Interior photography, correcting for windows

[dustin_meyer]

I do interior photography for a virtual tour company, mostly working

with real estate jobs, and new homes. I use a Nikon D70 with PS CS

and bracket every shot in NEF format. I usually correct for windows

to balance out the huge amount of exposure difference with the

interior of the rooms. Magnetic Lasso works for cutting windows

from proper exposed shots for outside light, and then pasting into

shots exposed for the interior. But there's always the issue of

making sure the pasted image lines up properly and also looks

natural and not "doctored". Does anyone else have experience in

this line of digital photography that is willing to lend a few

tidbits of wisdom? Any help is appreciated!

[andrew_grant2]

One way could be to take multiple frames and combine them in Photoshop... so one frame would be correctly exposed for the room, another frame would be correctly exposed for the window etc. Then you could layer the two photos over one another, adjust the opacity of the layers and add a layer mask with the Paintbrush tool (to make specific areas of the different layers more or less opaque) to fine tune the overall result.

[phule]

Are you using a tripod?

[grant_.]

bounce flash mixed with ambient...

[jackflesher]

What Andrew and Rob said: ie; if you use a tripod and take two frames, one exposed properly for each subject (or alternatively, one frame properly exposed for as many subjects of differing lighting value you have), it is easy to combine them later on separate layers in PS.

[dustin_meyer]

Appreciate the quick answers, guys! Hopefully, the quality of images will improve. Thanks!

[kw_smith]

The most accurate way is to line up all the exposures in the same image as different layers, then use layer masks to reveal or hide the stuff you want. This way, everything will already be lined up perfectly and you can feather in the other exposures for a more natural look.

 

BTW, cool trick to line up images - shift-drag one image into the main one, which centers it, then Ctrl-I to invert the new layer. Anything that looks embossed is out of alignment, but it's rarely a problem with digital photos.

[MichaelChang]

Adding to the above response, Ken Rockwell's D70 review happens to talk about interior photography:<br><br>http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d70perf.htm#performance

[www.whitemountainphoto.com]

If you can, try to shoot around dusk, after the sun has gone down. If you time it right, it can give a very nice blue shade of color to the windows, more blanced to the interior.

[keith_kanoun]

You could do it the brute force way - cover the outside of the windows with neutral density gells. Not very digital though I suppose.

[clauder]

<p><i>You could do it the brute force way - cover the outside of the windows with neutral density gells. Not very digital though I suppose</i></p>

<p>I had to shoot a showroom once, with 10 large (that is 2,50m x 1,50m each) windows, would have been one hell of a workload to cover this with neutral density gells :->></p>

<p>I'll second the multiple exposures on a tripod solution, it's an easy thing to do and works like a charm! Praise the digital age for shootings like this! :-)</p>