How to Focus Stack and Exposure Blend the Same Image
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มี.ค. 2020
- There are a ton of videos out there that explain how to focus stack an image and plenty of techniques to exposure blend images; but what if you want to do both?
I show you how to focus stack your images and prepare them for exposure blending correctly using whatever technique you use like HDR or luminosity masking.
Let me know in the comments if you'd like me to go over my blending techniques as well. Thanks for reading and hopefully watching!
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Just a couple pointers if you want to speed things up.
1. Option + Delete to fill your selection with white. No need to drop the lasso tool for the paint bucket.
2. There is a feather filter built right into the layer mask. Double-click on the mask thumbnail, and in the Properties palette move the Feather slider to the right. This way it’s reversible and adjustable. If you want to feather it more permanently, you could always apply a gaussian blur to the mask.
Studio G great tips! I tried to keep shortcuts to a minimum which is why I opted into using the paint bucket over filling with white. Funny enough the written tutorial I wrote for this I used fill with white instead of paint bucket. My only concern with the feathering the entire mask is effecting the borders which is why I explained the feather the way I did, only applying it to the top of the mask and not on the borders.
@@AlexArmitage Thanks, good to know. I guess too many shortcuts and you confuse people. There's also the technique of "painting in" the in-focus areas with the paintbrush tool for more complex scenes.
The edges of the frame won't get feathered as long as your areas of black and white go all the way to the edge.
@@studiog2682 Very good point. Ill play around with it and test it. Love learning better techniques so thanks for the idea!
Alex, great shots and thanks for sharing techniques you use, well done.
Thanks Antonio!
finally! someone who explains this thoroughly. You sir, just got yourself another sub.
Welcome Felipe! And thank you. To this day I still can't find an explanation on doing both of these things.
Great tutorial. Very much needed. Thanks
Glad you liked it
very useful video, thanks for the great work
Thank you!
This was extremely helpful! Thanks so much!
You're so welcome!
Awesome tutorial dude!!! Loved this video, thank you.
Anytime and thank you Adryan!
This is very useful tutorial.
Thanks
You are welcome
A really well described video on this very interesting topic. It's something which has intrigued me for a while. I also liked the pace at which you explained and demonstrated the process. Many thanks.
Anytime Daniel! Thank you
wow....wish i had a lens as clear as your video...Crystal clear!!! Thanks for the video :)
Thanks for the comment!
Great video, thankyou
Glad you enjoyed it
Fantastic video, Alex. I'd love to see how you exposure blended to create the final image.
That's the next video I'm working on! Currently it's just slow because of life :)
Hey I forgot to let everyone know. I made the follow up video!!
th-cam.com/video/uARxXFli0UE/w-d-xo.html
Great video... It'd be great to see your exposure blending process.. Cheers mate!
I plan to! Sorry the time between has been so long. Life has been a roller coaster lately but I plan to get to it very soon.
Hey I forgot to let everyone know. I made the follow up video!!
th-cam.com/video/uARxXFli0UE/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for the video, great shot! Will definitely try this out! Wish you had also shown how you exposure blended the two stacked images at the end into the final image. Any video you would recommend for that process?
Sorry I didn't go into that, the process is just as lengthy and at that point the video would have been quite long. However I could make a video for just that, but if you wouldn't want to wait there are plenty of videos just look up 'Luminosity masking.' Either way Ill work on that video next :) Been quite busy. Thanks for the response!
Hey I forgot to let everyone know. I made the follow up video!!
th-cam.com/video/uARxXFli0UE/w-d-xo.html
Great! This one goes in the Reference file.
I really don’t know how I landed on your channel, but your videos are amazing 😭
I hope you come back for more! Thank you :)
Thank you! I will try it on my sports photography at the next event. Found you via Fstops article. cheers!
Glad it was helpful!
How you gonna have time for this when shooting sports??
@@seamydobbsno1You need to see the finished picture, then start shooting. Is experience and knowing what you want in the end :)
@@Popa_Bogdan_Light_Drawing Doesn't make sense!
Hey Alex, Thanks for the video. It's really fantastic. It's a humble request to you, Is it possible for you to make a complete workflow video? Like From the field to the digital darkroom. If yes its gonna be awesome.
If I can ever find the time, I'll be working on the blending part. As for shooting in the field, maybe I'll try to do that next time. Haven't been shooting much at all with COVID sadly as I can't travel.
