Patagonia Sunrise (2 image blend)

Recently learned how to blend 2 images in photoshop, and this is the result. Not my favorite picture in the world, but it was perfect to practice on.

original RAW file:

Looks pretty good to me. About the only thing I would do is lighten up the foreground if possible, but that's more a taste thing than anything else.

Yeah, I agree with you there. I pushed it about as far as it would go though, before turning too noisy/grainy to fix up in LR.

Blends are usually better than HDR.....very nice job...great sky.

El Duderino wrote in post #14956009
Yeah, I agree with you there. I pushed it about as far as it would go though, before turning too noisy/grainy to fix up in LR.

So the next step is to try blending two shots with very different exposures (2 stops). I say this because of the fact that you couldn't get the foreground lighter and it's a little more tricky when the exposures are very different, especially with a tree line, or something that doesn't allow you to use a hard-edges mask.

For instance the top of the tree line is till a little dark, particularly on the right hand side where it looks like there is a line. By itself, having dark areas there isn't necessarily a problem, but you can kind of see the band. There are several ways around this, but what I find most effective is rather than trying to be super-precise in my mask, is to make it more of a shadow area, but not as an obvious line.

For instance, as a rough start, I would bring the mask down in the areas I marked red to darken them. Then they look like shadows, rather than a mask line. I don't think I can actually do this on the posted image to show what I mean though, hopefully you get the idea.

I often do this with tree lines where the dark outline of the trees intrudes into the lighter portion of the image and it's not really possible to blend with enough detail to make it look realistic.

It's a pretty good first go though (and IMO excellent for someone new to blending).