Master Exposure Blending

March 9, 2014 No Comments

Master Exposure Blending – Free HDR tutorial

In this video series, I focus on how to combine different exposures using blending and HDR tone mapping. I explain how I prepare my photos in Lightroom, how to use layers and layer masks, how to create and use luminance masks, and also how to blend with them. I also cover how I use Oloneo Photoengine and Photomatix to make the work quicker and how to blend panoramic images.

Please note. As this series was first released a few years ago, some of the used software is already out of date. But the techniques shown are still valid, and most of them I use to this day.

The tutorial is completely free, but please don’t reupload the files to video-sharing sites. Please link to this blog post.

You can also find the whole playlist on Youtube here.

Download the files

If you only want to download the used RAW files, you can do so here. Alternatively you can download whole series as video files here.

The total download size is 1.3 GB for the video files (all in 720p) and 650 MB for the RAW images.

Content

The series includes over 2 hours of video, covering these toppics

1. Welcome
2. Preparing brackets in Lightroom
3. Working with layers and layer masks
4. Luminance masks explained
5. Creating luminance masks
6. Blending two exposures
7. Blending multiple exposures
8. Using Oloneo Photoengine
9. Using Photomatix Pro
10. Blending panoramic photos
11. Adding glow

I don’t go through the edit from start to finish on the provided photos, I rather focus on the blending technique of the images, which is the main subject of these videos.

To follow my work with luminance masks you will need a copy of any version of Photoshop. For the specific videos, I also suggest Lightroom, as I think it’s the best program for photo organization (but of course, you can follow the blending videos without it). In the videos on Oloneo Photoengine and Photomatix Pro, I use the respective software. In the video on Panorama blending, I also use PTgui.

Additionally, you will receive all the RAW files I’m using (28 in total), so you can try all the edits also for yourself.