I was playing around with the settings in Camera Raw when I noticed I could make Pseudo HDR’s with the movement of a couple of sliders; Clarity, Fill Light, and Contrast predominantly. These Camera Raw adjustments are perfect for getting a HDR appearance with portrait photography, but they need a little punch for the details, so I started playing with Topaz Adjust 4. I found that adding a straight Topaz Filter to the image made it pretty noisy and unrealistic; I didn’t want to see my son that way. Then, I accidentally hit ctrl+f on the High Pass layer, this hot key runs the last filter applied to the selected layer which just so happened to be the Topaz Adjust Dramatic setting. What a surprise, a stunningly powerful, extremely detailed High Pass Sharpen. This Pseudo technique works wonders on portraits but you are better off using a single Raw in Photomatix or your favorite HDR software for landscape shots. Give it a chance with a portrait shot, you won’t be disappointed.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btLgJesD32Q
