Blending two images togheter

[Viking]

Im going to shoot some interior shoot next week. I *think* that the lightning will be very hard. So I think I need to blend two or three images togheter to not get blown windows and so on. I would love to see, hear and get pointed to pages that can help me to do the ultimate blend.. I did try to blend a few images, but the result was not very very good. And look so, photoshoped. Maybe just becous we dont see that kind of dynamic range normal. I dont know. I will do a new try tomorrow. Until then, please give me adive. :)



edit:
http://www.imagematics.com/Resources/Interior_photo1.htm

Dont the finiashes picture look strange, with all that dynamic range? but it looks, very good. :)

[Frost]

Here is a link just to take a look at this software. It's a free download and I used it and works quite well: http://www.photoacute.com/studio/index.html

In the 2nd example is a church interior with the photo exposed to show the detail of the stained glass window well, but the sides of the interior and the rest of the image is way underexposed. 2nd shot shows the interior well exposed and detailed, but now the stained glass window is way overexposed and has virtually no detail. 3rd photo shows the interior well defined AND the stained glass windows as it appeared (correctly exposed) in the first photo.

[digismile]

All the different techniques involve merging multiple exposures exposed to the various highs and lows. Don't know if you are using CS2, but you can also look at this link, which describes the new HDR in CS2 (specifically for blending the kind of layers you are speaking of).

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/hdr.shtml

The blending of layers can be done a variety of ways, but the real trick is getting good layers to blend. My only advice is to shoot in manual mode. Then adjust your exposures by changing the shutter speed only. Otherwise you end up with a different DOF in each photo. To ensure identical focus, use manual focus as well.

If the only part that need fixing is the windows in a indoor photo, you can often get away with just two layers and using a layer mask.

Regards,
Brad

[Shay Stephens]

You can use large sheets of ND filter to cover windows, but really, blown windows for interior work look nice too. I would suggest blown windows. Look at a lot of interior design magazines. Mostly blown windows and it looks great.