In my current evolutive moment, as many of you know well about me, I like a lot better when I'm out in the field than in front of the computer, although I admit I love this part, too. Luckily, by the way, because I have more time for the latter than I have for the former... Well, you know I don't use Photoshop much, except for panos, some focus stacking, posters, and little more... But in these day I have discovered/invented/come up with a new digital technique, I will call it "LIGHT STACKING", that I hadn't read about, so let me share it. It comes from my first light painting attempts I have shared before in this blog. And it was in one of my favorite places, the pine forest of Talayuela, Cáceres, Spain, that I went to keep on trying. I tried several different lighting setups, especially front, side and back lighting, with some interesting results. Only some times, when the image was "almost perfect", but for the fact I had forgotten to light some parts of the frame, and I thought: "So, why not illuminate that part in another shot, and then try some kind of "stacking the images together" in Photoshop"?. Okay, so let's see how thing came out:
Me gustó mucho el resultado, pero todavía se me ocurrió otra idea sobre la marcha: "¿Y por qué no tratar de unir imágenes que han quedado bien, pero tienen iluminaciones diferentes?" Bueno, pues eso hice, y así quedó otra de las fotos. En mi opinión, cada golpecito de luz ayuda a completar la imagen final, que es mucho más intensa que las otras, a ver a vosotros qué os parece...
Bueno, vamos al tema: ¿Cómo lo has hecho? Pues hay dos fases:
- Primero, a nivel de técnica en el campo, los principios fueron una improvisación, aunque ahora ya trabajaré pensando en ella. Lo cierto es que te permite hacer exposiciones más cortas, sabiendo que vamos a conseguir la toma por partes, incluso que podemos corregir los errores con tomas posteriores.
- Y la segunda fase, el postproceso, es tan fácil que creo que lo comprenderéis sin necesidad de un videotutorial de esos que odio porque nunca tengo paciencia de ver completos: sólo se trata de abrir todas las imágenes como capas, en el mismo archivo, y ajustar el "modo de fusión" de cada capa en "color más claro". Esto hace que el programa muestre, en cada pixel, el más claro (para nosotros, el mejor iluminado) de todos los que están apilados. Y el resultado final es éste.
Well, I loved the results quite a lot, but then I still came up with another idea: "What if I stack nice images with different lightings, and see what comes out?" Alright, this is it...
And yes, here comes what you are waiting for, finally: here's the whole process, in two steps:
- Step one, on the field, (although the beginning was purely casual), the idea is to keep adding to the final shot, lighting different parts of the frame, or adding different sources of light. We can even correct mistakes or sections not properly illuminated. And...
- Step two, post processing: it's so easy that we won't really need one of those video tutorials whose end I never reach, ;-) It's as simple as opening all shots as layers of the same file in Photoshop, then adjust blending mode to "lighter color" in all layers. This shows up the lighter pixel present in any layer, thus showing up every illumination. Simple, isn't it?