On1 Photo RAW: Exposure Blending (Layers Demo)

[Music] hey guys i'm jim i edit photos thanks for stopping by today i'm in on one and i've been doing a number of videos of around on one simply because it's a powerful product it's got honestly world-class masking it's got some great tools and filters and a lot of capabilities and so i've been doing a lot of these videos you can find them in that playlist right there but one of the things i haven't really talked about is layers and it does have layers capability which can come in really handy so i've had some people say hey jim when are you going to do videos about layers well i guess today um so um there's a couple of reasons i haven't done them and there's a couple of reasons why i would use layers so a couple i guess the main reason why i haven't really done any layers video is simply because with all the powerful masking and filters and things like that in on one i haven't really felt the need to add a layer to do things so i haven't really needed it and you know it's a great capability to have if you need it but i haven't really felt the need however i do want to walk through what you can do with it because there are a number of amazing things that you can do there's a couple of different instances when i would use layer one would be an exposure blend if you want to combine two exposures maybe they're shot at slightly different times you know same location same settings whatever but you just need to blend them for whatever reason that's what i'm going to do in this video another opportunity to use the layers panel would be if you wanted to add a new sky like do a sky replacement and i'll probably do a video about that if you want to check that out let me know in the comments below but today is going to be a an exposure blend so here's a photo and i basically stood in this location here this is in copenhagen and i shot that and i'm shooting some brackets and basically this one i feel like this guy's a little bit too light i also have this photo which is next to it that sky's a little bit better probably a little bit too dark and the rest of the photo is way too dark but i want to use that sky on top of this image so that's what i'm going to do with the exposure blend and that is how i would generally use exposure blends now there's other things you could use to make a true composite you could call this a composite but i think of it as an exposure blend i've got my base photo and i'm going to go over here i don't need to be an effects um i'm going to be right here in the layers panel there's a plus sign i'm going to click plus to add a new layer okay so i scroll through my folder here's 39 you'll notice 40 is the one that i'm on here's 39 i'm going to click add as layer and it just drops it in the layer stack on top of the base photo so this is the new layer with the darker sky if i click that little button i turn it off there's my base layer unedited it's a raw file this top layer is also a raw file as you can see dot nef back when i had a nikon this is from years ago uh but turn that back on and there's my new sky so what i want to do is i want to take that sky and leave it i want to get rid of the rest of it so the easiest way to do that i'm going to hit m to get in my masking brush and i'm going to get ai quick mask and here you can keep and drop so what i want to do is remember i'm on the top layer i just want to keep the sky i want to drop the rest of the photo because i'm going to use that from the base layer so i'm in drop so i'm going to come over here and i'm going to just use their little magic to get in here and just highlight in red all the stuff that i want to drop or get rid of which is basically everything but the sky so i've done that then i come up here i change this to keep and i do the same thing but of course this is green now if you're not familiar with ai quick mask i've got a video about that as well which i'll put up there in that corner it's hard to draw with a mask and point at the same time anyway so that's roughly it and as soon as you're done with that green is keep red is get rid of you click apply and it does its magic and there you go now if i was feeling a bit industrious i would show you how to refine this which i'm not going to do you can do that quite easily i'll talk about that in that other video but let's pretend it's perfect along those edges and i'm going to say done and i've basically now just dropped my new sky on top of my existing photo so you can see the mask over here if i click view that's what my mask looks like again we're on the top layer which is the darker sky so white reveals black conceals the darker sky is revealed and the rest of it is concealed because i don't want to see that so if i turn off this layer let me turn that off you'll see that the sky changes and when you click that radio button that turns off the layer so that layer is no longer visible and all you can see is the bottom layer which is the original photo i click this and you'll see the new darker sky shows up everything else stays the same now you can do this with multiple layers if you wanted to this is a pretty simple example new sky existing base photo and what i want to do now is get them to look like they belong together so there's a couple of things you can do you might come down here you can go back and make adjustments to this base layer if you want to you can click on that and you can say well maybe i want to raise the exposure of the bottom as i drag this to the right and i'm overdoing it on purpose you'll see that the bottom of the photo is getting really bright now you could do that i'm not going to do that here but i wanted to point out you can still edit that base photo if you would like to you could also come in here to this top photo and now i've now clicked on that be sure you click on the proper layer or else you're going to be making adjustments to the wrong one i can come in and do the same thing maybe i want to increase the exposure of that new sky which i do the original sky was too bright the new sky was a little too dark so i want to raise that just a little bit which i've just done so if i turn this layer off you'll see