Combine two RAW files for best results

- [Instructor] Hi, I'm Chris Orwig, and welcome to another episode of Photo Tools Weekly. In this week's episode we're gonna take a look at how we can start in Lightroom Classic CC. And create two versions of the same raw file then combine those two raw files together in Photoshop in order to craft the best look. We'll start off with this photograph here, just as it appeared straight out of the camera when I captured it. And here I want to begin by modifying my color temperature. And I'm doing that because I wanna to create cooler tones in the background.

Next I'll just increase the exposure a little bit add some contrast there as well. Looking to add that contrast so I have nice deep, rich tones. Drop those highlights down to recover some of the brighter tones. Little boost in shadows, drop down the darker tones and then a touch of clarity as well. Okay well, this is look number one. It has these deeper colors, a much cooler color temperature as well. To craft the second look we're gonna create a virtual copy. To do that you press command apostrophe on a Mac, or control apostrophe on Windows.

You can see the little virtual copy right here. Then what we'll do is we're going to modify the color temperature. So we're going to warm this one up quite a bit. Then we're gonna go down and take a look at some of our other settings here, just to make sure those are looking good. And I'm just gonna modify a few things here, as I'm looking at these. I'm also going to desaturate a little bit, so I want to have some warmth but not too much warmth in the image. So if we look at the difference between the two, here's one, much cooler color temperature, and then this one I'm gonna use for the subject.

It's a little bit of a warmer color temperature and I like the look of that. So then how in the world do we combine these two images together? Well what you can do is you can select both of them, click and then shift click, and then you can go up to your photo pull down menu, edit in, and chose Open as Layers in Photoshop. What this will do, when you click on this menu item, is it will take these two raw files, it will then send them over to Photoshop and open them up in a single layered document. And here what we're going to do is work a little bit on the color and tone and then just do some small little retouching to finish it off.

Well we can see that the layer underneath this is the one which is warmer, so I'm gonna put that one on top. And then the one underneath is the cooler colored temperature. I wanna bring the warmer tones in on the subject but leave the cool tones in the background. So to create a mask that which allows us to do that we'll click on the Add Layer Mask icon while holding down the option key on a Mac, alt on Windows. That creates a layer mask filled with black. Next step, grab our brush, zero percent hardness, nice big brush here so that we can paint over these areas.

That's a little bit too big. Something like that. Opacity up to 100, that's great. And what I'm gonna do is just start to paint this in. Now we're gonna start to see that this is going to brighten up and warm up these areas. Go up here to the top as well. But still give us the ability to have these nice cooler tones in the background. And so again, all that we're doing is painting over these areas. And we don't even have to paint too carefully because it's not like there's a huge difference between these two, but this give us a pretty good start. And you can see how that's allowing us to have this two, this double combo.

Where we have the warmth on the subject, and the the cooler tones there, on the background. Alright next, in order to finish this one off I wanna do a little bit of retouching. And the shininess on the face up there, I wanna reduce that. So go ahead and grab my Clone Stamp Tool, and actually take that back, I'm gonna grab the Healing Brush, Healing Brush will work fine. Healing Brush, sample all layers, option or alt click to paint over that. And I'm just gonna option or alt click from a few different angles here. And I'm just looking to try to take this out, I'm gonna lower the opacity of this layer, but right now I'm just painting over the area where we have some of that shine.

And I wanna make that a little more subtle, it's just was too strong. And the light was a little bit too harsh for my liking. So I'm just reducing that here a little bit as I go. Then we drop the opacity down and that allows us to have a little bit of a smoother look on the skin there, which I think is kinda cool. Well there you have it, a nice technique we can use to combine multiple exposures together. One which allows us to have the best of both worlds. A little bit of warmth here, then also those cooler tones in the background.

And if ever you get to a point like this and wish, you know what, I really want to make the background even darker. Well just click into that layer and add an adjustment above it. Now take a look at how as I modify this, and let me zoom out so you can see that, as I modify this, it's really bringing that down even more, so it's creating even a little bit more drama for me. So you can see the before and after, how this is darkening that, then we have our nice brightness there, and then a little bit of a finish on that area as well. Alright, a couple of combo techniques using Lightroom and Photoshop together to get the best of multiple exposures that we created in Lightroom, by creating a virtual copy.

Thanks for joining in this week's episode. I hope to see you in another one. Have a great rest of your day. Bye for now.