The photo on the left was the best shot, but the mother of the bride was looking away from the camera. Because I knew I liked the picture except for this one problem, I hunted through the rest of the similar shots and found the photo on the right. Ordinarily, it would be a throw-away, particularly because the bride is blinking. But the mother of the bride’s expression is perfect.

Good shot, but mother of the bride is looking away from the camera

Mother of the bride is smiling at the camera, but bride's eyes are closed

So now that I have both pictures that I want to combine, how do I do it? First, I open both images in Photoshop (for this example, I will be referring to CS4, but the same technique can be used in CS3). Using the Move tool, I drag one image on top of the other image. This will create a second layer, giving the second image two layers, one with each original image.

Or, if you are using Lightroom, all of the above can be skipped by selecting both photos, and clicking the menu item Photo->Edit In->Open as Layers in Photoshop…

Now that both images are stacked as separate layers, I select both layers in Photoshop and click the menu item Edit->Auto-Align Layers. This is a crucial step in making sure everything blends nicely between both layers when I merge them later. Next, I make sure that the image I want to keep (the left image above) is the top layer, and I add a layer mask (by clicking on the rectangle with the small circle icon at the bottom of the Layers palette). I make sure that black is selected as the foreground color.

With the top layer selected, I use the paint brush tool to paint the photo in the places that I want the bottom layer to show through. In this case, I painted in the mother-of-the-bride’s head. The head from the bottom layer appeared in the top layer, creating the fixed photo below:

Fixed portrait with everyone looking great

If the two photos you are merging have only small differences, the above method can be a great and more natural looking alternative the more traditional approach of selecting from one image and pasting into another.

HDR (or High Dynamic Range for the uninitiated) has been sweeping the digital photography world for the past couple of years, mostly thanks to some new software that makes creating these images easy. The goal is simple: use several shots of the same scene at varying exposures to create a single image with a greater dynamic range (the range between pure white and pure black) than your camera can capture. Unfortunately, this goal is usually not achieved with results that look correct to the human eye. The final images appear flat and with low contrast, and the colors tend look almost cartoonish. This can be overcome to some degree by increasing the black level and overall contrast – however correcting the color issue is difficult.

The solution is to go back to digital basics. Instead of letting software automatically combine 3 or more shots at different exposures, combine 2 or more images yourself in an application such as Adobe Photoshop using stacked layers and various blending techniques. Photographer Glenn Randall covers some of these techniques and the principals behind them in his recent article for Outdoor Photographer magazine. The images below demonstrate using image blending verses an HDR software approach.

High Dynamic Range photo of Zion National Park, combining three images shot at different exposures

The above image was created by blending three photographs of different exposures together using software. Once this was done, the contrast was increased significantly. However, as you can see, the colors still look unnatural, with too much yellow in the rock. In addition the two rock faces in the background are washed out.

The image below combines two the the images used to create the previous image. The foreground and mountain were exposed with no evaluative metering compensation. The sky was exposed in a second shot at -1 stop, and blended into the foreground using a graduated mask. The result is more natural looking.

Two images of Zion National Park blended together using a gradient mask

Some people like the aesthetic of HDR images, and that is great. It brings a new artistic flair to the world of digital photography. But since I am usually trying to create a final photograph that accurately portrays what I see in nature, using the blended approach often works better for me.