Techniques to Bring Out the Detail in Your Digital Landscapes with George Schaub

A consistent problem for landscape photographers is that sky and ground have different brightness levels and digital enforces highlight-biased exposures, thus the ground tends to become underexposed. Given that you must maintain highlights during exposure, there are numerous ways to process an image that can bring back full detail in the ground areas.

1. Bracket exposures and combine using Layers and Layer Masks (given no wind is blowing!)
2. Use bracket exposures for HDR
3. Take an exposure biased for the highlights, select ground/sky, and then use a screen blending mode approach with paint back on the sky.
4. Select the sky/ground and use a New Adjustment Layer.

Using any of the above techniques you can maintain highlight control and regain excellent detail in the ground area.

You can learn more about exposure and processing from George in his workshop
Crafting the Black-and-White Print
April 12-16, 2010

Visit his web site at www.georgeschaub.com to see what he's up to.