combining two exposures - pictures added

[merapi]

Dear friends,
I try to blend two images from Niah cave - one exposure for forest outside, one for cave itself in Photoshop. I have tried many ways I found on webs, but without any success.
Pictures were taken from hand, so I think the main problem might be aligning both images.
What way would you recommend me? Manual masking is hard due to the staligmites.
Thanks a lot!
Richard

Both pictures are here:
http://www.uschovna.cz/zasilka/CE8X7W849CZINYLP-2BG/

[pnodrog]

I used a mix of selection methods to get the basic mask then just manually adjusted mask to get rid of annoying artifacts. Perseverance will be the main technique. You will need to do a lot of burning, dodging and saturation sponge to get it looking OK. Below is a quick edit - well not that quick but if it was mine I would take more care and spend a great deal longer on it.




If I was hand holding I would have been looking for a rock or some sort of support to help steady the camera and taken a variety of differing exposures.

[merapi]

Thank you very much. Finally I did it manual, too. But it is pretty long work, so I was finding out some "action" for exposure blending.
This is my final image from another couple of pictures. But stalactite was really hard:
http://www.merapi.estranky.cz/img/or...niah---253.jpg

[dje]

Here is my attempt. Merged to HDR Pro in Photoshop using 32 bit option. Saved as tif then processed in ACR and Photoshop. Seemed to work OK.

Dave

[proseak]

CS6 merge to HDR.

[merapi]

Dje: Looks very nice, but still difference (even in colors) between trees in fron and in the back. Much better results than mine in any action. I use CS5, not sure abou HDR.
I tried luminance actions in CS5 and Photomatics, but nothing special. Finally I did a mask by hand and use brush tool.

[dje]

Dje: Looks very nice, but still difference (even in colors) between trees in fron and in the back. Much better results than mine in any action. I use CS5, not sure abou HDR.
I tried luminance actions in CS5 and Photomatics, but nothing special. Finally I did a mask by hand and use brush tool.

I am using CS6. I'm pretty sure the HDR feature is available in CS5 but not sure about 32bit (see File/Automate/Merge to HDR). I did use a mask to tone down the distant trees but here's another version where I've adjusted the colours there as well. To some extent, it's just the different light I think on the two sets of trees. I've mucked the sky up a bit but that could be fixed.

One of the advantages of using the HDR tool is that it will attempt to align the images automatically.

Dave

[jordand]

If not taken properly handheld shots are difficult to align. As for the masking, have you tried the "apply image" command from Image menu?
Another way to make things easier is to produce "light" and "dark" copy of the shot you like better and try merging them.

[FrankMi]

Hi Merapi, compared with most of the images I see of the Niah National Park on the WEB, this one is quite good!

With this high of a dynamic range, the minimum I would shoot would be three images at -2EV, 0EV, and +2EV. If you are interested in the shadow details in the cave and avoiding the blown out sky then five images, adding -4EV and +4EV. If you want to have a good chance for alignment at the ultra-wide 11mm focal length, a tripod is a must. If tripods are not allowed, then you may need to find a way to rest the camera securely on a rock with something that can substitute for a beanbag for stability. I am seeing what looks like dried water spots on the lens?

Here is what I tried with the two source images, Niah In and Niah Out.

Niah In – in ACR 6.7, Recovery to +50, Fill Light to +50.

Niah Out – in ACR 6.7, Fill Light to +25

Open images in Photoshop CS5 as Layers.

Using the Topaz DeJpeg plug-in, use the Highly Compressed JPEG setting for both images to address noise in the shadows.

Using Topaz ReMask plug-in, I masked the outside so that I could control the brightness and contrast of the In image separately from the Out image after merging them.

Remove some of the Chromatic Aberration, particularly on the stalactites.

Replaced the blown out sky.

Removed what appeared to be lens water spots, particularly on the ceiling of the cave.

Using the Clone Tool, removed some of the motion blur on the walking figure.

A little bit of dodge and burn to adjust brightness in specific locations to give the image some flow.

Adjusted the brightness and contrast to suite my taste.

Warmed the image slightly, resize and post process sharpening.

[bambleweeney]

Insomnia prompted me to give this a go. Opened both images in Photoshop, NiaOUT as a smart object via ACR. Cranked down the lightness slider and added Nik Viveza2 into the smart object to give a bit of structure. Created a luminosity mask using NiaIn and blurred it by 80pixels or so and used in on NiaOUT. Applied a bit of saturation and mid tone contrast. A solid green layer was added using a green sampled from the 'good' trees at a low opacity using soft light. The same luminosity mask was used on this layer, sharpened it.



In Photoshop :-



Insomnia persists