merging photos

wersal gummage

I have a basic understanding of photoshop CS2, i've messed around with HDR images and stuff before and some of them came out OK.

basically i've got two photos and i want the sky from one with the bottom half from another photo (both photos are identical). I dont want to HDR them, I just want a straight lift of the sky....

I took the photo at the time knowing that i was overexposing and underexposing parts of different images - with a view to putting the correct bits together at some stage.

How do I go about this ??? is it hard ??

thanks very much

oshead

If it's as simple as top vs bottom. Just open the two images into two layers and mask off the bit you don't need on the bottom. Then duplicate the bottom mask to the top layer and invert it.

wersal gummage

wersal gummage wrote: »

I have a basic understanding of photoshop CS2

oshead wrote: »

If it's as simple as top vs bottom. Just open the two images into two layers and mask off the bit you don't need on the bottom. Then duplicate the bottom mask to the top layer and invert it.

OK I realise now that I lied:o

I can create layers alright but after that I've kinda lost you.

any time i create layers, when i put it all back together its always very obvious as well

wersal gummage

sorry to bring this back up - but i've spent a good while googling this and trying it but cant get it right.

can anyone give me a few tips (simplified) on how to do this ??? or even a link to a good tutorial.

i could post up the two pictures i want to put together if it would help explain what i'm trying to do ?

Heebie

Well.. it would certainly illustrate your intention.

I don't think the advice is likely to change though.

Does anyone know if Photoshop Elements can read .PSD files?

kjt

If you pop them up here I can give you a few more pointers if you like?

wersal gummage

thanks kjt:)

i have the raw files, but basically i want to get this foreground (water and the light trees and mountains on right) with the mountain and cloud from the left hand side of the second photo.... i used an ND grad but it didn't have enough stops in it for what i wanted.

perhaps the photo isn't worth bothering with - but even for the sake of learning - i'd love to see if anything can be done with it.

[IMG][/img]

kjt

I put together a realllly quick video of how I would go about this. If I was doing this properly, I'd take at least 10/15 minutes minimum. The most amount of time would be spent on where the two layers are going to merge (which I didn't really cover in the video),for this shot the skyline/mountain tops would take the most time.


Larger


To do this, all you need to know is the brush tool, how to change the opacity of the brush and how to add a mask, which is covered at the start (bottom right of the screen).

I hope that helps a bit Barry

wersal gummage

thats pretty cool alright. thanks!

thats just what i wanted - i can have a bash now step by step.

kjt

Let us know how you get on

wersal gummage

will do, unfortunatley i'm off to the airport now so i'll be worrying about volcanos for the next few days:eek:

thanks again.

kjt

Good luck with the flight buddy!

shanona

i was just going to suggest putting one on top of the other and "erasing" the bottom (or top) of the photo, if they're identical... but previous posters have said to layer mask, and that is the easiest to recover from if you mess up while editing.

best of luck! both in the photo and your travels.