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Many of the exposure we make with our digital cameras are a compromise. In truth, we would really like to give more exposure to one area and perhaps less to another. Now there are a lot of ways we can achieve this and this type of manipulation probably accounts for the majority of the work we do to our photographs. However, it's not always easy is it? Sometimes when it is possible it then becomes very time consuming in our image editor.

Photoshop has some great tools to help us, but here is one that does not seem to get used that often.

When shooting a scene, set your camera to auto bracketed exposures either 2 or 3 will do and also set the continuous setting (motor drive). Now frame up your image and squeeze the shutter button when ready. Your camera will fire off 2-3 images in quick succession that will be almost identical. We say almost, because even the smallest of movement will effect these images making each one slightly different. So how will be use these images if they don't line up? This is vital to enable us to use the best part of the two images we choose. The answer lies in Photoshop's align tools and here we demonstrate how good this is.

Take a look first at the two images we shot, we have some nice clouds in the darker of the two images, but the shadows are too dark. In the second image behave a great foreground still wet after a rain storm, but a boring sky. Now take a look at a sample of the combined images below these two.

You can clearly see below as we look at both images together that while they are almost in register, for a photo quality image they may as well be a mile apart

Using the align tools we can first align the two layers and then blend the two, it's quick and easy.

Download our readme file HERE