As an experiment I took a number of photographs of a sunrise at Muscatatuck NWR with different exposures and alternating between using a 2 stop graduated neutral density filter and just pushing the image sensor to the limit.
The images with the filter came out pretty good, and I was impressed with how well the unfiltered images came out and were able to be processed by Lightroom. However, the scene simply pushed past the camera sensor’s dynamic range (the range of dark to light that the camera can accurately measure).
But even with the optical GND filter it wasn’t quite right so I used Lightroom’s GND filter to tweak the image even more. After doing this I realized that there was a great advantage to doing this with Lightroom: I could selectively “undo” the filter with key visual elements. In my case the dead tree in the foreground ended up going deep into shadow and that’s not necessarily how it looked. (I won’t go into how the eye and brain conspire to create images beyond the eye’s ability to capture light.)
By employing a mask with a 1-stop increase in exposure, I selectively reversed the 1-stop decrease the filter was applying. In other words I effectively cut a hole in my horizon filter and said “leave the tree alone”. Cool!
Here’s the sequence. It’s much easier to see the differences when you flip between them rather than sequentially here in the blog, but I hope I will be able to draw your attention to the variations.
Here’s the original photograph.
Now I use Lightroom to apply a classic graduated filter at the horizon. This tones down the sky, and leaves the lower half of the photograph intact exposure-wise:
Now the sky looks like it did when I took the photograph, the foreground is good, but the upper half of the tree is in deeper shadow than the lower part. There’s some reality here, but it doesn’t look right.
So we employ the other local correction tool Lightroom has to mask the tree:
I then tell the adjustment to increase the exposure just in the area I’ve painted. It’s like the ultimate dodging and burning tool.
In the image below I’ve jacked up the exposure by 2 stops. It’s ugly, but you can see the effect much easier:
And then with the desired correction amount, the final image:
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