Making 2 separate scans to preserve details in shadow and highlight

Adrian writes:

> What I decided to do was to make 2 separate scans, one for the detail
> in the pyramid and a separate one for the detail in the city model. I
> then opened both in Photoshop, with the background detail as the
> bottom layer, and copy/pasted the shadow detail scanned image over the
> bottom layer and just erased blown-out parts of image to reveal the
> detail of the pyramid. Finished example at this link:
>
> http://www.amenfoto.com/gallery/mexi...acan_view.html

Nice work.

It's tedious to combine scans in that way, though. Ideally, you should
use a scanner that can get it all on one pass. You don't have problems
with pixel misalignments then, either.

Even more ideally, if you are on a tripod, you shoot two or more
exposures at the original scene, so that you have ideal exposures for
all the important areas. I've only very rarely done this, and it is
very tedious to combine in Photoshop, but the contrasts involved were so
great (about 15 stops, as I recall), that I had no choice.

--
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"Mxsmanic" <mxsmanic@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:g953ivkgiek4f2264qq2n8bm12ed35t64c@4ax.com...
> ...
> Even more ideally, if you are on a tripod, you shoot two or more
> exposures at the original scene, so that you have ideal exposures for
> all the important areas. I've only very rarely done this, and it is
> very tedious to combine in Photoshop, but the contrasts involved were so
> great (about 15 stops, as I recall), that I had no choice.

Reindeergraphics.com has plug-ins to align and combine images
like that.

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:51:40 +0200, Mxsmanic <mxsmanic@hotmail.com>
wrote:


>Even more ideally, if you are on a tripod, you shoot two or more
>exposures at the original scene, so that you have ideal exposures for
>all the important areas. I've only very rarely done this, and it is
>very tedious to combine in Photoshop, but the contrasts involved were so
>great (about 15 stops, as I recall), that I had no choice.

For anyone whose interested in macro photography, rather than light
balancing, multiple shots can be a good technique too to make up for
the loss of DoF. For example, a 1:1 of a flower with a trumpet (no,
it's not musical, that's a description <g>). I've done that and taken
five shots, using a tripod, all from the same position, but with the
focus set on different depths of the flower. This results in a number
of photos which, if combined, give you a great DoF all the way down
the flower head. This is, IMHO, one of the great techniques you can
use with PS which is extremely difficult done any other way.

--

Hecate
Hecate@newsguy.com (Fried computers a specialty)