HDR Style Results Using Layers in Photoshop. A Post By Darren Rowse. In this post Nathan Pask takes a look at a technique to get HDR Style Images Using Layers in Photoshop. The intro to the hit TV show True Detective has everyone talking about the double exposure effect. I have made this tutorial to very closely match the actual look. View and Download ADOBE PHOTOSHOP 5. PHOTOSHOP 5. 0 Software pdf manual download. More resources for learning about layers, layer styles, layer masks, and adjustment layers How to Install and Use Photoshop Layer Styles The Pen Tool. There currently seems to be a lot of interest in HDR or similar processes. What is HDR Essentially, its about collecting a series of shots taken on a tripod at different exposures and allowing ber clever software to merge them together to make one supposedly perfectly exposed image. There are various types of software or plug ins such as Photoshop, Photomatrix or FDR Tools that make producing a HDR image fairly straight forward. Does the final result look pleasing to the eye The jury is out for a majority of it as far as Im concerned. Some images I think look fantastic, but others I feel have done nothing to enhance the subject. Its using process for processes sake. Creating a good mask is one of the essential skills in compositing images within Photoshop. Recognizing the right tool for the masking job is an art in itself. Today. Learn what every photographer needs to master Photoshop, including cropping, improving exposure, masking, converting to black and white, and more. Being a professional retoucher for quite a few years, working for many demanding clients such as Cond Nast on Vogue, Bride Traveller magazines, the idea of retouching is about making an image more beautiful than it was to begin with. For the retouch to be successful, it needs to look seamless. It wants to look amazing, almost too good to be true, but with no tell tale signs of it having been manipulated. Granted, there is a place for artistic imagery, and perhaps some people who are producing HDR are just doing it for an artistic result, but I personally tend to lean towards the too good to be true style when producing an image like this. If you are not a fan of the results HDR give, but like the idea of it, read on. Workaround-big-picture.jpg' alt='Photoshop Masking Layers' title='Photoshop Masking Layers' />The process I am about to talk you through has essentially the same premise, but will give a more realistic finished result as per the example above. So to begin, you need to a good sturdy tripod. This is a little easier if you have an SLR camera, but it can also be done with a point and shoot if you can manually adjust your exposure. Mount your camera on the tripod and compose your image to your liking. It is important that when you take your images, your camera doesnt move. A handy tip if you dont have a remote control is to set your camera to its inbuilt timer and shoot with this as when you press the shutter you are shaking the camera ever so slightly and you will get a slightly blurry result. Every situation is different because your subject and light is different, but for the image above, I took a shot exposing for the water which was 4 seconds at f. I then took another shot exposing for the rock face and the trees which was 1 second at f. I then took another exposure for the sky which was 14 of a second at f. Ideally keep your f stop constant in this process and as you have it on a tripod you can afford to close down your f stopaperture to give you maximum depth of field throughout your image. The following process is using Adobe Photoshop. I am on a Mac using Photoshop CS3, but it doesnt matter which version you have. As long as it has layers, you are sorted. Download your images from your camera onto your computer. Once you have chosen your exposures you want to use, in my case 3, open them all in Photoshop so you can see them all side by side with your layers palette open on the side like this click images to open larger versions. It doesnt really matter, but I tend to use my darkest layer as my base just because its logical. With this in mind, select the middle exposed image. Head over to your layers palette and click and drag your layer icon and drop it on your darkest image. Then select your lighter image and repeat the process. Obviously, you can have as many imagesexposures as you like and continue this process till you have dragged all your exposures onto the one image. The more you have, the longer it will take to combine and the more complicated it will become, so choose your number of exposures wisely. You shouldnt really need any more than 3 or 4 exposures unless your subject is particularly complicated. Click back on your darker image that you have been dragging the layers on to. You should now have 3 layers in your palette and should look like this. You can close the other 2 images as these are no longer required. What you have left is one image open with your multiple layers, in my case 3, each layer containing exactly the same shot just taken with a different exposure all sandwiched on top of each other. You cant fully manipulate the bottom layer called Background, so select this layer, go up to the options at the