Tutorial: How to Create Dynamic Timelapses With DSLRs

Make sure that all of your photos are selected and then right-click on the photo stack. Select the Open Images Inside of Camera Raw option. Camera Raw is a program that ships with Adobe Photoshop and allows you to easily edit exposure, tonality, color, and a number of other things with the use of sliders (Figure 3, below). You have the option to adjust white balance, exposure, contrast, shadows, whites, blacks, vibrants, and more.

Figure 3. Adjustments available in Adobe Camera Raw. Click the image to see it at full size.

You also have advanced options available by selecting the other icons in this panel, such as sharpening, noise reduction, converting the images to grayscale, etc. When you have the look you want, make sure you have all of your photos selected and then right-click. Choose the Sync Settings option, to apply the exposure and other settings you've made to all of your images in the photo stack (Figure 4, below).

Figure 4. Sync Settings to apply the settings you’ve chosen for the image in the stack.

Next, navigate down to the information under the preview image and select this area. This will open the Workflow options dialog box (Figure 5, below). Here you can make adjustments to the output of your photos. For this project, I’m OK with all of the default options so I'll move forward with saving the images. On the bottom, click the Save Images button.

Figure 5. The Workflow Options dialog. 

In the dialog that opens (Figure 6, below), you’ll choose the destination of your images and rename the photos if you like. I'm also going to choose a more manageable output for Photoshop. In this case, I'll go with a TIFF format.

Figure 6. The Save Options dialog box. Click the image to see it at full size.