Merging sky and the foreground

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4allens
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p.1 #1 · Merging sky and the foreground

I've toyed with PS for a long time. But, admittedly, I am still a novice. I have a series of shots taken this past Sunday that capture the sun hitting low clouds over the Wenatchee River in Tumwater Canyon (just outside of Leavenworth, WA). I bracketed the shots and have mulitple shots up and down from the metered exposure. To that end, I have everything from foreground detail and blown sky to brilliant sky with black mountains.

My question, is there a tutorial or two (or more) that I might study to develop the skill to bring these mages together?

I suspect this has been asked many times ... sorry, I am at a loss ...

Brad

Edited on Oct 15, 2008 at 03:33 AM · View previous versions

Oct 08, 2008 at 04:35 AM

floris
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p.1 #2 · Merging sky and the foreground

I think it's been a little while since this question has been posed.

Google 'layer masks', that's all it is, sort of. That and contrast adjustment layers and a burn/dodge layer to locally fix things (google those and you'll probably find tutorials as well).

The best advice I can give that might not be explicit in all the tutorials is to start with a gradient based layer mask (ie. use the gradient tool on your layer mask to best approximate the blend), as it'll make your life easier by reducing processing time, giving you a more uniform mask, and reducing halos (in my experience). Then fix the straight line using the eraser to adjust the mask to taste. I know others like using selection tools, but that leads to too many nightmares and halos in my experience.. I like the control offered by manual masks.. it's all about preference. Try to only use 2, if necessary 3, files to blend, otherwise you'll get confused and lost

Here's some good places for tutorials:
http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/articles.htm
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/
http://goodlight.us/writing/tutorials.html
http://www.theradiantvista.com/

Oct 08, 2008 at 04:45 AM

Rob-Bob
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p.1 #3 · Merging sky and the foreground

Cool, Bump.
Thanks alot for those.

Bob

Oct 08, 2008 at 04:51 AM

JameelH
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p.1 #4 · Merging sky and the foreground

If you have CS3, I'd try merge to HDR and then tone map it.

Oct 08, 2008 at 04:57 AM

Dajavu
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p.1 #5 · Merging sky and the foreground

Another link to a tutorial I've save some while ago and have used once or twice, using the "Color Range" tool for the selection:

http://www.nwpphotoforum.com/ubbthreads/information/php/2007_Articles/rjohnston/roman2.php

Oct 08, 2008 at 05:35 AM

JimFox
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p.1 #6 · Merging sky and the foreground

Hey Brad,

I would recommend RonBigelow's link and also the last link that David (Dejavu) posted. I can't argue about Floris's results

but personally I find using a gradient in Photoshop much harder then using for instance the Color Range tool, or simply drawing your mask and feathering.

I would suggest staying away from using HDR. Learning to blend with layer masks, is a powerful skill that you will end up being able to use in so many different ways.

Good luck!

Jim

Oct 08, 2008 at 07:44 AM

Alex Nail
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p.1 #7 · Merging sky and the foreground

I second everything floris has said, that is good advice.

Alex

Oct 08, 2008 at 08:22 AM

4allens
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p.1 #8 · Merging sky and the foreground

Image added to original post.

Using the magic wand tool, I placed the more dramatic sky (Layer 1) onto the image that has the foreground detail (Background). I've completed no other processing to either image.

I have a visible line where the mountains meet the sky and the tree on the right is needing some work. As I adjust the opacity on Layer 1, I can reduce the line between the mountains and the sky, but, that causes me to lose too much sky.

How do I eliminate the line? How do I bring the top of the tree back? Should I slightly darken the most distant mountain?

Thanks again ... I truly appreciate all of you that give so generously of your time and talent ...

Brad

Oct 08, 2008 at 01:16 PM

Jeremy Conoley
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p.1 #9 · Merging sky and the foreground

I'm not an expert by any means, as a matter of fact I'm playing with as many different ways of eliminating that visible line (also called a halo I believe) in my blends as well.

is layer 1 the whole image or just your sky cut from the darker image?

