outdoorswithcamera

Until recently, a huge frustration in shooting the bright moon and its dimmer context was this— I could 1) brighten the whole image in order to make the context visible, washing out the features of the moon, 2) dim the moon and make the context even less visible, or 3) use a brush to change the exposure or brightness of just the moon or (in the case of the photo below) the hills beneath it, which was a big pain. But a couple of months ago, Adobe upgraded the masking tool Photoshop’s Camera Raw Filter. It can now detect the “subject” of the photo and—in a separate mask or brush— its context (by “inverting” the subject, i.e., selecting everything BUT the subject.) That means basically doing #3 above, but with MUCH less effort.

I’ll just show you the finished product below.