New Guest Post: Exposure Blending by Younes Bounhar

I'm kicking off the week by publishing a killer "how-to" article on my blog that was written by mega-talented Canadian photographer Younes Bounhar. Younes' tutorial walks readers step-by-step through the technique he uses to blend images together to create a single image with an expanded dynamic range. I invite you to read "Exposure Blending by Younes Bounhar". As always, your comments are encouraged and welcome.

This is something I've been waiting for! I'll let you know how it works after I read the tutorial.

That makes two of us, Jack! I like the simplistic approach of Younes' technique and have found it to work very well for my images. As I've said before, I'm kind of an idiot so if I can follow along - anybody can use the technique!

One of the nice things about Photoshop is that there are many ways to do the same tasks, and someone's always figuring out an even better way. This one sounds very intriguing, and I can't wait to try it.

Todd: That is one of the nice things but it can also be frustrating as hell when there are 10 different ways to do the same thing and I can't do any of them well.

Thanks for the info Bret.

You bet, Brian. Thanks to Younes for allowing me to post it on my blog. I hope ya'll find it useful.

OK Bret, I am having problems with it, so must be dumber than you! The eraser doesn't erase. Are there common mistakes that people make? I will try again later when I get a minute.

Good question, Bill. I'll send it to Younes and will post his response. Thanks for the question.

Bill:

Here is Younes' response:

So, I just went through the tutorial step by step and everything seems to be in order.
I see 3 potential errors that people can do inadvertently:

1- when creating the mask on the dark exposure, they do not press "alt" and end up
creating a white mask instead of a black one (see step 2).
2- when selecting the eraser, they do not select black as their foreground colour
(see step 7)
3- when erasing, they do not select the mask (see step 6).

Try this and let us know if you still run into problems. Thanks!

Bret

Looks like a good technique that I'll have to try out, thanks for the info.

Bret, thanks for posting this. This is another method of doing this blending that I can add to my toolkit. I will have to give this one a try soon. =)