Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: bretedge on August 30, 2013, 02:36:06 am
-
I have yet to find an exposure blending technique that produces consistent results. I prefer not to use one that requires you to "paint" with a brush the areas that you want to blend because I find it too tedious and time consuming. That leaves luminosity mask blends and I've yet to master that technique.
What techniques are you using to blend multiple exposures? Please feel free to reference any tutorials, free or otherwise.
-
I suppose I could respond with a detailed technique, but that would be too tedious and time consuming.
-
haha You can search on google, there are loads of tutorials so you can find one that appeals to you!
I find that I get the best results, well the ones I'm happy with, when doing it manually. I know it takes time with the brush tool, but I'm a patient person so it's fine for me. Have you tried the Layer Mask tool? Works really well for scenes which have a flat horizon, like oceans or the desert etc.
Good luck! :)
-
I suppose I could respond with a detailed technique, but that would be too tedious and time consuming.
Well done, are you competing for the most useless post of the week ?
What techniques are you using to blend multiple exposures?
The easiest and most reliable way of combining the sort of multiple exposures I shoot is to use the Enfuse plug-in for Lightroom. I've tried quite a few other similar HDR type plug-ins, but Enfuse has always given the most pleasing and natural results. Enfuse gets things pretty much spot on most times, when it doesn't the shots usually have to be manually painted together with luminosity masks, multiple layers and spot changes etc and every 'difficult' set seems to need a different approach anyway.
-
I suppose I could respond with a detailed technique, but that would be too tedious and time consuming.
Dare I say 'take that s*t to a different photo forum', that attitude is not welcome. We are lucky! to have the caliber of
photo and graphics professionals that contribute here.
-
Well done, are you competing for the most useless post of the week ?
No, I was trying to make an obvious point. Making an good image is hard. I know we live in a push button Instagram world, but, sometimes you just have a little patience with yourself. Revel in the process. You'll learn something.
-
.......Revel in the process. You'll learn something.
Photography doesn't have to be about making things as difficult as they can be to 'revel in the process', it's about making good images.
The OP's original request wasn't asking for an automatic or push button process, just asking how others reduce their workload. It's a perfectly reasonable request and not one that deserves any scorn for being lazy.
Maybe you could add something constructive yourself ? or are you too busy coating your own plates ?
-
Oh, ok, sorry. Listen, this guy has a lot of advice for amateurs: http://scottkelby.com
What's encouraging is that there will always be a need for a good retoucher out there. Everyone wants it to be so easy.
-
No, I was trying to make an obvious point. Making an good image is hard. I know we live in a push button Instagram world, but, sometimes you just have a little patience with yourself. Revel in the process. You'll learn something.
Good points, Benny. You provided the only valuable contribution so far. Others are just peddlers of Instagram "culture."
To the OP: the best technique is to stay away from any technique.
-
Oh, ok, sorry. Listen, this guy has a lot of advice for amateurs: http://scottkelby.com
What's encouraging is that there will always be a need for a good retoucher out there. Everyone wants it to be so easy.
Benny,
No need to be snarky. Take a little time to get the feel for this forum. The tone here is generally more mellow and constructive than some other photo sites (pardon the horrible pun), Slobodan not withstanding ;D .
Usually an OP is given the benefit of the doubt as regards their love of, and commitment to the art and craft. And, even if it is ultimately demonstrated that the OP is a lazy lout, pontificating on his or her "lout-ness" is not likely to be construed at furthering the discussion.
Rand
-
Why not use a camera that has 14 stop dynamic range where you can under expose a Raw shot by 5 EV and still recover significant detail with very little noise in the shadows?
I mean bracketing multiple exposures of the scene and then exposure blending sounds way too tedious and time consuming, doesn't it?
For Christ sake what kind of pictures are you all making? Vacation trips to the sun?
I hear the light's really good but you have to bracket to get the rest of the surrounding stars in the night sky.
-
Excellent series of tutorials by Sean Bagashaw
http://www.outdoorexposurephoto.com/video-tutorials/
I have not review 'Basics', but the other 3 do a great job of building knowledge on blending techniques.
-
I prefer not to use one that requires you to "paint" with a brush the areas that you want to blend because I find it too tedious and time consuming. That leaves luminosity mask blends and I've yet to master that technique.
I use luminosity masks automatically created from the image itself, no painting required.
-
I use both luminosity masks and manual blending with a brush, sometimes both in combination with each other.
One thing I will say is that getting a Wacom tablet makes working with a brush much, MUCH, better and more efficient. It's shifted me more towards manual brushwork because of the degree of control it offers.
-
As should be obvious from the replies here, snarky and otherwise, there is no one preferred method to blend images. Different circumstances respond best to a variety of techniques. I use them all, from Nik's HDR Effects Pro, which I find easy to use without generating the dreaded "HDR look" to luminance masking, selective editing of layer masks, and a 14 stop dynamic range camera (which may be the best advice given.)
