RM King Photography: Exposure Blending Tutorial

Hey everyone,

This week's post is a quick tutorial on how to do exposure blending.

This technique allows a photographer - or photo editor - to give a photograph more dynamic range than it would have had if it were a single exposure. Dynamic range refers to the range of colours (or light) that a photograph is able to capture at one time, or in a single photograph. Since cameras have a much smaller dynamic range than the human eye does, photographers often have to rely on techniques like this in order to fully capture the range of colours/light that were present at the time the photograph was taken.

This technique most often involves the use of bracketed exposures - or images that were taken at faster/slower shutter speeds while maintaining the same aperture size. The slower speed image often better exposes the low/midtones of the image, while the faster speed image better exposes the highlights.

However, bracketed exposures require the use of a tripod, and if you don't have one handy or are unable to set one up you can simulate bracketed exposures by shooting in RAW, then processing the image later. Or if you don't mind a loss in quality, you can use a JPEG too.

But enough with the technical babble that nobody cares about, here's a quick and dirty little tutorial on how do exposure blending, using only a single image file.

Here's a link to the base image that you can use to follow along:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2791/4480529336_428fb73ec3_o.jpg

Make sure to click on each Step Photo in order to view the whole thing, Blogspot cuts off image size at a certain point.

Step 1:
I'm going to assume that you've already opened Photoshop and loaded your image, and if you haven't, you probably should.

So here's our base image.

Step 2:
Go up the Layers menu, and duplicate the layer. It should look like this:

Got it? Good.

Step 3:
Now that you've duplicated the layer, you can start tweaking it so you that you can blend it into the base image. Make sure that you've selected the new layer. Go up the Image menu,then select the Adjustments sub-menu, and click on Levels. You should end up with a window that looks like this:

Step 4:
Now start adjusting the levels. I like to start by adjusting the slider on the far right, then the middle slider. You're looking to darken your new layer. Like this:

Step 5:
Okay, now that you've darkened your new layer, it's time to start blending it. Open the Layers menu again, and find the Layer Mask sub-menu and then click on Reveal All.

Step 6:
You should see a small white box next your duplicate layer in the layers window. Select that box - that's your Layer Mask. Once you've selected it, click on the Gradient Tool in your tool bar, and adjust the opacity to a lower level than 100%.

Step 7:
With your gradient tool selected, find the horizon in your image, and drag the gradient down from there. You can press the Shift key on your keyboard to make the line straight.

Step 8:
You'll notice that your foreground just got lighter, as the layer mask and gradient leaves the darker duplicate layer on top, but reveals the lighter base image beneath where the gradient was applied.