You must have at some point run into the challenge of trying to take a picture of something that has more contrast between light and dark areas than your lens can properly capture. A decent collection of filters can regrettably be pretty pricey, and a set of inexpensive filters might affect the quality of your photo. Mixing exposure with contrast might be an easy way to solve this problem, but how do you do it? Let’s examine a straightforward exposure blending procedure to fix this contrast problem.
Open your Image
Depending on the app you use (for example, Photoshop), you need to open your app. Once you have it opened, you need to open both exposures in photoshop as different layers. You can do this by doing the following:
Select file
Take the option scripts
Load the files into stacks
Once you are done with this, you need to select the two files for exposure and ensure you label them accordingly. For clarity purposes, ensure that the brighter exposure is at the top.
Add a Layer Mask
The next step in your image settings is to add a black and white filled layer mask to the top layer. You can get this done by holding the ALT key and selecting the layer mask button, which you can find at the base of the layer palette. This will automatically cover the top layer with black and add a layer mask to it. The top will be completely hidden by the black-filled layer, revealing the entire Foreground layer.
Painting the top layer
Choose the paintbrush tool and click on the black layer mask. Set the dimension of your paintbrush and the color of your paintbrush to white as required. To give the brush a gentle edge as you paint, set the hardness to a low value. The top layer of the photo will be revealed by painting over the top portion of the image. Mix the two exposures altogether by changing the brush’s opacity, size, and hardness as you paint. To show the brightness at the top image, use white paint to fill up your layer mask. To get the blending to appear natural, use several brush hardnesses and opacities. This could be how the mask appears.
The finishing touches
Once you are done painting the top layer, you need to make some color adjustments as well as some other adjustments to the contrast of the layer to ensure that the image looks as natural as possible. If you cannot ensure that it looks as natural as possible, it would have all been for nothing.
Saving your file
Once you are done editing, you need to ensure you properly save your image in such a way that you can go back to it in case you want to make some adjustments. For the easiest results, you can ensure the layers are flattened so you can save them as a single layer in JPG.
Bottom Line
If you are looking to easily mix exposure and contrast, these are some of the steps you need to take to get it done. It’s easy to follow with good results to show.
Open your Image
Depending on the app you use (for example, Photoshop), you need to open your app. Once you have it opened, you need to open both exposures in photoshop as different layers. You can do this by doing the following:
Select file
Take the option scripts
Load the files into stacks
Once you are done with this, you need to select the two files for exposure and ensure you label them accordingly. For clarity purposes, ensure that the brighter exposure is at the top.
Add a Layer Mask
The next step in your image settings is to add a black and white filled layer mask to the top layer. You can get this done by holding the ALT key and selecting the layer mask button, which you can find at the base of the layer palette. This will automatically cover the top layer with black and add a layer mask to it. The top will be completely hidden by the black-filled layer, revealing the entire Foreground layer.
Painting the top layer
Choose the paintbrush tool and click on the black layer mask. Set the dimension of your paintbrush and the color of your paintbrush to white as required. To give the brush a gentle edge as you paint, set the hardness to a low value. The top layer of the photo will be revealed by painting over the top portion of the image. Mix the two exposures altogether by changing the brush’s opacity, size, and hardness as you paint. To show the brightness at the top image, use white paint to fill up your layer mask. To get the blending to appear natural, use several brush hardnesses and opacities. This could be how the mask appears.
The finishing touches
Once you are done painting the top layer, you need to make some color adjustments as well as some other adjustments to the contrast of the layer to ensure that the image looks as natural as possible. If you cannot ensure that it looks as natural as possible, it would have all been for nothing.
Saving your file
Once you are done editing, you need to ensure you properly save your image in such a way that you can go back to it in case you want to make some adjustments. For the easiest results, you can ensure the layers are flattened so you can save them as a single layer in JPG.
Bottom Line
If you are looking to easily mix exposure and contrast, these are some of the steps you need to take to get it done. It’s easy to follow with good results to show.
