Editing help needed - DPChallenge Forums

Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

11/13/2005 11:10:04 PM · #1

Hi All,

I took these two photos last week. I couldn't get the correct exposure throughout the pic, so I bracketed and want to bring these two pics (one over exposed and one under exposed) into one photo (with hindsight, I'd have shot in RAW, but I've only had the camera a couple of weeks and am taking things one step at a time). I'm having problems doing this though - my problems are that 1) the two pics aren't perfectly alligned (the merge looks fine when "fit to screen" but really bad when at 100%) and 2) I can't get the tree line to look correct when bringing the two pics together...the bleached white in the trees compared to the new blue sky looks wrong. Anyone have any suggestions?

Cheers
Dave

oOWonderBreadOo

Canon EOS-5D

11/13/2005 11:19:15 PM · #2

what version of PS are you using & I can explain my editing...

Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

11/13/2005 11:24:00 PM · #3

LOL, I've been trying for hours what you've done in a few minutes....

I'm using CS

Dave

oOWonderBreadOo

Canon EOS-5D

11/13/2005 11:28:32 PM · #4

hmmm... I'm using 7.0 I think you can do this even quicker than I can using the shadow/ highlights toolbar- have you checked it out yet?

I press ctrl+ alt+ ~ to select the highlights then select inverse. ctrl-J to make a new layer. set the mode to screen.
then I did an adjustment layer of selective color & brought more cyan & black in the blue & cyan channels! :0)

edit to say, I used your overexposed image...
DOH!... that would be UNDEREXPOSED!! :0)

Message edited by author 2005-11-13 23:30:45.

Sony 24-70mm F4 Vario-Tessar T* FE OSS

11/13/2005 11:40:23 PM · #5

Yeah, got it! Shadow/highlight has recently become my favorite tool in PS. I guess I was just trying to make life more difficult for myself. I read a tutorial on bringing together 2 images in PS at FredMiranda and have wanted to try it out for a while now. The only problem I'm getting with the shadow/highlight is that it brings quite a lot of noise into the image, hopefully NI can take care of that though.

Thanks for your help!
Dave

Bear_Music

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

11/13/2005 11:54:56 PM · #6

Merging the two images, I believe, requires that they be RAW. Here's a shot at it using the cntrl-alt-tilde approach in 7.0:

1. Dupe BG, make very contrasty, create and save sky selection, discard dupe layer.

2. cntrl-alt-tilde, cntrl j for a highlight mask, set to "multiply"

3. Same, invert for shadow mask, set to "linear dodge"

4. Flatten image

5. Load sky selection and adjust hue/sat and levels

6. Flatten image

7. Run the cntrl-alt-tildes a second time, assign multiply and screen modes, fade the shadow adjustment layer to 60%

8. Load inverse of sky selection and bring out the foreground colors with hue/sat

Shadow/highlight in CS2 may be able to do all of this but the saturation in a single pass...

R.