![]() ![]() So we needed the sky to be white or light grey in the mask. And that means we needed a selection of the sky. So in our example image above, we wanted to blend the sky from the darker exposure into the brighter one. ![]() Well if you remember in part 1: Essential Luminosity Masks Tutorial for Beginners, I said that whatever is white in our mask is selected, and whatever is grey is partially selected. The only thing that matters is that large image that takes up most of your workspace. It doesn’t matter what layer we have selected in the Layers panel. The answer to that is simple: luminosity masks are based on whatever the big image is on our screen. The first question we have to ask ourselves is, which exposure do we build our mask around? What I mean by this is, when we create a luminosity mask - let’s say a brights 1 luminosity mask - how is it created? Where does it get its information from? If you’ve pulled your images into Photoshop and stacked them, you’re ready to build luminosity masks. And if I’m working with a third exposure, let’s say a really bright one, that will go on the very top. On top of that I will place the darker exposure. This is my best exposure which contains most of the information I will need. I always put my base exposure at the bottom. We have to determine which order we want to put them. We now have our layers stacked on top of each other. To the right is the result when we blend the base exposure with the darkest exposure. The left image is the result when we blend the base exposure and the dark (not darkest) exposure together. To demonstrate the importance of choosing the right exposures, look at the slider below. Notice how it is dark enough to contain all the necessary information in the highlights.īut the final exposure is also dark and contains no overexposed areas, and yet if we try to blend that into our base exposure, the final result will not look good. The image below that is the darker exposure we will use in this tutorial. We just need to recover the sky from a darker exposure. The first one is our brightest exposure, also know as our base exposure because it contains most of the information in the scene. The closer together, the smoother the blend.įor example, see the three images below. The second rule of thumb is: your exposures should be as close as possible in terms of stops. ![]() While the darker exposure should have no overexposed highlights. In other words, your brightest exposure should have no underexposed shadows. The rule of thumb is: the exposures you choose should cover the full range of light in your scene. This is covered in more detail in Part 5 of this series: How Many Exposures Do I Need for Exposure Blending?Ĭhoosing the correct exposures for blending is one of the most important steps in the exposure blending workflow. On very rare occasions, where the dynamic light in a scene is particularly wide, we will need more exposures. Scenes of higher contrast, three exposures are usually ideal. In scenes of low contrast, two exposures will usually do the trick, like the exposures used below in this tutorial. And finally, make sure the brush has a hardness of 0. Make sure the blend mode is set to Normal. To the left of those settings, you will see a dropdown box which says ‘Mode’ next to it. This means selecting the paintbrush in Photoshop, going to the top menu and setting Flow to 100% and Smoothing to 0%. To paint in an active luminosity mask selection, we need to set our paintbrush correctly. As you move further on down the tutorial you will learn that there are two ways to blend exposures using luminosity masks: Applying the mask directly and painting in a selection. How to Prepare for Exposure Blending With Luminosity Masksīefore exposure blending, we need to do a couple of quick things. If you’re a visual person and prefer to learn from video tutorials, I’ve created a very popular YouTube video which will take you through the same steps in the article.
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