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Exposure Blending – Digital Graduated Filters
In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to create stunning images without the need for an expensive filter system (saying that, the software used is fairly expensive). This is Exposure Blending, a great method for when you have forgotten/can’t be bother to use your filters, or, if it is raining. And will allow you to produce images like this:
Exposure blending can be considered the digital version of using a graduated filter to take Landscape shots, whereby two digital images are blended together to give an even exposure for the foreground and sky. Although there some people that will argue that it is HDR, they are two different techniques, and Exposure Blending can be achieved with some graduated filters (more detail can be resolved).
The basics of Exposure blending are this:
1. Composing and taking your shot
2. Taking a photograph that has been exposed for the sky
3. Taking a photograph that has been exposed for the foreground
4. Blend the two photographs together in a photo processing software suite such as Adobe CS3 (which is used throughout this tutorial).
Firstly, process you pictures in your normal manner, but only concentrating on the foreground or background. .Once you have done this, open up both images in your editing suite and copy one of them into the other image, as below.
Next, you want to add a layer mask and select hide all, like in the image below
Once you have a hide all layer mask selected, you want to select a erase brush. Any size can do, but you want to make sure that you have the hardness set to zero or it will not look natural. The image below shows a typical brush that we use, we also set the opacity to about 80%, but this varies depending on the style of image
Next, erase the dark area from the image (either the foreground or background) up to the point that the it meets the lighter area. Below shows you how it has been done for the original image, with the background image turned off.
Now you have your two images combined you can then set about adjusting the overall image to fine tune the contrast, sharpness etc. The normal things that you change when you are post processing one of yourimages. Hopefully this tutorial shows you you can achieve images that look good quickly, and easily, such as the image below.