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

Blake Rudis
f.64 Academy and f.64 Elite are the brainchildren of Blake Rudis. While he is a landscape photographer, he is most passionate about post-processing images in Photoshop and mentoring others.

For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
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