Exposure blending in Mac OS Photoshop CS 4

[nitewalk]

I would appreciate if anyone can help me on this.

I tried to pick up exposure blending from the tutorial here (Exposure Blending in Photoshop « « Layers Magazine Layers Magazine), I can't really describe what I do, but I pretty much follow what they mention (except for the brush thingy coz they used a rather thick brush, whereas i use a less thick one). The end result isn't quite what is desirable.

I will post the two photos I tried blending in this post.

The two photos are:

The shot that i tried to expose for the sky properly

The shot that I tried to expose for the buildings properly

 

[nitewalk]

First (and only) Attempt

I know this is not critique section, but I am not too sure if this is the place to post. Anyway, one thing i notice is that the brush (don't know technical terms so i am using very layman term, only thing is i'm quite a tech idiot so a lot of terminologies throws me off, which is why i'm using this tutorial as they explain in a slightly clearer way) was not applied evenly.

Other than that, is there any other issues which I should take note of? Eg. I am wondering if the two shots i am blending is correctly exposed. Or such a scene what should I be exposing for, the building, sky, sea, or anything else?

Please enlighten me. Thank you in advance.

 

[catchlights]

the brush; if you want to apply the bush in a very large area, you need to check the opacity of the bush, make sure is set at 100%, cover more them the areas you wanted and switch to eraser tool to clear up unwanted bushed areas.
for this case you have all the edges in straight lines, it is easier to use (polygonal) lasso tools or pen tool to make the selection, than convert selection to layer mask, don't forget to feather the edges of your selection, else it will look like a cut out



for this scene, when the sky is nice but the buildings are not light up yet, it is much easier to wait shoot during magic hour, you can do it a one shot, no blending needed.







Hope this help.

 

[nitewalk]

Thanks! I've made a second attempt using another scene, before reading your advice. The outcome is as follows (again still two exposures):

I believe at the horizon somewhere in the centre right part, u can see my brush mark. I changed opacity from 50% for most of the buildings and trees to 40, 30, 20% gradually for the horizon. After several attempts, this is the better ones among the attempts and even so, the mark is quite obvious.

I'll try out your advice later tonight, have to go for work. Thank you once again!