Combining pictures.

[peter/c]

Hi everyone.I have two pics of the same scene. One underexposed (great sky) one overexposed (good foreground) In photoshop elements 2, can anyone please tell Me in simple terms!, how to combine the two pictures.thanks.
www.lulu.com/peter-clarkson

[Meerkat17]

I don't use Photoshop Elements but it can't be that different from PS7.

If they are exactly the same then open both documents

on one of them press Ctrl+A then Ctrl+C

Select the other document and press Ctrl+V which will paste the image into a new layer.

Hope you manage OK

David

[MrChevy]

You are trying to do this?:

http://www.mrchevy.com/gallery/both/medium/CRW_0008ps.jpg

It is done with copying the one file over the other and erasing what you don't want.

Ken

[Jesper]

I just asked the same question yesterday!
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=25508

On Luminous Landscape there's an article that describes how to do it (see my previous post). However, you need layer masks for it, which PS Elements doesn't have.

So, how can it be done in PS Elements? What Meerkat17 writes is not the whole story. After putting the two images in two layers, you need layer masks to mix the images, according to Luminous Landscape.

Please don't tell me to upgrade to PS CS, because the upgrade costs more than € 700 here. (No $299 upgrade available here outside the USA!).... :(

[iwatkins]

Don't know how to do it in Elements, mainly as I don't use it.

Nice piece of software I've played with recently called Photomatix does a nice job of it though: http://www.hdrsoft.com/index.html

Cheers

Ian

[john_houghton]

On Luminous Landscape there's an article that describes how to do it (see my previous post). However, you need layer masks for it, which PS Elements doesn't have.

This is not altogether true; PS Elements does have layer masks. All that it lacks is the ability to create them. However, if you do happen to have a layered PSD file with masks, Elements can do most of the processing of the masks that you need. So if you can lay your hands on such a file, you can resize it to suit your images and then paste your images into the layers. Likewise, you can paste images into the layer masks, should you need to. Having done that, you should be able to do most of the stuff that the article you refer to recommends. Anybody with the full Photoshop or PS LE would be able to supply you with a tiny sample file for you to use for this purpose.

John

[evilenglishman]

if elements has layers (I don't use it) then it will work.
You don't need layer masks.
Just erase what you dont want on the uppermost level and it will show the layer underneath.