Fairly simple process really… I used Photoshop of course.
It’s a composition of two shots first of all, bracketed exposures so they’re very close to lined up (even though it was handheld). I lined them up in 2 layers with the sky on top, and then carefully selected (feathered) and erased the stadium portion to bring through the brighter exposure. Basically, this is equivalent to a graduated ND filter.
After that I copied the layers to a new layer, overlaid it, and flattened it to one layer (on top of the 2 other layers still there). Then I applied a 100 px radius Gaussian blur to this new overlaid layer. Following that I set the layer blending mode to “Soft Light” (though you can try others as well, I just used what looked good) and the opacity to around 35% or until the saturation looked ok.
After that, it’s just fine tuning. Adjust the levels and color and saturation (which I obviously boosted a little) on the sky and foreground layers, and apply some unsharp mask, until you’re happy with how it looks.
I obviously went for saturated and well-lit in this one, and I think it turned out pretty well. The key was the double bracketed exposure for high dynamic range.
This is what I consider “Real HDR.” That fake stuff just doesn’t cut it, and looks horrible and unnatural. Generally you can bracket shots and selectively compose areas of correct exposure as a whole (like sky and foreground), which results in much better-looking HDR images that are closer to what the eye sees. This is the same idea as Grad ND filters, and it’s been used for decades.
Let me know if you have any more questions. Basically just try compositing layers, both blurred and otherwise, and blending them with different opacities and blend modes to see what kind of effects you can achieve. I’ve applied this successfully to non-composite images as well and it works great, but the 2- or 3-exposure layering can achieve very dramatic results. Good luck!
Hey I’m a part of Cal Band and i can tell you that this picture is AWESOME. Doesn’t matter what you did to it — makes me proud to have been on the field when you snapped this shot. Go Bears!
No guess what you did, but the colors are great.
Any chance you can share your method on this one?
Fairly simple process really… I used Photoshop of course.
It’s a composition of two shots first of all, bracketed exposures so they’re very close to lined up (even though it was handheld). I lined them up in 2 layers with the sky on top, and then carefully selected (feathered) and erased the stadium portion to bring through the brighter exposure. Basically, this is equivalent to a graduated ND filter.
After that I copied the layers to a new layer, overlaid it, and flattened it to one layer (on top of the 2 other layers still there). Then I applied a 100 px radius Gaussian blur to this new overlaid layer. Following that I set the layer blending mode to “Soft Light” (though you can try others as well, I just used what looked good) and the opacity to around 35% or until the saturation looked ok.
After that, it’s just fine tuning. Adjust the levels and color and saturation (which I obviously boosted a little) on the sky and foreground layers, and apply some unsharp mask, until you’re happy with how it looks.
I obviously went for saturated and well-lit in this one, and I think it turned out pretty well. The key was the double bracketed exposure for high dynamic range.
This is what I consider “Real HDR.” That fake stuff just doesn’t cut it, and looks horrible and unnatural. Generally you can bracket shots and selectively compose areas of correct exposure as a whole (like sky and foreground), which results in much better-looking HDR images that are closer to what the eye sees. This is the same idea as Grad ND filters, and it’s been used for decades.
Let me know if you have any more questions. Basically just try compositing layers, both blurred and otherwise, and blending them with different opacities and blend modes to see what kind of effects you can achieve. I’ve applied this successfully to non-composite images as well and it works great, but the 2- or 3-exposure layering can achieve very dramatic results. Good luck!
Hey I’m a part of Cal Band and i can tell you that this picture is AWESOME. Doesn’t matter what you did to it — makes me proud to have been on the field when you snapped this shot. Go Bears!