About the Image(s)

This one isn’t an exhibition image by any stretch but it proved to be a learning experience. The original bracket was made using a Canon 5D MK III and Sigma 24-105 ART based on five shots (one stop intervals) centered around a core exposure of 1/320 at F 11.3 iso 200. I made the first blend in Aurora 2019 and was very disappointed to see the extent of the highlight clipping. I tried doing the blend in Camera Raw but Photoshop refused to do it, possibly relating to the most recent update since it wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened. My solution was to process and pull in the minus 1 exposure and manually mask in the water from that image. The result wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t what I was looking for either. I updated Photomatix to version 6.1 and gave that a run. The blend was better, but the blended image was very soft. I could (and did) fix most of that in Photoshop, but it continues to show that Photomatix’s alignment algorithms leave something t be desired. After mulling on it a bit, I went back into Aurora and did a blend on just three images, base exposure and plus 1 and minus 1. That result is the second image I’m sending along for this month. The water is different, but the blend was much cleaner. I would say that if you have a situation where the clipping in the plus 2 image is severe, don’t use it in Aurora unless you absolutely need it to handle the shadow details.