details!.

ChrisWww@QuestionHome@Com