In this week’s free Deke’s Techniques episode, Deke shows you how to take two different exposures of the same image—-each processed in Camera Raw to bring out different detail—-and blend them together in Photoshop. 

In this case, the first version on the left below is processed with an eye to maintaining the shadow detail sky. The middle version is processed to expose the detail in the foreground. Then, in Photoshop, the two are blended together using a well-crafted mask to reveal both the texturally rich foreground and the dramatically lit sky. 

After a bit of High Pass filtering for sharpness, here is the final result:

For members of lynda.com, Deke has an exclusive movie this week in which he shows you how he made this detailed mask of the mountain’s ridge, which reveals the more striking sky in the darker image:

If you’re not a member and would like to check it out, you can get a free week’s trial at lynda.com/deke with which to watch this movie, as well as the other 322 episodes of Deke’s Techniques.