Blending exposures

To ensure that all the detail could be seen in the final image, we bracket-exposed the scene. In the end we only needed to use two raw images, as you can push and pull your raw files in Camera Raw a fair bit. It’s good practice to shoot three exposures (one each for shadows, midtones and highlights), but you may get away with processing just two, like us. The first image is underexposed by -1 stop, and the second image (for the foreground detail) is overexposed by + 2 stops. When it comes to editing your images, make sure the colour temperature and tones in both images are reading similar settings. When you blend them together, drag the +2 stop image over to the -1 stop image (hold down Shift as you let go to make sure they align), then add a black layer mask to mask the top layer. Using a white brush with an Opacity set to around 50%, paint back the parts of the image you want lighter in the foreground.