Merging multiple exposures luminosity masking

Hi,

I just wondered if anyone knew how to simulate or reproduce a process used in photography called luminosity masking? Luminosity masking is generally carried out in photoshop and allows the merging of multiple exposures (usually 3 - 5 brackets exposure values)

I know about the technique in general, but I don’t have much experience with it myself. Maybe you could tell us more about what you want to do and there may be another way to achieve the results you want (e.g., the Tone Map node: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/compositing/types/color/tone_map.html#tone-map-node).

Hi and thank you for the reply. While watching videos regarding architectural photography it appears that photographers will blend multiple exposures to create a realistic balanced image. please see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFr4AlU4Mew&t=196s I would like to try and adopt this approach in while rendering and compositing in blender… I will try tone mapping and see where I get to

What you are talking about doing is not Luminosity Masking… that’s a far more complicated editing technique that a photographer uses to enhance certain details, textures, shadows, etc. in an image. The stacking of multiple bracketed exposures extends the dynamic range. Unless I’m mistaken, using Filmic, the dynamic range of a render shouldn’t be limited at all. The output to a JPG file however, will be. What you want, is to render out to a RAW file… one that can be post processed using all the standard techniques photographers use. I don’t know how, or if you can save a rendering to a RAW file… seem’s like it should be possible.

Hi Dave,
I am definately interested in luminosity masking as I do it at the moment in photoshop to enhance my photographs… and yes it is a complicated way of editing. I want to be able to blend 3 brackets, for example, 1 braket exposed for exterior, 1 bracket for an overall and one for shadows. The way I do it in photoshop is by creating a mask for each which enables me to seemlessly blend what i want form each of the images

. Brakcets attached of a reworked evermotion scene all rendered in blender. I used the filmic correction above and saved the files out as 16bit tiff which worked well for photoshop. Being able to do this in blender would be awesome. Thank you for taking the time to reply to me. Its much appreciated.

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Can you please check this and provide feedback?