Exposure Blending in Photoshop with Sean Bagshaw

Exposure Blending- Luminosity Masks and Smart Objects
It seems topics in photography ebb and flow often, and lately, I have received a lot of inquiries about exposure blending. My usual response is, "I don't do it that often, so I'm afraid I can't be much help." While that may be true, it is a horrible response that is not helpful to anyone who asks. So, I called in a special guest to help us al lout with exposure blending, Sean Bagshaw.
For those of you who know Sean, you know that he is an eloquent educator with a real talent for explaining difficult topics in a way anyone can understand. For those of you who may not know Sean, he uses the Tony Kuyper Luminosity masking panels and creates incredible education to go along with them. Sean is a legend in the photo education community, and it is an extreme pleasure to have him here on f.64 Academy to explain some of his exposure blending techniques.
Sean and I met at Out of Oregon in October and from day one we hit it off discussing all the nerdy things in Photoshop that we are passionate about. I will admit, I was a little intimidated by him when we first shook hands. It's kind of like meeting someone you have heard so many amazing things about, but when you get the chance to meet them face to face, you kind of freeze up. It didn't take long, however, for us to dive into some heavy Photoshop conversation.
While we were in the car driving the Oregon Coast, Sean thought it would be an excellent idea if we could collaborate on a project. After deliberating on several topics, we came up with two that would be mutually beneficial to our audiences.
So today, on f.64 Academy, you get not one, but two excellent free tutorials to spruce up your Friday morning. Sean will show you some of his Exposure Blending techniques on my channel, and I will be showing him some Color grading techniques on his channel. This collaboration was a lot of fun and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
Sean will show you two exposure blending methods in this video. One is an effortless blend, and the second has a few more intricate details that need a more delicate hand with a Luminosity Mask and some Smart Objects. This one is great! Enjoy :)

[@Ronin760]

I have seen several tutorials on exposure blending, but the tip Sean gave about opening the images as smart objects and then adjusting the images after making the mask made this the best. Brilliant! Great instruction and example. Additionally Blake, I appreciate that you sought someone outside your expertise to bring us the best instruction. Kudos to you both. Thank you for this.

[@f64Academy]

Sean is awesome and we enjoyed this collaboration a lot. Much to learn from one another.

[@tokyoinpics9346]

Why is some channels never show in my feed? I've done so many searches for "exposure blending" and constantly get the same stuff which I have never, ever understood. Finally, today, after I chase down a video about selective darkening of exposure and this video pops up in the suggested list. This is video is brilliant. The first way to do it beyond simple (and I'm kicking myself for having thought of it myself) and can get a lot of use. As for the second one ... the icing on the cake. That was what I was exactly looking for, 100%. Many, many, many thanks to both you and Sean!!

[@f64Academy]

Awesome! Well now subscribe to us and our new videos will show up in your feed 😁 Glad we could help.

[@tokyoinpics9346]

@@f64Academy I subscribed already! And I hope you don't mind, but I embedded this video in an article on my blog.

[@eobiri]

A combination of the best minds in photography!

[@f64Academy]

Thanks so much, we had a lot of fun with it.

[@rlfisher]

HI Blake! Hi Sean! Even two years later, there's still something to be learned from two of my heroes!

[@ashvarma2486]

Excellent tutorial. Many thanks for sharing.

[@f64Academy]

Or pleasure!

[@Randyrocker1]

You both are classy gentlemen, and it's great to learn from both of you in the same day!

[@SammySantiagoIrizarry]

Wow! Thanks for bringing Sean and explaining Exposure Blending. Excellent Video!!!!

[@guillermogiannini]

Thanks for this tutorial. I loved seeing my instructors together. I've been following Blake for a long time. He is a guru, as well as entertaining and a very honest person. And I thank you too Sean since your videos are also very clear and interesting. Warm regards to both of you

[@f64Academy]

Thanks so much for all of your support. We sincerely appreciate you for your years of feedback and warm comments :)

[@johnpouw3352]

This is simply awesome, I have been doing blending but always ended up with Halos and spent hours trying to get rid of them with varying success. Thanks so much for his, amazing :) John Pouw NZ

[@chrisschindler7634]

Exactly what I needed! I’m a photoshop newbie and knew there had to be a better way.

[@SteveMillerhuntingforfood]

We all do it differently, and there's many, many ways to do it. That's what "work-flow" is. Our way of getting to the end product. Thanks so much for this collaboration. Looking forward to seeing more.

