How do I fix the layer boarders...

[embdude]

Ok guys,and girls...

I am getting better at this post processing all the time. Thank you all sooo much for all your help and advice, and encourragement too!

I am using Canon DPP and Elements 2.0 for my work, so please keep that in mind.

I have had great sucess taking a raw image, processing it twice once for the highlights and once for the shadows, to get a nice beautiful full range.

However....

when I mask out the sky I am left with an obvious boarder between he two layers. <examples to follow> I have played with the blurr tool and also the smuge tool to get things a bit better, but not quite right.....

So how should I tackle this problem?

Here are 2 examples of shots with this problem:

[Chazs]

One thing you might try to do before you delete out the forground (if that's what is going away) is is to feather the selection by about 3 pixels (under the Select...Feather...menu). It's still not perfect, but it's an improvement.

[CyberPet]

Feather is the key... 3 pixles is perfect. You can then adjust with a soft brush, if there's some details you need to adjust later.

[embdude]

Thanks for the advice...

I tried to use the feathering to get rid of those boarders...

I used #3 after selecting both masks and applying it. not sure how I'm supposed to do it...

Here is the result with some dodging as well...

[embdude]

Could you give me some advice on this feather technique? What is it doing? When should it be applied? What will different #'s give me? Do I need to apply it to both masks?

Thanks again...

[CyberPet]

Feather is sort of "fading", i.e. you have from 1 up to 250 pixels "gradient" feathering. Depending on what you're going to "mask" 2-3 pixles is pretty normal, and it gives you a smooth and soft edge. perfect for replacing a new sky for instance. The more pixels you set, the softer the edge will be. Play around with it and you'll see what I mean.

If I were to make a nice vignette around a picture, I'd use the max number of pixels to get a smooth edge. Like I did on the image below. I made an oval selection and then set the feather to a high number, inverted the selection and poured some black color around the edges. In this picture I didn't let it be 100% black though, so I used the opacity slider for that layer with the vignette to tone it done just a tad.

http://the-halls.se/brides/diverse/IMG_1910-sv.jpg

So there's many ways to use feather, either as a smooth transition between two layers, or as an effect to emphasize on something.

[PhotosGuy]

Try this:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=39994