Best way to do this?

[Ikikuru]

Hi All,

Sorry for real NOOB question! If you have 2 pictures, say of a room with a window and bright light coming in from the window. If you take 2 photos, one with exposure set outside the window to correctly expose light, and the other with exposure set within the  room to of course correctly expose the room, how would you merge the two pictures to get the best of both exposures? Add in that whilst almost identical pictures there is some probable very slight alignment issues as pictures not taken on a tripod. I know there are potentially a few ways to do this! Just not quite sure how!

 

*edit*

so I’ve seen stacking, looks ideal as it aligns images, can you then just mask the area you want to work on, which in my case would ideally just be the windows as they would be a smaller area to work on, so that dark room, correctly exposed outside world would be the second layer, and I’d just bring that area to the forefront, in my head I’d be erasing the primary layer to reveal the secondary layer. Is this possible or (another method) when using stacking?

[DM1]

8 hours ago, Ikikuru said:

Is this possible or (another method) when using stacking?

You could try that or simply open the one photo of correctly exposed room, then use place image to open the second photo of correctly exposed window. Rasterise the 'placed' image and select the widow area with selection tool. You can create it as a masked layer and just position it over the other window. Paint with black or white on the mask layer to fine tune what is shown, Black conceal and white reveals.

[DWright]

Hi @Ikikuru,

As you have different exposure images you can also use the HDR merge to combine your images as shown in the example below where I used three different images

 

 

[Ikikuru]

Thank you both! Will explore both options! If HDR aligns images like stacking, it could be ideal!

[Paul Mudditt]

20 hours ago, Ikikuru said:

Hi All,

Sorry for real NOOB question! If you have 2 pictures, say of a room with a window and bright light coming in from the window. If you take 2 photos, one with exposure set outside the window to correctly expose light, and the other with exposure set within the  room to of course correctly expose the room, how would you merge the two pictures to get the best of both exposures? Add in that whilst almost identical pictures there is some probable very slight alignment issues as pictures not taken on a tripod. I know there are potentially a few ways to do this! Just not quite sure how!

 

*edit*

so I’ve seen stacking, looks ideal as it aligns images, can you then just mask the area you want to work on, which in my case would ideally just be the windows as they would be a smaller area to work on, so that dark room, correctly exposed outside world would be the second layer, and I’d just bring that area to the forefront, in my head I’d be erasing the primary layer to reveal the secondary layer. Is this possible or (another method) when using stacking?

HDR Merge will align the images, if you are on V1.8 don’t forget you will need to do a Tone Map after the merge. I say this because the V1.9 beta automates that step but V1.8 does not.