The sky at night

Paintman (e2 Member)

6

15 Dec 2012 - 9:44 PM

• Options
  • Report Error / Abuse

2

Something like this might help

The first of four pages to explain hand blending HDR photos

I think it would help you to know about Luminosity masks and how to blend a normal, an underexposed and an overexposed photo together to produce a natural looking photo with a correctly exposed sky and ground.

Using a soft brush to blend the transitions also helps. Blending modes are useful in modifying masks to make them more accurate and reducing the halo effect you're trying to get rid of.

To me the church is too light, given the low light and sunset conditions, and the horizon to the right of the church has lost depth and contrast because of the processing. This is where using a brush on a mask would help. Using the dodge and burn tools in early PS CS created ugly brown, smudgy effects that were easily spotted by the viewer. One of my preferred methods of dodging and burning is:

Press Ctrl J twice to create two layers from the b/g layer. Change the blend modes of each to screen and multiply. Now select each in turn and create a layer mask and fill with black. The photo will not have changed, but by using a soft brush with a low opacity you can now lighten and darken the photo where you think it's needed by revealing parts of the two copied layers.

A luminosity mask is created by going to the channels palette and Ctrl clicking a channel. Either the Red, Green, Blue or RGB channel can be used depending on what information you need in the mask. The channel is now selected and should have 'marching ants' on it. Go back to the Layers palette and choose an adjustment layer from the Layers palette, normally Curves in my case. You should now have the curves layer with the luminosity mask, a mono version of the photo. You can now work on different tonal areas according to the mask. The mask can be inverted to work on the opposite tonal range. The mask can also be moved or copied by click and dragging or Alt click and dragging to another layer.

This may or may not help you but it will help to know some of these things. Learning how to make accurate masks is important if you want to manipulate photos.

Alan.

Constructive Critique!