Photo Plus - UK (2020-09)

40 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com

PROJECT 1

THE MISSION

Bracket exposures

then merge for a

more balanced

landscape sunset

Time needed

1-2 hours

Skill level

Intermediate

Kit needed

• Tripod


• Photoshop CC

Bracket and blend

Capture and craft balanced sunset scenic images with Peter Travers

01 STEADY AS SHE GOES

You’ll need your camera on a tripod for

sharp shots, plus it makes it easier to

blend your Raw exposures seamlessly for

the single HDR Raw photo. We’ve used a

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens to zoom

into the scene and best parts of the sky.

04 ADOBE CAMERA RAW

Open your three Raw images in Adobe

Camera Raw (or Lightroom) and edit them

consistently, so their colour temperature is

the same. Make tweaks to the Contrast,

Highlights and Shadows, but don’t change

the exposure of any of the pictures.

02 GET SET TO BRACKET

In AEB, in our Canon camera’s red menu,

we set up to take three Raw images; one at

a standard exposure value (0 EV), then

one brighter exposure at +2-stops EV for

the dark land, and one darker exposure at

-2-stops EV for the brighter sky.

05 RAW HDR TIME

With your three Raw photos selected,

right-click and select Merge to HDR to

create your HDR Raw image. You can then

further edit the sliders to boost the image,

we added digital grad filters and radial

filters to warm up the skyline slightly.

03 THREE EXPOSURES

We shot in Manual mode at f/8 for good

depth of field in the scene. For our ISO

we set it to 200. Our three bracketed

exposures were then captured at f/8,

ISO200 and with shutter speeds of 1/60

sec, 1/250 sec and 1/15 sec.

06 BOOST THE COLOURS

Open your Raw image into the main

Photoshop workspace for final touches.

Duplicate the layer and in Image>

Adjustments>Photo Filter we added a

Warming Filter (81) at 50%, and boosted

the red colours in Hue/Saturation to finish.

STEP BY STEP CAPTURE IMAGES TO CREATE HDR SUNSETS

First bracket your exposures in camera, then edit your Raw images to reveal their full colourful potential

hen you’re shooting a

scene at sunset and

don’t want to bother

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By bracketing exposures in the

AEB (Auto Exposure Bracketing)

mode of your Canon camera, you

can capture three Raw photos;

one standard exposure, one

underexposure for the bright sky,

and one overexposure and darker

land area. With your three Raw

images, it’s then easy to use the

Merge to HDR Raw feature in

Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom

in Photoshop. With your HDR Raw

image, we can then edit to reveal

more tones, detail and colours, as

well as adding digital ND grad

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areas. We’ve also edited our JPEG

image in Photoshop using layers

and a warm orange Photo Filter,

plus boosted the reds for a

brilliant, balanced, sunset

landscape photograph.

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