[ichiban]

take your test picture and your hdr and put them on separate layers; the test picture being the lower layer. Then put a masking layer over the hdr layer. get the brush tool and set flow to 10% (if this takes to long, maybe bump it up to 20%) and brush out the areas that look too hdr'd.

[ShopVac]

Originally Posted by ichiban

take your test picture and your hdr and put them on separate layers; the test picture being the lower layer. Then put a masking layer over the hdr layer. get the brush tool and set flow to 10% (if this takes to long, maybe bump it up to 20%) and brush out the areas that look too hdr'd.

Thanks, I'll give it a try...

[ShopVac]

Originally Posted by M_Six

My hacks. First is with the crane, second without it. I basically did the double adjustment like he did in the video above. I duplicated the layer and adjusted the top layer for the sky. Then I adjusted the bottom layer for the buildings. Then I used a layer mask on the upper layer to mask out the buildings so the adjusted buildings from the bottom layer showed through. Once I was happy with it, I used a high pass filter to sharpen it up some. The whole picture is pretty soft.

I assume you go by looks to determine what to do at what times....there's nothing that works 'every' time.

That's probably most of my problem.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by ShopVac

I assume you go by looks to determine what to do at what times....there's nothing that works 'every' time.

That's probably most of my problem.

Yes, it's definitely a "see as you go" routine. Sometimes opening HDR toning makes the image outrageously bright and bizarre and other times it works wonders. Ichiban's method sounds interesting. Slowly blending two images to reach a point where you're happy. And in doing that, always save your work as a .psd file before you flatten and save as a .jpg. That way you can go back to your layers and make corrections later without having to start all over again.

The main thing with Photoshop is to get used to your tools. Once you understand how layers work and what the tools do, you can start to "think on your feet" and come up with new ways of doing things. It's like being a carpenter. The best ones know their tools inside and out. They can think of new and better ways to do things because of that. It just takes practice and watching some tutorials.