Posted by Doug Koepsel on August 13, 2010 at 8:05 PM
While at Grand Falls last Sunday evening, the clouds in the east lit up nicely at Sunset. I took two exposures, one for the falls and another for the clouds. Blended with PSE7 using the article here on NPN since Elements has no mask feature. (Thank you John for the move+shift tip)
Lightness/contrast/saturation adjustments were done to the individual images before blending. Sharpening after blending. I did notice a tendency to get dark and light halos along the blend line. I used a small brush with hard edge along the horizon to "paint" the mask, with some overlap but minimal as I could get along the horizon. Used about 10pixel guassian blur as it looked the best. Slight burn and dodge (5%) after blending to reduce the halo. Any suggestions on reducing this problem or anything else you may notice about the image or workflow? Thanks.
Posted by John Mumaw on August 14, 2010 at 12:13 AM
The blend in and of itself looks good. In this, I think you succeeded. Looks quite natural to my eyes. Can't offer any suggestions re: fixing haloes.
Cropping the sky down to just below the brightest cloud removes that visual distraction. Try a 'scroll crop' here and see what you think.
After cropping, check your histogram and notice that you can drag the White slider in Levels to the left in order to brighten up the scene without overexposing that bright cloud that was cropped.
The individual exposures (top and bottom) look good--but that horizon halo has got to go. There's a million ways to do a blend, for this you might just try a simple digital gnd, that would certainly solve the halo issue. Or try blending wioth luminosity maks, that might also help. Tony Kuper has a tutorial on his website, thats where i learned it from a couple years back.
Posted by Doug Koepsel on August 20, 2010 at 3:13 PM
Thanks for the tips. For the horizon halo, I tried a 2 pix clone along the horizon to clone a darker sky from just above, and from below to lighten the dark rock. Seemed to be more effective than dodge/burn.
Painted the bright cloud from a yellow spot on another cloud with about 20% opacity, then used the white slider in levels to darken the cloud top, then added some mid-cntrast. I did not like the look of the cloud top cropped off.
Discussion
3 repliesLightness/contrast/saturation adjustments were done to the individual images before blending. Sharpening after blending. I did notice a tendency to get dark and light halos along the blend line. I used a small brush with hard edge along the horizon to "paint" the mask, with some overlap but minimal as I could get along the horizon. Used about 10pixel guassian blur as it looked the best. Slight burn and dodge (5%) after blending to reduce the halo. Any suggestions on reducing this problem or anything else you may notice about the image or workflow? Thanks.
Cropping the sky down to just below the brightest cloud removes that visual distraction. Try a 'scroll crop' here and see what you think.
After cropping, check your histogram and notice that you can drag the White slider in Levels to the left in order to brighten up the scene without overexposing that bright cloud that was cropped.
Painted the bright cloud from a yellow spot on another cloud with about 20% opacity, then used the white slider in levels to darken the cloud top, then added some mid-cntrast. I did not like the look of the cloud top cropped off.