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Photography Question 

Thomas E. Dillon
 

Merging Multiple Exposures


I am very interested in the possibilities resulting from merging multiple photos, but have never tried it. Can this be done fairly easily? For example, I am thinking of exposing for the light areas of a scene, then exposing for the dark areas of a scene, and then combining in PSE6. Can this be done by simply merging these as layers? It doesn't seem to be all that difficult, although I might well be forgetting to think about something. Using a tripod would be mandatory, of course. Help, please.


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December 24, 2007

 
- Darren J. Gilcher

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  Are you talking about a panorama? If so You can do it in Photomerge. It's easy. I would find an area that is midway between light and dark and set the exposure for that. Either use manual mode or exposure lock. Otherwise you will see where every pic is overlapped. And make sure you overlap when taking the pics by about 25%. The program looks for those areas to piece the photos together. I have a pano in my gallery from Marthas Vineyard of 5 pics together out of 10. I used PSE2.0 so I'm sure PSE6.0 can do it. Good luck.


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December 24, 2007

 

Thomas E. Dillon
  Thank you, Darren, but no, I'm not talking about panoramas or merging two photos at their overlapped edges. What I'm referring to is overlapping two different exposures of the exact same image: one exposed for light areas, and the other image exposed for darker sections of the same scene. I think this can be done with Layers.


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December 24, 2007

 
- Darren J. Gilcher

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  (In Gilda Radners voice) Nevermind.


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December 24, 2007

 

W.
 
Hi Thomas,

the idea you're describing is a.k.a. "HDRI", or High Dynamic Range Imaging" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDRI).

And Photomatix may help you along: http://www.hdrsoft.com/.

Have fun!


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December 24, 2007

 
sherry-adkins-photography.com - Sherry Karr Adkins

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  Layer the two images on top of each other. Either use a layer mask (my preference) or the eraser tool and 'erase' the part of the top layer that you don't want and expose the part of the bottom layer that you do want. Use a soft edged brush so that the brush strokes aren't visible. You can also change the opacity of the brush in either the layer mask or the eraser tool. The layer mask is much more forgiving. I use PSCS2 and not Elements, so I don't know if Elements has a layer mask. If so, and you want to know how to do it, let me know and I'll explain it to you.


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December 24, 2007

 

Thomas E. Dillon
  W.S. and Sherry A - Thank you both, very much!

Merry Christmas, too, y'all!


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December 25, 2007

 

Thomas E. Dillon
  W.S. and Sherry A - Thank you both, very much!

Merry Christmas, too, y'all!


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December 25, 2007

 
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