there we go that's what the original sky was and the new sky now is that in fact i might go just a tiny bit brighter even let's say something like that now at the point that i have the two exposures blended together like that and looking the way i want them to look it's now time for me to go edit now i want to edit the com the combination of the two i don't want to edit these individually so what i do is i right click here on this top layer make sure the radio button for both layers is turned on and i'm going to create a new stamped layer and there you go the new stand player is just a combination of the two below it with the edits applied and now i've got this top layer because it combines all the others i can go make edits to this one layer and it will affect everything so if i turn this off it looks just the same as the one below it and because the one below it is basically a vis visible representation of the two below because they're both on so make sure they're both on right click new stamp layer and i have a new stand player which i can go edit and now it's just an editing job to make this photo look the way i want it to look so i'm starting here with a little bit of contrast i'm going to do some of that i'm going to maybe put on the highlights a tad maybe pull up the mid-tones and the shadows a little bit and i'm going to go into temperature and vibrance and i'm just kind of i don't want to say hacking around a little bit here but i'm hacking around a little bit here because all i'm trying to do is get the photo to look the way i want the photo to look in other words as i said already this is just an editing job so here in effects i'm adding dynamic contrast that's my first tool that i want to use and i'm going to go ahead and bump up some of that small and i think i'll leave the medium and large the way they are and i want to mask these so i'm going to go in here i'm going to click invert so i have a black mask which means it's not applying anywhere and make sure you're in paint in and i'm on the perfect brush and so now it's just a paint job so i'm going to come in and i'm going to paint all this stuff in where i want it to go i'm actually going to get it in some of these shadow reflection areas as well okay after a couple of minutes of messing around my uh mask looks something about like that so let me click view to hide that and basically what i've done is added dynamic contrast to the buildings right so that's essentially what i've done here so turn this off there it is before and there it is after it's kind of minor it's kind of hard to see but i'm going to click copy i'm going to use that mask again and this time i'm going to get hdr look and i'm going to click on the masking menu and i'm going to click paste and i've just added that into the same area so if i turn this off there it is before and there it is after hdr look just creating a little bit of crunch in the man-made stuff as i tend to like to do it's just something i enjoy doing so add filter i'm going to go to tone enhancer and i'm also going to paste the mask once again but this time i'm going to invert it and there we go so now my mask is mostly going to be applying in the sky and the water so i'm going to close that masking menu and here i'm going to play a little bit with the exposure i think i'm going to pull that down a little bit i'm creating a little bit more mood you can see i messed up with my mask and got some in the water i'm aware of that in case you're noticing that that was me messing up with the mask and not correcting it i could go back and correct it for the purposes of this video we're going to just kind of skip over that right now though i am just playing a little bit with the water and the sky primarily and i think i'll do something about like that so if i turn this off there it is before and there it is after so basically just darken the sky in the water all i'm doing is kind of blending them trying to get them to go together a little bit more and i've got one more tool for that and that is the sunshine filter and here i'm going to just paste the mask because once again i want that to go just into the buildings and the amounts at 50 i'm going to pull that up a little bit i'm going to pull up the warmth a little bit and maybe the saturation and that's really it let me turn that off there's the buildings before just trying to give them a little bit more pop of warmth and after and it brightens them a little bit as well and that's really how you do an exposure blend i basically took a base photo that i liked i took another photo taken at the same time slightly different exposure with the darker sky stuck that on top masked that in with the ai quick mask and then created a new stamp layer and did some edits it's super powerful super easy and it's honestly really quick to do here in on one because of the powerful masking and of course the layers capability is what this is all about so that's an example of how i would use layers in on one in this particular case as i showed for an exposure blend you could do this for you know you could go add another layer to this if you wanted to and do more things there's lots of different reasons you would use layers all i was saying at the beginning of the video is i haven't had a lot of need for it for most of my edits but exposure blend is a great need for it and of course sky replacement i'll do a video about that as well but that's an example of how i would use the layers capability to build an exposure blend here in on one let me turn these off and you can see we started with that base photo we added a new layer for a new sky masked it in and then we created a stamped layer and did some edits and that's our final edit that's how an exposure blend works and on one hope it gives you some help and some ideas maybe some inspiration for your own photos thanks for watching my friends i'll catch you in the next video you guys take care of yourselves and audios

Channel: Jim Nix

Views: 1,433

Keywords: Jim Nix, travel, photography, post processing, editing, training, tutorial, photo editor, photo editing, On1 Photo RAW

Id: KZ8bzIHJY98

Length: 10min 40sec (640 seconds)

Published: Tue May 11 2021