blended exposures and photoshop selections

Argh.

A series of my images have the background way over exposed.

Nevermind i thought, this is why I shoot RAW. So I've got two images now, one exposed for the highlights, one for the shadows.

For the life of me I cant get the thing to work. Its near impossible to get the edges of the exposures looking natural. If my layer mask is off, I either get blown highlights on the model, or parts of her really underexposed.

Ive read PhotosGuys "Selecting areas in PS" tutorial, as well as his "Using selections with a Layer Mask to change a background." tutorial.

What am I missing? I have about 30 shots in this series that need this treatment - I need an easier way!

Heres the original shot with over exposed background,

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

and my feeble attempt at a blended version. It shows badly on her arms, her hair, just about every part of her body!

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

I can't see your images. Did you feather selections? If so you can also use a small brush and paint the areas (white/black) to add or remove parts of the images you want/don't want.

Can you repost yoiur images and I'll have a look?

I don't remember those tutorials so pardon if this is explained in them...

I think that the issue you're having is with the Feathering, which blends the edge of the selection. Playing with feathering can be tough, so an easier way is to save the selection (as a channel) and then use Gaussian Blur to blur the edge. This will act as feathering and will give you control over how the edges blend. Be prepared to undo the Gaussian blur and try again, but it's easier to do this rather than mucking with feathering.

Matt,

I too find that whenever I use selections to edit a picture, it gets a "fake" feel to it. One technique that I've been using lately is to take the two images and add them as two layers into a single image, with the one exposed for the shadows (person in your case) on top. Then with the top image, create a layer mask that is an inverted-grayscale copy of the layer. Then mess with the opacity of the two layers to get the colors how you like them. For me it feels like I get a much more natural feel to the images by doing this.

If you need help, I just wrote up a post on my blog on how to do this. (I've been meaning to do this for a few weeks, and your question encouraged me to get it done.)

Patrick

Here's an excellent tutorial by Glen Mitchell on blended exposures:
http://www.thelightsri​ght.com …dedExposuresRev​isited.pdf
And another from Luminous Landscape:
http://luminous-landscape.com …s/blended_expos​ures.shtml