PERFORM COMPLEX BLENDS

Merge images with challenging moving elements and tricky lighting

1 AUTO BLEND SHOTS

In this high-contrast scene, I captured a bracket of three exposures, which I then blended together using Lightroom’s Merge to HDR function, loading all of the tones into a single frame for later adjustment.

3 The ADJUST TONAL SHIFT

use of a strong ND filter has given the image a yellow tone. I wanted to remove this from the shadows, so to target this range I created a luminance range mask, selected a highlight with the eyedropper, and refined the luminance range.

5 The REMOVE GHOSTS

moving water has created blending artefacts, so I stacked the HDR file and one of the original bracketed images in Photoshop. I made a selection around the foreground water in Quick Mask mode, feathered the selection and applied a layer mask.

2 ADJUST MAIN PARAMETERS

On the merged image, I set the black and white points, introduced some extra clarity, and pulled back some of the highlight detail. In order to monitor clipping, I toggled the clipping alerts by clicking on the triangle symbols on the histogram.

4 After RESTORE NATURAL COLOUR

adjusting the temperature of that range, the greens remained an ugly brown, so I adjusted them using HSL, increasing the green hue until the colours looked more natural. I also applied +33 green primary hue under Calibration.

6 CREATE A LIGHT GRADIENT

For a sunset feel, I added a Radial Gradient layer with a yellow foreground and magenta background and applied the Soft Light blending mode. For a smoother gradient, go to Layer Styles and, in Blend If, adjust the Underlying Layer markers.