[@f64Academy]

Thank you for taking the time to watch us! You rock!

[@SeanBagshaw]

Cheers Steve! I couldn't agree more.

[@lukeventers4755]

Thanks for the video, Blake.

[@rogerwalton8160]

Excellent - clear and effective.

[@pauldouglas864]

What a great job and great camaraderie. It was a pleasure watching you two go back and forth. Let's have more like this. I'm as eager as you were to go try this out. Thanks a lot. Just found myself subscribing to your, and Sean's, KZbin channels.

[@eoslove2022]

Love this! I use Blake's ƒ64 panels for the color grading side of editing but now have incorporated the latest Lumenzia panels to isolate image luminosity zones for treatment after ACR. IMO, these two tools allow me to master the power of Photoshop without putting in 20 years of hard won empirical knowledge! Thanks guys.

[@keithpinn152]

Great video Blake. I really enjoy seeing how each creator would approach the same problem but from different angles. Keep safe! . . . Keith Pinn (Canada)

[@jamiebuzil3460]

Great tip to open 2 smart objects and blend. Thank you!

[@pbziegler]

Loved watching the two of you sharing some of what I have learned from each of you. As others have said, Blake and Sean are two of the best teachers on the internet.

[@f64Academy]

Thanks, Phillip :) We appreciate you and your words, you are too kind!

[@pbziegler]

f64 Academy just putting out my opinion. No kindness about it.

[@SeanBagshaw]

Thanks, Phillip! I think it may have been you who put the seed for a cross-over in my mind a while back.

[@simplebyjd7627]

I am excited that I found your channel today! I look forward to using these techniques with my portraits as well as checking out your other videos!

[@f64Academy]

Awesome! Thanks for checking it out and keep in touch!

[@chepo1956]

Hey Rudis, Jose from Puerto Rico. How's it going man? Wonderful tutorial in this video. To be honest with you, I bought your panel and I bought the TK8 panel also for luminosity masking. I've been playing with both techniques: Your Blend-if method and Sean's luminosity masking method. I guess it boils down to what you need at a certain moment with your photos. Both of you guys are gurus! The wonderful part for me is that I can combine both of your methods. I also forgot to mention that I also bought Greg Benz's and Aaron Dowlings Luminosity panels too. Greg Benz made one called Lumienza and Aaron made one called ADP Lumiflow. You can probably call me crazy, but I love to have different weapons in my arsenal. Take care man!

[@f64Academy]

Nice! Heck yeah! Just like guns, you can never have too many 🤣🤣🤣

[@photonsonpixels]

Brilliant! Thank you Blake and Sean.

[@f64Academy]

It was our pleasure, thank you for watching it!

[@gordroberts53]

Outstanding collaboration! I have not been satisfied with the Adobe approach to HDR and now look forward to developing my own process for exposure blending using either or both of ZS6 or TK7 panels. Thanks for sharing!

[@f64Academy]

Thank you! We are glad you enjoyed it.

[@CipherKilledit]

Nice upload! I feel it.

[@bodywise007]

This is a superb video. Probably on of the best videos of any of these series. You learn from each other. As an aside you never quite mention the derivation of the f/64. They were the original masters most especially Ansel Adams and Brett Weston to follow. They could only dream of what we have at our disposal today. I would love to see your version of Sean's second example.

[@patryklau]

Great collab! I have been following Sean for some time and when your video on color popped up on his channel, I had to watch it straight away. You got a new sub.. keep up the great work!

[@f64Academy]

YESSS! thank you so much! I really appreciate it.

[@petervandenbroek273]

Nice to see the two of you teaching each other. what I have learned is that there are "more roads that in the end lead to Rome" (I hope you know what I mean). I find it a pity, that I haven't learned about colour theory, when I was a young guy. Understanding it at my age is one thing, but applying is another. Thank you both for inspiring me!

[@SeanBagshaw]

Couldn't agree more that many roads lead to Rome. For me, that's one of the aspects of this stuff that makes it so fun. You can try different things and create your own road. Photoshop is very open-ended that way. Creative choices are awesome!

[@shupingyin8082]

Great vid cheers to both of you ❤

[@f64Academy]

Thanks 😁

[@conradearnest5423]

Thanks for this. I've been doing this for a little while and thought the basic overview helped connect a few extra dots that will improve my editing a bit more. Cheers!

