How to Combine Multiple Exposures for Amazing Landscapes
- Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book
- The Adobe Photoshop CC Book for Digital Photographers
- Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book
A good landscape photo is easy to spot from countless other attempts the Internet is full of. Good choice of subject, correct composition and spectacular light are all important elements if you want your audience to stare at a photo with admiration. But even if you do get everything right, there's always going to be room for improvement. Digital photography is based on post processing and what you do with a photo in the digital darkroom will make the difference between an average shot and an awesome one.
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Combining multiple exposures is one of the best ways to create a powerful final image. It doesn't necessarily mean turning everything into a cheesy HDR image. When you hear about multiple exposures, you probably think about three or more shots taken from an identical position with different exposure values. While indeed this is the recommended way to go if you want to blend more photos together, it's not mandatory.
You might decide on combining different versions of an image together months after you've taken the original shot, and the good news is there's a simple way of doing it. Obviously, you should only try blending different images together if the original file was shot in RAW format. It's not that you can't do it with jpg, but landscape photography demands top notch image quality and the RAW format is the only one capable of delivering that quality.
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Before you start working on combining the images, you should have a clear idea of what you want the final photo to look like. Do you want more detail in the shadows? Or maybe you want to bring highlights down locally. Whatever the case, have a plan before you get to work.
Here's an awesome video from Phlearn showing you how to combine several landscape photos into an awesome one.
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