Hi Everybody,

I'm looking for some advice as to how to make one great image out of these two scans (one scan contains good shadow detail, the other good highlight details) The scanner was not able to cope with the range of tones in my negative so I now have two scans to work from.

By combining these two images in photoshop I'm hoping to get maximum highlight info as well and shadow detail into the shot.

does anyone have any advice on how this could be done?

when I drag one image ontop of the other I find that they don't quite match up which means that the single image ends up looking like an out of focus picture.

Thanks in advance for any help
Robin

The lighter image appears to be a pixel to the right of the darker image. An "arrow-left" nudge corrects this.

However, you really don't want to go that route. What you are calling shadow detail in the darker scan is nothing more than blobs of black with no shadow detail at all. His shirt and neck in particular. In your lighter scan, you have excellent shadow detail: the contours of his shirt are visible, and while the variations in shading are subtle and close, there is a complete image of his neck and the side of his face. The darker image has none of that.

For that reason, a simple curve applied to the light image should give you what you want, if, in fact, you wish for the darks to get darker. However, as I mentioned, there is a host of detail available in his face and shirt that can easily be brought out with a lightening curve. That's an aeathetic question. The dark scan is useless since it lost all the shadow detail.

I agree with Edgework. The shadows are too dark in the darker image. In fact, I think you'd have a really nice image if you composited the sky from the darker image into the lighter image. A layer mask is all you'd need to do it.

--Racc

Well what you can do if you want to make two images super-impose on top of each other is use the difference blending mode.

Open both pictures; move one image on top of the other and use difference blending mode. In this picture using that technique one can see that the top photo needs to be moved one arrow click as previously described.

Of course the curves method is probably the best way to go.

i went a slightly different way/method. using paint shop pro 7.xx, i took the darker pic and using the 'magic wand' tool, i captured the background/sky as a selection. then, using the other light pic, i made a new raster image layer and copied the selection from the other into the new layer. then simply merge the two layers.

then, depending on what effect you're going for, use various filters to get the rest of the effect you want. you may want to apply those before merging the layers.

this was essentially a 10 minute job. it needs a bit of touch-up around where the magic wand selection was laid in, but that's fairly easy to do. i prolly could have used some feathering with magic wand or a slightly different tolerance level and done a bit better, but it gives you the idea.

i then ran one pass with a clarify filter to give things a bit more definition, but that's just a choice thing, depending on what you're after.

K.

Thanks everyone, lots of food for thought.

R

Hi Robin,

Welcome to RetouchPRO! :pleased:

You don't say if you are working with Photoshop and if yes with which version ...

Was something like this you had in mind?

P.S. I work with Photoshop CS.