top of the Layers palette and duplicate the layer. Its not essential to do this on this particular retouch, but its good to get into the habit of duplicating your original layer so you always have an untouched original just in case it all goes pear shaped or you want to refer back to it for some reason. Safety first Click on the little eye icon on the left hand side of the Background layer so it makes this particular layer invisible. You wont be needing this layer. Its just there as a back up. I tend to rename all my layers at this stage so it makes it easier to manage. Again, its not essential for this retouch, but getting into the practice of naming your layers appropriately is a good habit to get into. When you work on more complicated retouches that might have dozens of layers, it makes it much quicker when you can see easily which layer is which. So what are we going to do with these 3 layers We are going to mask out portions of each layer to allow elements from the layers underneath to show through eventually giving us 1 image formed out of 3. Siemens Optipoint 500 Advance User Manual. Lets start with our lightest exposed layer. In my case, I want this layer for the water and reeds only. Most of the trees and the sky are way too overexposed. Over to your Layers palette again, select your top layer your lightest layer and we want to add a layer mask to this layer. Go to the Layer menu at the top of your screen and select Layer maskReveal All. As a shortcut, you can also simply click on the little icon circled and it will do the same thing. For this particular layer mask I dont want to create a hard edge so we are going to use the brush tool to manually create our mask. Over to your layers palette again, make sure you have the mask part selected not the image icon when you click on the mask, it should have the broken black frame around it indicating that you have selected the mask. Making sure your colour is set to black if its not, click on the top colour square and change this 1. We are ready to mask We are now going to paint with this tool creating a mask revealing some of the image below. In this case we want to get rid of the sky, rocks and most of the trees. Make sure the opacity on the brush is at 1. Use an appropriate sized large brush to get rid of a majority of it and when it comes to going around the water line I used a small brush and zoomed in so I could see a little better as I was masking. You should be able to see your middle exposure layer below coming through. You will also see your little mask icon on your layers palette will give you a preview of what you have just masked out. Keep going until you are satisfied. I will show you how to do a more accurate mask on the next layer. But this method we have just performed is a great way to do a quick mask. Once you are happy with your mask, select the layer below. Create a new layer mask as before but instead of using our brush tool on its own, this time we are going to make a selection first as we want the mask to be a little more defined around the edge of the cliffs. Photoshop Tutorials by Julieanne Kost. OCTOBER 1. 8, 2. 01. Discover how to make precise adjustments using the new Color and Luminance Range Masking in Adobe Camera Raw. OCTOBER 1. 8, 2. 01. Discover how easy it is to draw resolution independent, vector paths in Photoshop with the new Curvature Pen tool. OCTOBER 1. 8, 2. 01. Take a look at several improvements made to the way we work with brushes in Photoshop CC including more powerful brush presets, new default brushes, drag and drop organization, and more OCTOBER 1. Discover how to create beautiful brush strokes using the new smoothing option and quickly make symmetrical paintings using the Paint Symmetry technology preview in Photoshop CC. OCTOBER 1. 8, 2. 01. Discover the power of Variable Fonts and additional typographic enhancements in Photoshop CC, including pasting without formatting, property panel enhancements, and paragraph level composer switching. FEBRUARY 2. 1, 2. In this video Julieanne demonstrates how to download a template into Photoshop CC 2. NOVEMBER 2, 2. 01. In this video, Julieanne demonstrates how to quickly create new documents, save custom presets, as well as download and license templates from Adobe Stock using Photoshops New Document workflow. NOVEMBER 2, 2. 01. In this video tutorial, Julieanne demonstrates the new features and enhancements made to Photoshops Libraries panel, including recent and alphabetized Libraries, undo options for deleted assets, the new Find Similar feature, drag and drop Adobe Stock search results and more NOVEMBER 2, 2. In this video, Julieanne will show how easy it is to find tools, menu items, CC Learn content, and Adobe Stock assets using the new in application Search command in Photoshop CC 2. NOVEMBER 2, 2. 01. In this video, Julieanne demonstrates several of the little known feature enhancements in Photoshop CC 2. Artboards, the Properties panel, Copy As SVG, SVG font support, Export As, and moreJUNE 2. When using the Crop tool to straighten and add canvas area to a photograph, check out the new Content Aware option which will intelligently fill in any transparent areas with computer generated Content Aware information in Photoshop CC. JUNE 2. 