Ideally you want the darker image in a layer and the lighter image in a layer, then you can use a layer mask to reveal the parts you want to. If you have it that way once you make your selection with the magic wand tool it will apply it to the layer mask. Then all you have to do is play with the layer mask to make it look the way you'd like.

Couple of suggestions that have worked for me in similar situations.

1.Feather the selection to overlap into the mountains some
2. Use the gradient tool to extend the darker layer into the mountains
3. paint the edge of the mask with a soft edged brush to get the look you want. (I use this one the most, it's heavy handed or as delicate as you want it to be, but doesn't always work for me.)

one thing I've got to work on is making sure that the layer blends logically. Like in your image if you get rid of the halo, the image might still look a little off if you don't blend the ridge lines with the darker sky some, since light doesn't always follow in a straight line it tends to fade into bright or dark areas some times. Of course I wasn't there when you captued the image so it could be a very dramatic difference between the sky and the ridgeline.

Definitely check out some of the links provided, I re read Ron Bigelow's site constantly just to get one idea of how to do things.

take this all with a grain of salt as it's coming from someone who's learning at the same time, I'm just trying to share whats working for me.

Oct 08, 2008 at 02:47 PM

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p.1 #10 · Merging sky and the foreground

Hey Brad,

Very simple. You didn't Feather it. make sure when you do it you use a heavy feather amount to start with. Atleast 150, and maybe as high as 200.

This is a good start! Believe me, most of us have all been there!

Jim

Oct 08, 2008 at 05:34 PM

slobodan
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p.1 #11 · Merging sky and the foreground

Check out one of the best (or the best, imho) book on Photoshop: Photoshop Artistry by Haynes, Crumpler and Duggan. Pages 388-397 deal with practically identical problem you have. Not sure feathering would work... you might just end up with a feathered but wider white halo. Most likely you would need to clone out the edge. However, there are no easy solutions, most would require meticulous work, perhaps even on a one-pixel level. After all, solutions to your problem are the holy grail of HDR blending.

Having said the above, I looked again your posted photo and realized that even if you would find a way to eliminate the white halo completely, that would not be the end of your work, only the beginning. The two parts of the image would still look artificially glued together, like paper cutouts. You would need to find other ways to create a more natural transitions. And no automated HDR software can do it for you. Currently, your non-sky area is uniformly lightened up, and that does not make much visual, perceptual or artistic sense. Areas closer to strong light source (i.e., tops of mountains or trees against sky) are naturally perceived as darker, vs. areas further away from the sky. In other words, your tree "piercing" the sky should not be uniformly lightened up, but should progress smoothly from the darker top down. Also, not everything in the non-sky area should be opened up fully. You would have to choose which areas contribute to your vision of the scene and composition and emphasize them by opening them up.

Oct 08, 2008 at 06:18 PM

floris
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p.1 #12 · Merging sky and the foreground

slobodan wrote:
Check out one of the best (or the best, imho) book on Photoshop: Photoshop Artistry by Haynes, Crumpler and Duggan. Pages 388-397 deal with practically identical problem you have. Not sure feathering would work... you might just end up with a feathered but wider white halo. Most likely you would need to clone out the edge. However, there are no easy solutions, most would require meticulous work, perhaps even on a one-pixel level. After all, solutions to your problem are the holy grail of HDR blending.

Having said the above, I looked again your posted photo and realized that even if you would find a way to eliminate the white halo completely, that would not be the end of your work, only the beginning. The two parts of the image would still look artificially glued together, like paper cutouts. You would need to find other ways to create a more natural transitions. And no automated HDR software can do it for you. Currently, your non-sky area is uniformly lightened up, and that does not make much visual, perceptual or artistic sense. Areas closer to strong light source (i.e., tops of mountains or trees against sky) are naturally perceived as darker, vs. areas further away from the sky. In other words, your tree "piercing" the sky should not be uniformly lightened up, but should progress smoothly from the darker top down. Also, not everything in the non-sky area should be opened up fully. You would have to choose which areas contribute to your vision of the scene and composition and emphasize them by opening them up.

