Manual Blending

Anyone care to share their method for blending images?

I haven't really had any success doing this, and recognize the potential of blending files.

Thanks
Kevin

Nothing fancy in the way I do it, Kevin. It works the same way whether it's:
- two (or more) exposures of the same scene, or
- one exposure processed multiple times (usually twice)

If it's multiple exposures, I'll process the two raw files, then copy one of them into the other's file as a separate layer. Then I create a mask, make an very inexact selection of the area I don't want, feather the selection heavily (50-150), and fill the selection with black. I usually mess around with the mask a bit more to make it work on the edges, but that's about it.

If it's one exposure, it's essentially the same thing. I'll process the raw once for everything except the problem area (usually highlights). Now I have one psd. Then I'll process the raw again to fix the problem area and make it a second psd. Then copy one into the other's file and mask/feather like above.

After the masking feathering, I may merge the layers into one layer for further processing, or I may keep them as separate layers, depending strictly upon the image.

That's about it.

An alternative to using selections is to use the paintbrush. Put a mask on the top layer, select the paintbrush. Press D to get the default colors (black and white) and paint on the mask with black to cover the areas of the top layer that you dont want. You can change the opacity of the paintbrush as you go to paint grays for transition areas. Then, when you have it the way you like it, with the mask selected, apply a guassian blur. This will accomplish the same thing as feathering.

Here's a good tutorial to get you started. A tip o' the hat to David Bostedo for this link.

Mostly you have to take your time to get it right. One thing I have been doing recently is painting my mask and then running the gaussian blur filter on the mask which makes for a more smooth transition without hard edges. I just move the slider for more or less blur until it looks right. I find this especially useful for scenes with mountains where a strait GND doesn't work. I'll paint in the sky, its ok if you overlap a little and you get some dark edges on the top of the mountains. I run the gaussian blur filter sometimes at full strength and it creates a smooth transition between the sky and rest of the photo, much like a GND except with edges that hug the skyline rather than a strait horizontal line across the frame. Sometimes this does create a slight halo around the edges in the sky but the halo isn't going to be as bad as it would be if you just painted around the edges of the sky without using the gaussian blur to smooth it out. If there is a little bit of a halo I will use a brush just big enough to cover the halo and further refine the mask by carefully brushing around the edge of the sky being careful not to hit the edges of the mountains which will create a dark rim around their edges. I find if I take the time to do this right I can get a pretty decent seamless blend between the bright sky and dark foreground.

Forest scenes where the gaps between the trees are much brighter than the rest of the scene are a little more difficult to blend but there are some tricks for that too. Matt Anderson posted a link to a video tutorial he did on here a while back which was good for those types of scenes. Here is the link to that post: http://www.naturephotographers.net/imagecritique/bbs.cgi?a=vm&mr=41538&CGISESSID=ead70fa36663523d8d97f553c3f1eea9&u=22709

Thanks for the tip on running Gaussian, Austin. Good one.

Kevin,
I was looking for the blending subject here on NPN, I also found this very useful info on this topic posted by Bret Edge "Blending Multiple Exposures for Dynamic Range and Depth of Field"

Link here

John, thanks for the link, nice tutorial for a start.