[@f64Academy]

Awesome! We are glad you learned some things you could take away.

[@gr8_22-15]

Excellent! He and Nick page are great at this.

[@SteveStrummerUK]

Wonderful stuff gents. I can't be the only one thinking a video featuring you two guys with Greg Benz would be absolutely fascinating.

[@f64Academy]

That would be a great addition!

[@3atmey]

Just stumbled on this and man, we need more of these collaboration videos. Cheers.

[@f64Academy]

We had some fun! It was good for a change of pace.

[@larryrudnick1519]

Great collaboration - thanks to you and Sean. I'm already a subscriber to both!

[@f64Academy]

Awesome! We appreciate you :)

[@SeanBagshaw]

Thanks Larry!

[@tlmly]

Both of your videos are great, and I enjoyed watching them. I think the three side by side examples at the end of this video confirm some of my observations on exposure blending. By way of background I use Tony Kuyper’s TK7 panel and have watched most of Sean’s videos. I have tried the exposure blending technique Sean discussed here and in other videos. In most cases I find using Lightroom’s exposure blending provides a better blended image. With the caveat that I know I am looking at a downsized image from an online video, it looks to me as though the left .dng image from the LR blending has better clarity and more saturated color, even in the non-blended (lower) areas. If I have a stationary subject and a tripod I will almost always take bracketed exposures on the theory that if the middle exposure is perfect I can use it. If not, I have other options. I frequently find that even when my middle exposure has a proper histogram a LR “HDR” has more detail and provides a better starting place than the RAW middle exposure, similar to what I think I see in your example.

[@speedways1]

This is awesome, my two go to guys for processing images. There is not an image that I process that I don't utilize both of your techniques and panels (TK panel) and (ZS6, Palette Effects 2). Blake , you know I'm one of your longest supporters and have always wondered why you didn't choose to exposure blend, but I think now you may want to play with it some more. I can see both of you adding each others panels. Thanks to you and Sean for this collaboration. Happy shooting!

[@f64Academy]

Yep, I know! It's great and Sean taught it so well. I never learned to do it so easily, I learned to do it with LM's alone and the result never really matched up to my liking. The painted mask/ LM/ Smart Object is a phenomenal and very practical approach. I'm sold!

[@FromePublishing]

Smart objects thats the key

[@stephencarmickle]

Excellent tutorial

[@f64Academy]

He's a good one!

[@dude157]

this was really helpful, thank you.

[@EricBier]

Please do a tutorial on using Lightroom HDR and other adjustments in Lightroom to process this image and compare differences in quality between Lightroom and Photoshop. Thank you for this excellent tutorial. I appreciate your ability to demonstrate in detail and clearly explain the procedure you use.

[@SeanBagshaw]

It's on my KZbin to-do list now Eric. Thanks for the suggestion.

[@RiffStills]

Awesome video guys. I took a lot from this, excited to implement this knowledge!

[@f64Academy]

Thanks :) We had some fun!

[@SouthernOregonCoast]

Late to this game. I am a huge fan of Sean (and also a friend of his) trust me - he is extraordinary in everything he does. It would be interesting to see Sean fine tune the same image using TK's precision masks. The 50% luminosity threshold is a pretty arbitrary threshold but serves as a good learning tool.

[@AlexFeldstein]

Excellent! I follow Sean and saw his video first. Sean uses TKActions for all his luminosity masks (as you most probably know). They really make mask editing immensely powerful. He turned TKActions off for this video to simplify, and I think he did a good job of showing the technique. Now subscribed now to yours. Cheers!

[@f64Academy]

Thanks for the subscribe. I hope I can measure up to all the awesome info Sean provides :)

[@SteveMillerhuntingforfood]

@@f64Academy LOL

[@tinagiles2368]

Very nice and it could be a fast one after a bit of practice! Cheers!

[@MaciejMarkiewicz]

It is really cool and funny to see you both collaborating :) Blake Rudis and Sean Bagshaw :) Since years I learned so much from both of you :)

[@f64Academy]

haha, I know right! About time we got together!

[@MaciejMarkiewicz]

@@f64Academy keep it coming :)

[@jonfischer9826]

The smart object move tip was a welcome bonus to an excellent video. Thanks Blake & Sean!

