07 Chromatic aberration
The third thing you may need to fix is chromatic aberration. All lenses suffer from this to some degree, and the HDR process does tend to exaggerate colour fringing, so now’s the time to nip it in the bud.
So click the Chromatic Aberration box over on the right (circled) and then use the loupe to look at detail near the edge of the screen, which is where chromatic aberration will be at its worst. And choose an area where you have strong outlines against a contrasting background.
I’ve used the Red-Cyan slider here (also circled) to get rid of some colour fringing around the leaves. You might not be able to get rid of it all, but every little helps. Some cameras, such as Nikon and Pentax D-SLRs, off in-camera lens corrections which can fix chromatic aberration automatically. You will need to shoot JPEGs, though, not RAW files – RAW files will be uncorrected because the camera’s not had the chance to process them.
08 The merged image
When you’ve chosen all your merge options, click the Create HDR button – you can now choose your HDR preset and any manual adjustments in the main HDR Efex Pro 2 window.
09 My final picture
This was a tricky subject for HDR because the exposure sequence was shot handheld, the leaves were moving between shots and the EOS 400D and 18-55mm kit lens I used are a little prone to colour fringing. This means it was a tricky little text for the HDR Efex Pro merge options, and I think it’s done a pretty good job under the circumstances.