1, 2. 01. Check out the new features and enhancements made to the Type tools in Photoshop CC including the ability to find similar Typekit fonts, apply alternate on screen with one click and font matching to help identify similar typefaces found in images. JUNE 2. 1, 2. 01. Discover how the new Select and Mask dedicated taskspace in Photoshop CC makes creating selections and masks easier, more exact, and more efficient than ever before. JUNE 2. 1, 2. 01. Discover new features and enhancements made to Artboards including new background color properties and easier duplication of layers and layer groups, Adjustment and Fill layer support for Looks and Patterns created in Capture CC, read only Library Collaboration, and new Export options for embedding color profiles and additional Artboard improvements. JUNE 8, 2. 01. 6Quickly correct perspective in a photograph with precision and control using the new Transform Panel, Guided Upright tool, and Offset sliders. Manually positioned guides automatically correct converging vertical and horizontal lines in images which can then be repositioned within the canvas area. NOVEMBER 3. 0, 2. In this video, Julieanne walks through the new Start and Recent Files workspaces, updated interface, and customizable Toolbar. NOVEMBER 3. 0, 2. In this video, Julieanne demonstrates how Artboards can increase your productivity when designing multiple versions of an image within a single document, as well as the new features and enhancements added to Artboards. NOVEMBER 3. 0, 2. With the addition of linked Smart Objects, Creative Cloud Libraries are now more powerful than ever. In this video, Julieanne will demonstrate the Libraries panels new features and enhancements including sharing assets using linked Smart Objects as well as create a Library from a document in a single click. NOVEMBER 3. 0, 2. In this video, Julieanne covers all of the improvements made to the Type tool including viewing recent fonts, filtering by classification, selecting favorite fonts, viewing similar and more. NOVEMBER 3. 0, 2. In this video, Julieanne will demonstrate how Quick Export and Export As can be used to save entire documents, multiple Artboards, as well as individual layers and layer groups. NOVEMBER 3. 0, 2. In this video, Julieanne demonstrates how to apply a painterly look to an image using the completely re coded Oil Paint filter. JUNE 2. 2, 2. 01. In this short tip, Julieanne demonstrates how the new Dehaze control in Lightroom CC and Phtooshop CC 2. JUNE 2. 2, 2. 01. In this short tip, Julieanne demonstrates how to add noise back into the blurred area in order to create a more realistic effect. APRIL 2. 1, 2. 01. Learn how easy it is to stitch together multiple files into a panorama that has all of the editing flexibility of a raw file. APRIL 2. 1, 2. 01. Discover how to combine bracketed exposures into a High Dynamic Range image that has all of the editing flexibility of a raw file. JUNE 1. 8, 2. 01. In this video Julieanne explains how Smart Objects are even smarter than before. Discover how to choose between embedding or linking a Smart Object, knowing that at any time, you can change your mind and convert embedded to linked. Hand off packaged files to your clients with confidence, knowing that you will never leave a linked file behind. JUNE 1. 8, 2. 01. In this video Julieanne demonstrates how to use the new, nondestructive Spin Blur in Photoshop to create realistic motion effects including the ability to spin an object at variable angles, as well emulate traditional strobe effects with the ability to define the strength, number of flashes and duration. JUNE 1. 8, 2. 01. In this video Julieanne walks through Photoshop CCs new Path Blur including how to control the direction, speed, taper, and shape of motion paths to make creative enhancements to your image. JUNE 1. 8, 2. 01. In this video Julieanne demonstrates the new features and enhancements made to the type tools including Font Search, Instant Font previews and seamless integration with Typekit. JUNE 1. 8, 2. 01. In this video Julieanne takes a close look at how Photoshop makes aligning and distributing layers and shapes easier than ever with improvements made to Smart Guides including determining distances between objects as well as a layers positioning within a document. Discover how these new features make aligning and distributing multiple shapes and layers faster than ever before. JUNE 1. 8, 2. 01. In this video Julieanne will show you how to remove distracting elements using the improved Content Aware technologies including the ability to blend colors and textures better than ever before. JUNE 1. 8, 2. 01. In this video Julieanne will show you how to seamlessly work with the newly refined Layer Comps. Learn how individual layer attributes can be easily updated and then synchronized across multiple Layer Comps and as well as how to use Smart Objects with nested embedded Layer Comps to create multiple iterations within a single document which can be displayed in a single click. JUNE 1. 8, 2. 01. In this video Julieanne will demonstrate how to make selections based on depth of field using Focus Mask to help isolate portions of your image for further editing. JUNE 1. 8, 2. 01.