The trick is precisely to not use meticulous pixel by pixel methods, but rather to use very broad blending techniques. That's why I use gradient masks, and an eraser with diameter of around 300-1000px (for a 12mp 5D file) to fix the straight edge. Others, like Jim, like selection tools, but when you feather with the selection tools I think you use a very high radius, and that will get rid of the halo because it spreads it out more.

Think of a graduated neutral density filter, I found my blending abilities improved a lot after I started using one because I realized how the light needs to be blended. That is, when I take two separate exposures without a GND, I'll blend them in a similar way the GND would have, then I'll fix the hard edge. It's that very smooth mask that will create a natural looking progression of tones. A tree sticking out into the sky will be close to black, there's not much you can do about that without introducing halos, but think about it - when you see the scene in real life, the tree is close to black when against a bright evening sky, there are still details if you look close enough, but it's definitely pretty dark.

Oct 08, 2008 at 07:08 PM

slobodan
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p.1 #13 · Merging sky and the foreground

floris wrote:
The trick is precisely to not use meticulous pixel by pixel methods...

Well, horses for courses... there are times when broad brush works fine and times when only pixel-by-pixel would do. If OPs' goal is to eliminate the white line once it is created, then only pixel by pixel cloning would help. If the idea is not to have the white line in the first place, then broader brushes or graduated masks are certainly the right tools. The choice of tools is image and intention dependent of course.

As for what constitutes a more natural perception, I think you and I are talking about the same thing and are in full agreement.

As an example, here is one of my HDR images of two exposures, 4 f/stop apart, manually blended, using a combination of graduated masks, broad brushes and meticulous, almost pixel-by-pixel editing for some (but not all) areas:

Oct 08, 2008 at 08:10 PM

floris
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p.1 #14 · Merging sky and the foreground

slobodan wrote:
floris wrote:
The trick is precisely to not use meticulous pixel by pixel methods...

Well, horses for courses... there are times when broad brush works fine and times when only pixel-by-pixel would do. If OPs' goal is to eliminate the white line once it is created, then only pixel by pixel cloning would help. If the idea is not to have the white line in the first place, then broader brushes or graduated masks are certainly the right tools. The choice of tools is image and intention dependent of course.

As for what constitutes a more natural perception, I think you and I are talking about the same thing and are in full agreement.

As an example, here is one of my HDR images of two exposures, 4 f/stop apart, manually blended, using a combination of graduated masks, broad brushes and meticulous, almost pixel-by-pixel editing for some (but not all) areas:

I think the OP will get a better result if starting with the right tools, rather than trying to fix on a pixel level the halo introduced by a direct selection mask.

Yes, sometimes you have to go into the fine details and edit meticulously. Often that's the case when there's a very high DR in a limited area like around the lighthouse light in your image - at least, that's where I'm guessing you had to do the majority of detail level masking? And perhaps a little in the trees along the edge to touch up some detail. For an image like the OP's, and most images without any direct light sources in the frame, you can do very well with broad brushes (or strong feathering of selections).

And yes, your blend looks natural

But I wouldn't call it HDR, unless you specifically used an HDR tone mapping algorithm, which from your description it doesn't seem you did.

Oct 08, 2008 at 08:34 PM

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p.1 #15 · Merging sky and the foreground

Hi Brad,

In the blended photo you posted there is a very extreme brightness difference between the sky and the foreground, IMO, even if you were to get a decent transiton the resulting image would still have an "unnatural" look about it.
In this case I would reccomend starting with two images a bit closer to the same luminance.
Sometimes it simply isn't possible to pack everything into one image.

That said, just for fun, why not post the two seperate images and invite everyone to have a go at blending them and see what comes up. Each person could explain what was done and maybe everyone could learn something.

Best regards,
Tom

Oct 08, 2008 at 09:00 PM

mark70x70
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p.1 #16 · Merging sky and the foreground

It is an art form to appropriately blend, but your shot is definitely worth it?!!!

