Expanding the range of your sunrise and sunset images using luminosity masks and exposure blending

posted Friday, August 18, 2017 at 3:30 PM EDT

Do you want to have a brilliant sunrise or sunset image without needing to use HDR? Luminosity masks might be a great way to cleanly blend exposures and expand the visual dynamic range of your photos.

Photographer and educator Jimmy McIntyre has created a new tutorial for blending sunrise or sunset exposures using luminosity masking. You can blend exposures using something like HDR as well, but this can often lead to somewhat unnatural results. If you want to have a more natural-looking image, you need to blend exposures manually, which can be very tricky. Luminosity masking comes in by allowing precise selections based on tonal range, making the blending process easier while producing clean results.