Blending 2 exposures

[gail bisson]

Can someone explain to me what this means? There have been a couple of images in wildlife and landscapes that alluded to using 2 different exposures from the same RAW image and blending them.
How do you do this? I need basic info like what tools to use and what buttons to push!
Gail

[John Chardine]

Hi Gail- Essentially you can create an HDR effect with one raw image. Bring the raw image into Adobe Camera Raw (for example), and set the exposure slider so that there's lots of detail in the shadow areas- don't worry about the highlights. Save the file. Then bring the same file in and adjust the exposure slider for a darker effect where there's lots of detail in the highlights- don't worry about the shadow areas. Save the file. You can then open both images as layers and mask out or erase areas in one layer to reveal areas in the layer below. If the darker layer is on top you may want to erase the shadow areas in that layer and retain the highlights, which will reveal the shadow areas in the lighter layer below. There are probably much more cleaver ways to do this using blending modes rather than erasing parts of one of the layers.

An easier way to do this is just to open one raw image in Photomatix Pro and let it process different exposures of the same image to provide a high dynamic range effect. I hope this makes some sense.

[dankearl]

Gail, lots of tutorials available, just google it.
Basically shooting the sky, for instance,exposing it properly, shooting land exposing it properly,
masking each in a saved file and putting them together.
Photoshop stuff I don't use but probably should for landscape although I think there is skill in using filters to achieve the
same thing.
Used extensively for landscapes, frowned upon for birds and wildlife as being too manipulative.

[Don Lacy]

Gail, Here is an image thats a blend of two different images one exposed for the sky and one exposed for the dock I only had a 2 stop grad filter with me and there was no way I could hold detail in both the sky and pier so I started bracketing my exposures to give me options when I processed the images. The reason to blend over HDR is you can achieve a more natural looking result and you have a bit more control over the finale image. http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/113560-Broken-Down-Boathouse if you scroll down I posted a link to a nice tutorial on how to blend in a sky.
With older versions of ACR I would use a single exposure like John outlines for my bird images but with the new sliders in ACR allowing you to control highlight and shadow detail separately I do not find it necessary anymore.

[John Chardine]

I think what is intriguing with the technique of blending two or more exposures from the same raw image is that it can be used with moving targets with no ghosting. IMO the trick is to make an HDR-type image look real and not like an HDR image! Don's (link above) is a beautiful example of this.

[John Guastella]

Frowned upon for birds and wildlife as being too manipulative.

Frowned upon by whom? It's no different conceptually than dodging/burning or using the shadows/highlights adjustment to even out the exposure.

John

[John Chardine]

I agree John, I don't see a problem with this technique for any type of modern digital photography. I think HDR techniques tend not to be used in wildlife photography so much because of the general (mis)understanding that you need to blend several images together to get the effect rather than blend a single image processed with different exposure settings.

[gail bisson]

Thanks for the links and info,
Gail

[Steve Kaluski]

It's all very simple, the two or more images are created as Smart Objects, you are continually working from the RAW in either LR or ACR which means you will have the largest amount of colour & IQ. You the export to PS, mask & combine to make you starting TIFF.