Oct 08, 2008 at 11:08 PM

4allens
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p.1 #17 · Merging sky and the foreground

Okay, I've added the two original JPEG files that I am working with. No other post processing work has been completed. I did resize each to 8x12.

I realize these images represent the extreme ... I am simply using these images to learn this blending technique. I have other shots where the exposure difference is not so radical. I think a little work on those shots combined with a successful merge will allow me to reproduce an image representing what I actually saw.

Thank you!

Oct 09, 2008 at 12:30 AM

floris
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p.1 #18 · Merging sky and the foreground

I like to procrastinate.. so played around with the two jpegs for 15 min and came up with this. The hills in the back are a bit muddy, since there wasn't much detail to work with with the small jpegs. This is really not that wild of a scene in terms of DR, I've had much worse.

For some reason the internet does weird things with blacks and oranges, even when everything's converted right in sRGB etc. But if you drag the image into PS you'll see what I intended it to look like.

Basically I used a gradient layer mask with the sky on top of the foreground, with some adjustments with the eraser. Then I made a whole bunch of contrast adjustment layers to adjust the contrast and exposure of various parts of the image - locally and globally (everything was a bit dark). I used the Channel mixer to boost the color overall, particularly in the trees. And a burn/dodge 50% gray layer to selectively make some other adjustments - if you give me your email I could send you the .psd file if you like.

I'll be interested to see what others come up with... maybe I'll learn something too!

btw - nice picture, it was fun to play with, definitely one worth your time to learn how to process!

Oct 09, 2008 at 12:55 AM

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p.1 #19 · Merging sky and the foreground

I did a tutorial a couple of years ago - this might help you out:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Oct 09, 2008 at 01:15 AM

JtJt
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p.1 #20 · Merging sky and the foreground

Here's mine:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Obviously you can work with the overall image until you get the look you want, but the blend is not that hard.

This was done using the technique described here:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-blending.shtml

After you blend the layers you can fine tune your result by brushing on the layer mask with a white or black paint brush to add or remove the light or dark layer untill happy with the image.

Tom

Oct 09, 2008 at 01:55 AM

aFeinPhoto.com
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p.1 #21 · Merging sky and the foreground

Some great advice here and everything i've learned (if you look at my last posts almost everything is blended), i've learned here. 3 things work for me:

1 - realkuhl's method

2 - digital gnd aka gradient mask...tweak

3 - dark image over bright image. select all on bright image (bottom one). make layer mask. option-click on layer mask. paste image. gaussian blur layer mask at max (adjustable). tweak from there

get this shot blended....it's gonna be sick. good luck. and remember, you can always go back years from now once you've learned more and redo (why it's taking me forever to get my website finalized).

rockin

aF

Oct 09, 2008 at 11:13 AM

CarloDidier
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p.1 #22 · Merging sky and the foreground

aFeinPhoto.com wrote:...website finalized...
Ain't that an oximoron

?
I just wanted to thank you all for the great advice. I'm also a beginner with HDR and this is all very interesting!

Oct 09, 2008 at 11:52 AM

4allens
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p.1 #23 · Merging sky and the foreground

Good morning everyone.

I've taken the advice received here and attempted to re-make the blended image. You will see that I've replaced the image in the original post. I am making progress and I am ready for some additional crtique ... Thanks!

Brad

Oct 09, 2008 at 01:33 PM

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p.1 #24 · Merging sky and the foreground

Yea that is going to be a sweet shot. Some halo'ing around the sky/hill edge and you could do with some more contrast in the hillsides. Keep at it. This is a killer shot.

aF

p.s. yes website finalized is an oxymoron :-P but i just mean getting it where i want for now :-P

Oct 09, 2008 at 01:46 PM

JimFox
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p.1 #25 · Merging sky and the foreground

Hey Brad,

It's looking sweet! You have made some great progress on this. Before you know it you will be blending these shots with your eyes closed!

Jim

Oct 09, 2008 at 05:03 PM


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