antifire wrote:
very sweet shots. about exposure blending, how do you get the mask so precise, especially when you work with complicated objects like trees. do you use a tablet and paint it back or is there a better technique?
A lot of people assume that making the masks precise is the answer, when actually making them imprecise is often the key!
For example, if you need to lighten a dark are by using a mask to bring in a brighter version of it:
- you might add only a 50% (or other value) version of it.
- you might blend it entirely within the darker area. At the boundary there might be no blend, but the blend might feather into the dark area. (The way our visual system works, this seems natural.)
- the amount of blend might well vary within the blended area.
- other similar techniques.
With a tree the work can be painstaking, though not always. In some cases you can \"paint in\" the lighter portions on the larger trunk, branches, and leafy mass of the tree to get enough added detail, but without applying the effect evenly to every part of the tree. In general, this looks much more natural than just making the whole tree brighter.
For those who haven\'t figured this out yet, masks are incredibly powerful image adjustment tools. Combine them with image blending and curves adjustments and the sky is the limit.
Dan
May 01, 2011 at 06:15 PM
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