An essential component of the procedure for using 'Colors/Exposure' to add positive exposure compensation to images with dark shadows and midtones needs to be explicitly mentioned: Not only is the high bit depth GIMP's 'Colors/Exposure' operation unbounded at floating point precision — layer masks are also unbounded. Exposure Blend recipe: made 0 EV, +1½ EV, +3 EV from raw Exposure Blended in GIMP RL deconvolution (G'MIC) Anisotropic Smoothing (G'MIC) Median filter: red channel 3x3 and then 5x5 Median filter: blue channel 3x3 USM 30, 0.20, 0 USM 1, 0.50, 3. Photoreceptor recipe: Tone Mapped to Reinhard'05 in Luminance HDR (previously Qtpfsgui).
Here are the two exposures, loaded into GIMP. I am going to sandwich these on different layers. The method I usually use is Exposure Blending – blending two exposures together in software like Photoshop or GIMP – as it is quick and gives good, natural results. Here’s how it’s done. Take Your Shot(s) The first thing you need to do is take your photographs.
In this photo editing tutorial, I show you an easy technique for blending multiple exposures in GIMP with images taken using exposure bracketing. This simple trick allows you to bring out the best parts of your image exposures – including underexposed, over exposed, and normally exposed elements. No plugin is required for this technique!
This is a great introduction to exposure blending and exposure bracketing. I recommend Googling exposure bracketing using your camera make and model to find out how to perform this technique when taking pictures.
Downloads
Download the latest version of GIMP 2.10:
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Download the Photos Used In This Tutorial From Flickr:
Under Exposed Photo – https://flic.kr/p/2hs3QVM
Over Exposed Photo – https://flic.kr/p/2hs6uX7
Normally Exposed Photo – https://flic.kr/p/2hs7vWq
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https://www.udemy.com/gimp-photo-editing/
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The human eye is very good at adapting to complicated lighting situations. The iris can open up to see details in shadowy areas, and it can close down to avoid the pain of bright light.
A single image from a camera, however, is limited to one exposure setting at a time, and the film or sensor may not be able to retain details in both light and dark extremes.
If you take multiple exposures, however, this can be blended later for excellent detail over a very wide range of exposure. Many cameras offer an automatic 'bracketing' feature to help with this task, though any manually-adustable camera can be used as well.
Take at least two shots; one shot which is exposed brightly enough to capture the details in dark areas, and one shot which is exposed darkly enough to keep the details in bright regions. If you're using a tripod, bracketing for shutter duration is the better course, but bracketing by aperture is usually acceptable. These exposures may be two or more full stops apart.
There are several ways of making a 'mask' which will combine the two images nicely; we'll only try one such method here. This method works in most types of exposure-blending situations.
In your photo editor, copy and align the two exposures, with the darker-looking image above the lighter-looking one. Create a layer mask for the darker image. Select the entire lighter image, and copy it into the mask of the darker image. It should appear as a grayscale copy.
The mask allows shadowy details to appear, while suppressing the overexposed bright areas. However, a closer look may show that there are sharpness problems near contrasty edges. Select the newly made mask and apply a small blur, such as a three-pixel gaussian blur, to smooth out the transitions from light to dark exposures. If the blur is too large, halos will appear along contrasting edges.
Gimp Blend Two Images
Once you've got the right blending, you will likely notice that the images have lost some of their colorful lustre. This is because color saturation is related to the overall range of the exposure, and blending across the expanded exposure range has not expanded the color range as well. Flatten the image, and boost your overall color saturation to taste.