The following is a simple but effective technique for adding morning sunbeams to your images. For this technique it's best to start with an image that has the sun rising up behind trees, through fog, or through some other subject.
From Photoshop
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HDR Photography and Image Processing Tutorial
The human eye does a great job of compensating for the dark and light areas in a high contrast scene. When these light or dark areas reach the extremes, we need to reach for a flashlight or dark glasses, but for the average high contrast scene, our eyes do a great job of automatically compensating.