How to use Photoshops BEST TOOL for QUICK & NATURAL Exposure Blending

In this #Adobe #Photoshop #Tutorial I’ll show you how to easily blend different exposures using the awesome Apply Mask Tool.

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0:00 Intro
One of the more common problems with landscape photography is over- or underexposure. That’s because your cameras dynamic range isn’t big enough to get all the information from the highlights and the shadows especially during sunsets or sunrises. Luckily, we can work around that by blending multiple exposures. Usually, I do this with Lightrooms HDR tool or a specialized Photoshop plug in. In this tutorial however I’m showing you a third way which will get you very natural results very fast and easy: The Apply Mask Tool in Photoshop.

For this video I will be showing all of the post processing. That includes some basic raw adjustments at the very beginning while the exposure blending will take up the most part in the middle of the video.

0:18 1. Raw Adjustments
I started by changing the camera profile to Adobe Landscape which gives the image more saturation. Then, I added Texture and slightly dropped the clarity which gives the photo a dreamy look. Also, I boosted the vibrance a bit. Since I’m blending two different exposures I don’t really need to worry about whites / blacks / highlights and so on.

In the tone curve I used the red channel to introduce stronger red tones to the highlights and thus give the photo stronger sunset colors. For the split toning, I again used a warm color tone for the highlights and also a cold tone for the shadows. Once that was done, I copied the raw adjustments to the second exposure so both images have the same settings.

5:18 2. Photoshop – Exposure Blending
I used the bright exposure as my base image. I placed the darker one as a layer on top of it. Since I was shooting this handheld (tripod was already in use) I let Photoshop auto-align the two layers.

To do the exposure blending I made the darker exposure invisible and also applied a layer mask on it. With this layer mask selected I went to the menu bar and chose image – apply image. I used the preset settings and just hit ok. This adds the images as a greyscale to the layer mask and thus blends the two exposures in a very natural way (as the foreground is black in the layer mask, we see the bright foreground of the bright exposure, while we do see the sky of the dark exposure). To fine-tune the layer mask I used the brush tool to paint in more of the sky from my dark exposure until I got a good looking result.

8:50 3. Photoshop – Final Editing
Finally, I cleaned up the photo from distracting objects using the content aware fill. Then, I decided to add some very subtle glow using a soft light layer and a warm, very soft brush. Last, I used the Nik Collection plug in to add the polarization and glamour glow effect for the dreamy look.