Photography Tips

Digital Blending

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	The Problem One exposure, exposed for the foreground (sky burned out)
	The Solution 2 exposures blended (dramatic sky)

Digital Blending

With Landscape photography in particular, there is usually too much contrast between the sky and the foreground. Cameras can't cope with this contrast range like the human eye can. If you leave it to your camera's meter, it will often expose correctly for the sky, but this means the foreground will be too dark.

If there's nothing moving fast in the frame (grasses blowing in the wind etc.) you can use a digital camera on a tripod to get the same effect as graduated filters, just correctly expose one frame for the sky, then without moving the camera take another shot correctly exposed for the foreground.

Layer Mask Method - To combine these two frames in Photoshop

Open them both, Ctrl A to select the light image, Ctrl C to copy it. Then close this image.

Ctrl V to paste the light image onto the darker image.

Choose Select>Color Range. Then choose Highlights from the drop-down menu. Make sure the Invert box is checked (see Fig 1) then OK. On the layers palette click to add a layer mask (see Fig 2) then Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur at a radius of 150-200 pixels. This technique works well but can leave unwanted halos around dark objects against bright skies, so you may need to manually adjust afterwards using cloning tools, try even more Gaussian blur, or if all else fails, blend manually.

When you're happy with the results you can Layer>Flatten Image before printing, but it's best to save this image with it's layers intact as a PSD file, then you can always do fine adjustments later if required. This will save you a lot of time if you're new to Photoshop - as your skills develop you can return to the image and improve it further, without starting the whole thing from scratch.

Don't overdo the effect - keep it looking natural

Manual Method

Sometimes, you have to do the blending manually to get a professional look, as in the boat examples above. To do this, open both images, Ctrl A to select the light image, Ctrl C to copy it. Then close this image. Ctrl V to paste the light image onto the darker image. Then use the Eraser tool at medium hardness to erase the light image (Layer 1) sky, revealing the darker sky underneath. Doing this properly can take an hour or more for a professional result that won't show on large prints!

Fig 1

Fig 2

More examples of images I created with Digital Blending: -


Castlerigg #4571 Blended using Layer Mask method	Lake District #4574 Blended using Layer Mask method	Weston Beach #4611 Blended using Layer Mask method


Lake District #4577 Blended using Layer Mask method	Lake District #4572 Blended using Layer Mask method	Loch Leven #4589 Blended using Layer Mask method	Windmill #4605 Manually blended	Lighthouse #4606 Blended using Layer Mask method