Combining images for manual HDR image

[Dave Robbins]

Hello Gurus message board!

I've never posted here before but look forward to getting to know you folks. I'm a long time Photoshop user (since CS 5) and am truly stumped for the first time in a while. (I think that means i'm trying new things for the first time in a while...)

On a recent trip to the UK I shot two photos of Westminster Abbey using automatic exposure bracketing, and I'm essentially trying to make an HDR of the two images where I'm using the sky from one shot and the rest from the other. The problem I'm running into is (A) I didn't have a tripod available so the images aren't perfectly aligned (though the camera was resting on a bench so it's pretty darn close.) The other problem is that since things were moving (flags, people, leaves blowing around) there's another layer of misalignment.

What I originally set out to do was create a layer mask over the foreground in the darker shot and drop it on top of the background in the lighter shot. That's not working for a few reasons (clearly the ones mentioned above) but also I'm running into an issue of having purple and green glow along the edges of the mask. The only solution I can see would clearly work would be zooming into the highest level and literally draw the boundaries of the layer mask pixel by pixel, which would take forever. I have tried the magic wand selection tool at varying tolerances and have gotten different results, but nothing quite like what I'm looking for.

Here's ultimately my question: Is there a way to do something like this without relying entirely on a precise layer mask? I was hoping to find some way of utilizing the blending modes to accomplish this goal but haven't figured out a way that works yet. The images are below, for reference.



Thanks for taking the time to read this!!

 

[Eggy]

Hi and welcome.

Since the alignment is way off it is nearly impossible to combine those two pictures using blending modes.

But there's a way to do this by using a forgotten 'filter' in PS, the 'Shadows/Highlights' filter you wont find under 'filters'.

Here's how to proceed:

Open the light colored picture and make a mask from the sky part. I assume you're working with 2015.5 so by using 'select and mask' on this particular picture should give you a perfect mask.

Place the masked sky on his own layer and make that layer active.
Go to 'adjustments' --> Highlights/Shadows



experiment with the settings until you achieve the effect you want.



This is the result with using only the light photo by enhancing the sky:

 

[fredfish]

As always with HDR less is more - I just had a little play with this (and I think I went a bit over the top on the exposure for the Abby itself).



Here is what I did.

Load the image
Convert to smart object
Launch the Camera Raw Filter
Boost the exposure to +2.00
Save the image
Double click on the Camera Raw filter in the smart object and change the settings to -1.45
Save the image again

You should now have 3 perfectly aligned images at different exposure levels

Launch the Automate / Merge to HDR pro and play with the settings

I then loaded the middle exposure version and blended the sky with the HDR version (as I didnt like the artifacts that the HDR process produced).

If you have the original file as a RAW file anyway you will get an even better effect.

Obviously you have to have a version of Photoshop that allows you to use Camera RAW as a filter (I think CC2014 and above?)

As always more than one way!

Cheers

John