Some of you have expressed interest as to when (or even if) my final course, Photoshop CS6 One-on-One: Mastery, will go live at my beloved video publisher lynda.com.

First, let me assure you that it will and I am almost done recording the damn thing.

Second, I thought, gosh, I might as well give you a sneak peek into what’s in store. There’s plenty of exciting stuff—Lighting Effects, Adaptive Wide Angle, animation, and video editing—not to mention a new take on high dynamic range, better known as HDR.

Most of the HDR tips and tricks I’ve seen present the feature as something like digital magic. (I myself have been guilty of this crime.) But this time I’ll be rolling up my sleeves and showing you how this weird and semi-fantastical feature actually works. For example, did you know that, under the right circumstances, you can indeed create an HDR portrait shot?

Using myself as the proverbial guinea pig, I was able to take the following pedestrian portrait shot (captured ever-so-deftly by my buddy Lucas Deming; the pedestrian aspect is altogether my fault):

And transform it into this lustrously volumetric image using Photoshop CS6’s enhanced HDR Pro module, entirely without the assistance of Liquify, the Healing Brush, or any selective retouching:

As many of you know, HDR Pro requires multiple shots captured at different exposures. (This began as a three-shot bracketed series, btw.) So how do you manage to capture a living, breathing, flinching human being under such conditions? Answer: Very carefully.

Oh, and just in case you think this stuff happens easily, it don’t. The art of HDR portraiture requires that you pass thru the following ultra-realistic step, which (as you might imagine) is none too pleasant. But as a friend of mine at Adobe recently told me, nothing easy is worth the effort.

I’ll explain more soon. Oh, and indicative of nothing, happy Valentine’s Day.