Lightroom Photmerge

[Beemermark]

I have Elements V15 and I've never spent much time trying to learn it. I figure if I get the right exposure I've got it nailed - right? However I recently spent a week in Northern New Mexico & Arizona taking pictures, The scenes were high contrast with beautiful blue skies and clouds. So I used the AE bracketing with my Fuji X-Pro2 to capture -1, normal, +1 exposures. If I understand correctly the Fuji takes one picture and processes 3 images.


So now my problem, when I used Photmerge Exposure in Elements I merge 3 pictures into one to control contrast. OK, works like it's suppose to BUT I take three perfectly focused pictures to get get one blurry photo, albeit perfect contrast.


????

 

[Dan]

I'm not familiar with Elements but it sounds like the merged photos aren't exactly lined up.

Best is to use PS because you can nudge each layer while checking alignment. Your title says Lightroom (but you use Elements) which should also do a perfect job at aligning the individual exposures.

 

[tbhv55]

I don't have Elements, but I presume that it has (in the merge function dialogue box) a tickbox called "Automatically align source images", or something fairly similar. If so, then enabling this should help - although you should be aware that it usually takes longer to process.


OTOH, if you were already using this setting when you got poor results, then maybe it's time to try disabling it. 🙂

 

[willie_901]

The X-Pro 2 AE bracket mode (AE BKT in the menu) makes three separate images with different shutter times. You can confirm this by looking the file name numbers.

Three sharp images should result in one acceptably sharp image when the pixels are properly aligned.

One situation where properly aligned images will result in a blurry combined image is when foliage and, or clouds move in between exposures due to windy conditions. Obviously some objects aren't affected by wind and these should be sharp. Shorter shutter times minimize wind-motion issues.

Occasionally I could not bracket exposures using a tripod. In these situations I used the widest practical aperture and even increased the camera ISO setting to use the shortest practical shutter times.

Were these JPEG or raw files? What was the longest shutter time for the three? What was the lens focal length?

 

[shawn]

I have Elements V15 and I've never spent much time trying to learn it. I figure if I get the right exposure I've got it nailed - right? However I recently spent a week in Northern New Mexico & Arizona taking pictures, The scenes were high contrast with beautiful blue skies and clouds. So I used the AE bracketing with my Fuji X-Pro2 to capture -1, normal, +1 exposures. If I understand correctly the Fuji takes one picture and processes 3 images.


So now my problem, when I used Photmerge Exposure in Elements I merge 3 pictures into one to control contrast. OK, works like it's suppose to BUT I take three perfectly focused pictures to get get one blurry photo, albeit perfect contrast.


????

If you post your originals somewhere I can show you what a Lightroom merge (and Affinity) merges would look like.

The Fuji will shoot 3 different shots (with varying exposure) when using exposure bracketing.

Shawn