When the forces of light and dark battle...both can win
(above) After: NY's JFK International Airport (below) Before: top picture scanned for the sky and bottom picture scanned for the shadows
 The unfortunate truth of photography is that the picture we see often isn’t the picture we get. The human eye sees differently than a camera, and it’s our job to compensate for the camera’s habits in order to get the picture we want.
Take landscape photography. How many times have you photographed a fiercely clouded sky over a densely shadowed ground, only to end up with a picture messed up in one of three ways: the sky is perfect and the ground is black; the ground is nicely detailed and the sky’s blown out beyond recognition; or the exposure of each is balanced and the image as a whole is middling muddy.
Like many issues in photography, this one’s better addressed when taking the picture than after the fact. Probably the best way to get a balanced exposure of earth and sky is to attach a totally analog graduated neutral-density filter to your SLR. (For further instructions, see “Nature,” September 2003.) But maybe you forgot your filter. Or you’re shooting with a point-and-shoot, and using a grad filter is difficult (digital P/S) to impossible (film P/S). As usual, it’s not too late to solve the problem digitally.
Absent a grad filter or present a point-and-shoot, plan ahead by taking two identical pictures: one exposed for the ground and one for the sky. But be sure not to change position! Then follow the directions in Part I to meld the two images after the fact using layers in an image-editing program. If it’s too late to take two and you’ve got a (potentially) gorgeous image shot on film, scan it twice at the same resolution—first for the highlights and then for shadows—and put them together according to the directions in Part I. If you’ve got a digital image, head for Part II.
A note to Photoshop CS users: Before you follow any of the steps below, first open your image and go to Image > Adjust > Highlight/Shadow and see if you can solve all of your problems with that miraculous slider tool.
Part I: One plus one equals one. Put together the brights from one image and the darks from another.
(Step 1) Combine. Adjust the color in each, and combine. If you scanned two at the same resolution, it’s easy to line them up; simply Select All, Copy, and Paste. The pasted image will automatically appear as a new layer. If you’ve got two separate images that are slightly different, change the opacity of the new layer to 30% and use the Move tool and the arrow keys to nudge them into alignment.
(Step 2) Erase. Make sure you’ve got the Highlights layer selected. Grab the eraser and set it to a big brush with a hard edge. Quickly wipe out as much as you can of the shadows without going too near the edges. Then zoom in and, with a smaller brush, erase the rest. Or, to save time and effort, try using the Magic Wand tool on the highlights. Then go to Select > Inverse to select the ground and Edit > Clear to erase it.
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