Broken Down Boathouse

[Don Lacy]

This image was made earlier in morning and along the same stretch of water as the abandon fish house. The sky was amazing and I knew I could not hold detail in it even with a grad filter so I started bracketing images with the intent of either using HDR or blending them I ended up using a two image blend after finding a nice technique on the web.

1DMKIII, 17-40 f/4 at 29mm, 4s at f/16 for the boathouse and 1s at f/16 for the sky, Manual Mode, Evaluative Metered, ISO 50, Tripod, cropped to pano and two image blend.

[dankearl]

I think you held the sky very well.
Colors are terrific, I might lighten the left side just a tad to balance it a bit.
I really like the comp, it really draws my eye into the scene.

[Don Railton]

Beautiful Don.. Nice composition and the blend looks seamless to me.. Well done.

DON

[Dick Huberty]

Perfect! Great composition and amazing sky! Would you mind sharing the link on the blending technique?

Dick

[Morkel Erasmus]

That is one KILLER sky...! :Whoa!:
Again, great job in creating a compelling composition with a leading line and a rustic feel.

PS: did you use the "blue channel" blend method or a grad filter simulation?

[Don Lacy]

Hi Morkel and Dick I used the gradient tool set to neutral density to get my initial blend and then used the brush tool to refine it by masking out the pilings and boat house. This is the video I watched then that a few good tricks like how to load the images direcrlty into PS as layers how the use the grad tool and how to modify the mask with the blur filter. http://tv.adobe.com/watch/the-russell-brown-show/blending-images-in-photoshop/

[hennieloots]

Hi Don - Beautiful image with great color and lines leading into the image to the subject.
TFS
Hennie

[Andrew McLachlan]

Stunning work here Don :5

[Don Nelson]

Absolutely breathtaking sky. Extremely well done and great use of the dock to send the eye to the sunset.

[Diane Miller]

Stunning, with a wonderful sky and just the right amount of detail in the FG.

You can also load several images as layers in PS from LR: select them and go to Photo > Edit in > Open as layers in PS. And of course you can drag and drop the layers in the Layers panel to change their order if desired.

But, there's a pitfall he doesn't mention in the tutorial. When you have a pixel layer that isn't linked to the BG layer, you might accidentally bump it with the Move tool and loose the registration. And in fact, in the case like this where you load 2+ images as layers, the bottom layer is not designated a BG layer, which has special properties that prevent it from being moved. So first select the bottom layer and go to Layer > New > BG from Layer. Then you can keep the other(s) pin-registered to it by linking them to the BG layer. Select the BG and the desired layers (by Cmd-click) and then click the Link icon (the leftmost one) in the bottom of the Layers panel. (You can unlink any layer later by selecting it and clicking the chain-link icon.)

This same linking advice applies to any adjustment layer that has a mask.