Ideally, the exposures you choose to blend should cover the full range of light in a given scene. Your brightest exposure should contain information in the darker areas, while your darkest exposure should contain information in the brightest areas. You are not limited to the number of exposures you can blend. Sometimes, in scenes of extremely high contrast, you may need to use as many as five to ensure a smooth transition between exposures and to cover the full range of light in the scene.

The order you choose to layer the exposures in Photoshop is dependent on your personal preference and the exposures you’re working with. Usually working with your normally exposed image as the base layer will derive the best results, but sometimes you may need to work with a darker or brighter exposure as your base layer. In this tutorial we will select three exposures using the normal exposure as our base layer to blend and create a natural looking HDR image.

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