This is an exposure blend using Luminar 4 which is an amazing piece of magic software.
Up until now I have been totally old school in using nd grads to control dynamic range. I always found exposure blending to be overwhelming in trying to use such things as luminosity masks and tedious blending around things such as trees. But I still bracketed in the hope that in the future I would get better. Most people I think are buying Luminar to use it’s sky replacement feature which I feel is somewhat unethical. Some people will say art is art and all is fair but I’m still old school in that regard too.
It’s extremely simple. You load your FG image. Then you load your sky exposure and drag the horizon slider all the way to the left which aligns the two images and click apply. The only problem I see so far is that you have to convert the sky to jpeg. If it keeps working this good, the ND’s are going to be collecting dust.
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
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Clearing storms are always the best weather for winter landscapes, and you have done a great job of capturing these dynamic conditions. your processing of exposure and contrast has created a very clean and crisp look. I especially like the duality of the sunlit and shaded trees on each side. The channel of open water in the river doesn’t hurt either.
The blend looks great here. Given that your horizon consists of treetops, Luminar looks like it did a very good job with the blend. Hopefully you saved some exposure brackets of the lenticular clouds and lupines from this past spring in New Hampshire
I threw my Grad ND’s away 7 or 8 years ago when I cast my lot in with TK Luminosity Masks for exposure blending. Before you throw yours away for Luminar, I would think hard about the need to have the sky image be a Jpeg, this could have significant limitations in some cases. If you can work around that and get it to use a raw file for the sky, then it certainly looks like a promising piece of software for blending.
Thanks @Ed_McGuirk, @Jim_Gavin, @Nathan_Klein. Ed, I’m assuming that after listening to future input from photogs , that there will be a future update that will allow the raw sky file.
This is fantastic! What beautiful winter landscape image. I must say the blend and processing such a wide dynamic range is pretty impressive.
The only suggestion I can offer would be a slight shave off the right; perhaps just enough to remove the dark, vertical branches on the UR edge. If anything, the trees on the right are ever so slightly heavy, relative to the rest of the scene. But that’s getting pretty picky…
Mike,
Dang, I might have to go back and recheck my images from that trip to see if I have any that look like this and can be saved. The cloud laden sky is flat out fantastic and I love that light kissing the trees on the left side of the Blackwater River. I am totally old school and would never replace the sky. I just think that belongs in the photo art category and not landscape photography. Ok, I am off my soapbox. Lovely winter scene. Hopefully we can catch some conditions like this if we can head out there next month.
An absolutely beautiful winter scene, Mike. I love the line the creek provides, and that light on the trees to the left. I don’t see how this could be any better.
Mike, late to the party but no nits whatsoever from me. This is just amazing. I really like how the light on the left bank guides the eyes in.
Good to know about Luminar although it’s a shame about the sky JPEG. I have stopped using grad ND for a while but that’s just because I have not been limited by dynamic range… Maybe I am not critical enough about noise? I mean I shoot at ISO 3200 regularly for wildlife. That perhaps has contributed to some kind of numbness towards noise?
Mike, this is a great, “cold and snowy” view. The blending looks fine. At NPN sizes, I don’t see any jpeg issues in this sky, but recognize the desire for the best possible file. The river winding through the snow is a great leading line.