Only after you have mastered a number of techniques will your experience allow you to choose the right one for the circumstances. And that will speed up your workflow.
-
Others are just peddlers of Instagram "culture."
From that it's pretty obvious you haven't much of a clue what Enfuse does or how to get the best out of it.
Got anything more constructive to add than " stay away from any technique" ?
-
+1 for Enfuse. I use it in Harry van der Wolfe's GUI ImfageFuser, where it is combined with Align_image_stack. Works great.(Mac)
-
+1 for Enfuse. I use it in Harry van der Wolfe's GUI ImfageFuser, where it is combined with Align_image_stack.
The LR plug-in also uses the Align_image_stack utility and also uses some of Phil Harvey's Exiftool's functionality, all in one GUI package.
If you use Lightroom it really makes using all these command line utilities simple, there's still room to hone the process to best effect, but the defaults work extremely well.
-
I have yet to find an exposure blending technique that produces consistent results. I prefer not to use one that requires you to "paint" with a brush the areas that you want to blend because I find it too tedious and time consuming. That leaves luminosity mask blends and I've yet to master that technique.
What techniques are you using to blend multiple exposures? Please feel free to reference any tutorials, free or otherwise.
While I haven't found one technique that always gives consistent results, most of the time I can't avoid "painting" with a brush in Photoshop at some point.
I often start with Enfuse to get an idea of what the image may look like. Sometimes that is pretty close, but usually I'll still need to take another copy that has detail I want, select both photos in Lightroom and "open as layers in Photoshop", then use a brush.
Luminosity masks work well, but mostly I just open the images in Photoshop and go to it with a brush on layer masks and paint with a low opacity until I have what I want. Once I stop procrastinating and actually start, it's pretty fast and quite enjoyable.
-
Yet another method to reduce noise with two exposures (http://jtrujillo.net/qpix/)
-
Good points, Benny. You provided the only valuable contribution so far. Others are just peddlers of Instagram "culture."
To the OP: the best technique is to stay away from any technique.
I disagree. I'm not interested in a push-button do it all, Instagram solution. I don't mind spending time processing images if the outcome meets my expectations. I prefer not to spend hours at my desk doing tedious work if there is another way to accomplish the same result with less effort. I didn't get into outdoor photography because I adore sitting at a desk staring at a computer. Working at the computer is a necessity in this digital age but certainly there are ways to minimize the amount of time spent in post-production.
With regard to your advice to "stay away from any technique", I find the statement hopelessly flawed. What's wrong with technique? Technique is defined as "a way of carrying out a particular task, esp. the execution or performance of an artistic work or a scientific procedure." So, how is using a technique to blend exposures (or any other necessary task) a bad thing? Seems an awfully elitist statement to me.
-
Excellent series of tutorials by Sean Bagashaw
http://www.outdoorexposurephoto.com/video-tutorials/
I have not review 'Basics', but the other 3 do a great job of building knowledge on blending techniques.
I've got Sean's video tutorials and they are excellent. Thus far I'm getting my best results using his techniques. I'm always interested in learning what other people are doing, though.
-
I have yet to find an exposure blending technique that produces consistent results. I prefer not to use one that requires you to "paint" with a brush the areas that you want to blend because I find it too tedious and time consuming. That leaves luminosity mask blends and I've yet to master that technique.
What techniques are you using to blend multiple exposures? Please feel free to reference any tutorials, free or otherwise.
Hi Bret,
I like to avoid too much manual intervention, because it is too slow, and that hinders my creativity. I usually know where I want to have the image end-up, but the tedious steps of getting there take too much time.
That, and a huge dislike of halo defects and other distractions, and a huge preference for natural looking lighting, nudged me towards SNS-HDR Pro (http://www.sns-hdr.com/) over the years of trying different things (including Enfuse, which is a great step in the right direction). It allows to solve virtually impossible lighting scenarios, including natural looking High Dynamic Range scenes. I love natural light, but it doesn't always make rendering it easy. I now rarely need to do local adjustments anymore.
It's a Windows only program, but apparently it runs fine under Parallels, or similar, on a Mac.
There hasn't been much recent development released, not that it would need much but some is already announced (ghosting control, noise control, speedups by using the GPUs more, memory management), but that is apparently also caused by a delay that the programmer inflicted upon himself. He tried to make it a Multi Platform application, but that proved more difficult than he initially thought. Next update (Version 2.0) is expected in the October/November timeframe, and is supposed to be free for existing users).
The great benefit of the program is its resistance to halos and posterization (if brackets are not too wide), but even on single exposure images it can do magic. The virtually instant screen updates makes working with the sliders a joy, and really helps creativity.
Cheers,
Bart