Great! And the 2 final exposures, how did you create the one final image? With mask keeping a part of darker image and another part from brighter image?
Yup thats it!
Interesting approach. You do it exactly the other way around than I do ;-) I find stacking first and blending later can be problematic because of the misalignments you can get. I don't trust Photoshop to align the dark exposures the same way it does for the bright ones. I see you don't trust Photoshop either, which is why in the end you do another alignment of the two. I find it works better to first blend and then stack, because the bracketed shots are usually aligned. I also don't blend for all images, only those that require it.
What I like in your workflow is how you reuse the masks.
PS: Funny that it just suggested this video to me as it's been out for so long. I guess you are also using Helicon now?
I use a combination of both. Don't focus stack a ton currently if I can avoid it.
But bruh how you blend those two layers at the end?
I was thinking the same thing! Haha
Please do make another video if you haven’t yet if the exposure blending!
Soon! Been on a bit of a break currently but it's coming.
Hey I forgot to let everyone know. I made the follow up video!!
th-cam.com/video/uARxXFli0UE/w-d-xo.html
Yo, I was loosing my mind trying to figure out how to copy complex masks from my main exposure focus stack to bracketed exposures. I knew it had to be doable, but couldn't figure it out. Thanks!
Why are avoiding focus stacking more recently, and what are you doing instead?
I just don't shoot images like this nearly as much
So are you bracketing a image then afterwards do the different focus areas of that same image without moving the tripod? and then taking the final correctly exposed bracketed one then just blend it with the final focused one? I need to watch this a few more times during your editing process but was a little confused on the exposures.
Hey sorry for my late reply! This is the process order:
In the field I set my camera to take bracketed shots (3 in this case). I then focus from foreground to background or background to foreground. I recommend background to foreground because typically the light is changing the most in your sky/background. So ill have my focus set on that while Im waiting, take my shot (3 shots because it's bracketed) and then set my focus progressively closer to my foreground. Each shot being 3 bracketed shots for each focus point.
In this exact case I took 3 shots for each focal point, and focused on 4 different focal planes totaling 12 shots. However you notice I only used two exposures each for what I wanted to achieve.
I hope this answers your question!
Forgot to answer. Once in processing I only edit one exposure at a time. So I'll take 4 images with different focal points (with all the same exposure) and stitch them together. Then I'll stitch together another exposure using the same stitching I used for the first exposure. This is what I go over in the video! Hope that helps too
@@AlexArmitage I thank you so much...makes total sense :)
@@tahomyjo Anytime! Glad I could help
Hey Alex,
Not sure if you’ll see this comment but I do have a question! How do you focus stack and exposure blend with seascapes / moving water?
Hey Jadon! It will mostly depend on the exact photo but I'd likely do the exact same thing I did in this video, just spend extra time on the water when blending between each focal point. There's a lot of variables here so it's hard to answer in absolutes. If the water is blurred (longer exposure) by quite a bit then it should be easy to blend their focus and exposure. If the water is a lot more frozen I could see it being a little more tedious to mask them together. Do you have a specific example and the issue you're running into?
Why not carry it through to the end and show the blend? The method for copying the masks was helpful, thanks. I'll keep this in my save pile.
Joel I think this is what you are looking for - th-cam.com/video/uARxXFli0UE/w-d-xo.html
@@AlexArmitage Thanks for the link. I learned something about luminosity selections. eg. turning off the dark layer to make the selection. Thanks again. I'll subscribe!
@@joelbarto1103 Hey thanks Joe and welcome!
Is there a camera that does hdr focus stacking
I don't believe so no
I know this vid is some years old... but 2 things... first, the exposure looks fine to pull up shadows and you dont need to exposure blend this at all... and secondly, why dont you use a gradient mask .... far easier to blend each image?
Up to date PS.. i see no issues with letting PS handle this.... even years ago i saw no issues... even with moving objects.
I've struggled with PS and just use helicon now
Nice tutorial, but if you title your video "How to focus stack and exposure blend the same image" i was expecting you to do both focus stack and exposure blend. You just showed how to focus stack.
Hey Christoph, part 2 should pop up right after the video you just watched. If it didn’t it’s right on my channel to see how to exposure blend :)
You may not be qualified to be determined
No body else shows how to do stacked bracketing
Thank you... I think? Hah
dude is your nose running and you haven't noticed?