conkerwood

I first processed this as an HDR which I posted in the HDR section some time back but I was never quite satisfied with it. This is a reprocess but this time I have blended the three images rather than use HDR and it feels much more like what I was after when I took the pic.

FYC

Peter

(Download)

Bob Yankle Loc: Burlington, NC

Excellent use of foreground material to give the image depth. It's also a pretty impressive photo of a mountain range.

Billyspad Loc: The Philippines

Beautifully blended my man. Much prefer the blended look to HDR these days.

Joanna27 Loc: Lakewood Ca

I agree, this looks more natural than HDR. What is blended and how do you do it?

conkerwood

Blending is merging together aspects of two or more differently exposed pics of the same subject.

There are, for me two related situations when I use blending. 1) If there is a wide dynamic range in the scene I am trying to photograph such that if I used a single pic the highlights would blow out or the blacks would be crushed, or both. 2) Since I shoot in RAW it is often possible to pull details out of the shadows but unfortunately the details are sometimes quite noisy. Blending is a way of dealing with both these issues.
Firstly you need a bracket of photos. For me thats not a problem as every shot I take is a bracket of three set to -2 ev, 0 and +2ev just in case I need them. I open all three in photoshop and initially process them in the Photoshop RAW convertor as follows:
The -2ev shot (underexposed) I process so that the highlights look good, ie no blow out and plenty of details..
The '0' shot (correctly exposed) I process for the mid-tones and adjust the highlights/shadows as close to how I want them as I can.
The +2ev shot (over exposed) I process so that the shadows look good ie there are clear details showing.
I take the three shots into photoshop, then stack and align them. After that I arrange them in the stack as follows:
The underexposed layer is on top with a layer mask set to 'hide all'
The correctly exposed layer is in the middle with a layer mask set to 'show all.'
The overexposed layer is on the bottom.

Since the top layer is hidden the middle, correctly exposed layer, is visible. To adjust the highlights on the correctly exposed layer I paint with a white brush on the 'hide all' mask of the under exposed shot to reveal/blend the highlights from the underexposed shot. To blend the details from the shadows contained on the overexposed shot I paint the 'show all' mask of the middle layer with a black brush.

And that's it really. Keep going until you are satisfied with the results and then finish off by going through your normal processing workflow.

That's my way of doing it, but others will have different workflows. I hope this helps.

Peter

ediesaul

[quote=conkerwood]

Beautiful photo! If the woman had brown hair, my eyes would peruse the mountain range. Her stunning red hair makes her the subject of the photo, an interesting switch for a viewer who would expect to be looking at the mountains. Love it!

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

I was kind of thinking the woman was the subject, too, but hadn't picked up that my eye was drawn to her red hair 'til Edie mentioned!

A beautifully crafted image, conkerwood.

boberic Loc: Quiet Corner, Connecticut. Ex long Islander

That's the reason I might want to see a tighter crop (crop out the "bald sky" on the right) so as to focus more on the main subject.

conkerwood

[quote=ediesaul]

Yeah the woman with the red hair was certainly intended to be the subject which you would expect since it is my lovely wife. We were both absolutely blown away by this mountain view so I was trying to focus on her but to also capture how we felt about this most awesome place.

Peter

Joanna27 Loc: Lakewood Ca

Thank you for this detailed answer. I want to learn to do this. I have several images that would benifit from this technique. Every time I've done a standard HDR image it looks funny and doesn't bring the details out the I want it to. Blending appears to allow me to chose how to put the images together. I currently use Photoshop Elements, I don't know if allows me to stack photos but I'm going to find out. I may need to upgrade to regular Photoshop.
Thanks again.

ebrunner Loc: New Jersey Shore

If you did not have the person at the scope, this image would not work for me because I think that railing would bother me. Putting a person in the photo gives the railing a purpose and it works better for me.

SoHillGuy Loc: Washington

Comparing this to your previous post of the scene shows a very significant improvement. The crop has also improved the composition.