[@DTL5555]

Hi, thanks for awesome tutorial. I have one simple question for you Blake, but first I would like to describe my “problem”. As you know Adobe LR has some “issues” with color interpretation for Nikon RAW files, and probably some other manufacturers. I’m using D500 mostly for action and street photography but also some landscapes. Color processing in camera is Adobe RGB. I noticed that in majority of my photos that isn’t big issue, but in some landscapes, especially those which I took during midday when sun is high, that could be problem with blue color interpretation, even if my photos were correctly exposed (slightly under exposed, spot or CW metering). Problem is even bigger if there is line between sky and sea with distinction of blue color. So I tried to open that kind of images in Nikon’s ViewNX-D and make two TIFF files from same RAW file, one TIFF well underexposed (-1) and other TIFF overexposed (+1). I noticed that that kind of TIFF file directly exported from ViewNX-D to Photoshop is not in Adobe RGB profile any more, but in Nikons own color profile which PS recognized correctly, and consequently color representation is much more accurate than one which LR recognizes. Especially in blue spectrum. So my question to you is your opinion of this method for exporting RAW to PS, and could technique described in this tutorial will be effective with this method. You know, sometimes I don’t have my tripod with me to make separate exact exposures, and honestly sometimes I just simply forget exposure bracketing as an option. Thanks for your time to eventually read and answer this question.

[@maxsmirnoff8200]

Re: the comment at 21:20, you can convert blend if into a mask once you turn the layer into smart object, and paint on that mask Don't know if the mask adjusts itself every time you change the blend-if sliders.

[@johnhjic2]

This look real interesting method. One question I was very quickly playing with this I did not see a way of aliening smart OBJ in CC like you can aline layers? is there a way?

[@xgreenjacket]

John Hughes pretty sure when you drag and drop the images, it does an auto align

[@barryashenhurst2071]

No Blake, "I tried it and I didn't like it" is a very good answer.

[@f64Academy]

It didn't work for Green Eggs and Ham, he ended up looking it, lol

[@es0terra]

This is excellent. I follow both you and Sean Bagshaw closely. I also use the latest version of the Tony Kuyper Panels. One question I had, and maybe you can answer, is what exposure brackets did Sean Bagshaw use for the second more difficult blend? -1 and +1 exposures? Thanks in advance.

[@SeanBagshaw]

Hi Chris! I don't recall what the exact exposure compensation was for those two exposures because I shoot to the histogram not the meter setting. However, the darker exposure turned out to be 0.4 seconds and the brighter exposure landed at 1.6 seconds...so, yes, in this case, two stops apart. :-)

[@es0terra]

​@@SeanBagshaw Thanks! In your Lake Bled complete workflow tutorial that I purchased, you expose three images in one of your examples, and you paint in your mask using the brush at 50% opacity in overlay mode. In this video, you painted it in normal mode at 100%.... is one method preferred over the other? Is overlay mode suited more for very complicated transitions? Thanks, and sorry for all the questions!

[@SeanBagshaw]

@@es0terra Just slightly different methods for different situations but with a similar goal. It is good to have a big tool belt and then use the tool or combination of tools that get the job done. Overlay mode keeps the painting just in the tones lighter or darker than 50% gray in the mask. Painting in the normal mode allows a soft paintbrush to feather across tones. In the Lake Bled example, I was trying to create a mask with little to no feathering and in this example, a more feathered mask works well. :-D

[@Yalelax]

Brilliant approach. Quick question: Could the same result have been obtained with a soft ND grad filter and thus save the time before the computer? Indeed, has exposure blending obviated the need for ND grad filters which of course are costly and need to be taken into the field?

[@f64Academy]

Possibly, ND grads can be helpful, but not always the perfect solution. There are some super wide angle lenses that wouldn't work for like the Sony 12-24 so tis would be the only method.

[@user-vb7fu5pi5i]

Has anyone got the written instructions for this excellent technique? Or know where I might find them. Thanks.

[@howardharrison3498]

Here's a totally inane question for Sean [sorry]... What font did you use to customize your LR/Identity Plate/Module Picker Buttons? Thanks [and apologies] in advance...

[@wilsongoodrich8590]

I'm having a problem creating the luminosity mask, when I hit control button it doesn't create the mask. What am I doing wrong?

[@f64Academy]

If you are on a Mac or CMD

[@wilsongoodrich8590]

MAC@@f64Academy

[@bretthundley9418]

Is that a Mahomes Jersey?

[@f64Academy]

It is 😁 signed too 😁