Need blending help

[wilsonqp]

Very new to PP and need some advise. I took both of these photos and wanted to blend them together but it looks "manufactured" to me. Was hoping to get some advise on how to make it look more realistic. Thanks.



Both images were taken with a D80 but with different lenses and at different times. It is the PP i'm trying to get a handle on in this peticular photo. Thanks again for your help.

[hifigraz]

The moon is simply to big, and therefore it looks manufactured.

[edbayani]

hifigraz is right, the moon is too big. aside from that, the edges are too defined it looks like a paste up job. maybe after making it smaller, feather the edges of the moon and add a yellowish tinge. if you can, add some see through clouds covering some portions of the moon.

[eiverson]

I'm going to assume you want a realistic looking picture, not a “sci-fi/fantasy” one. I should warn you that I'm an astronomy geek, so my threshold for realism may involve more orbital mechanics than you think necessary.

Your clouds are illuminated in a way that makes me think you're shooting toward where the sun recently set or is about to rise. But if the moon is that close to the sun it needs to be a very thin crescent. rather than being nearly full. Furthermore, your moon appears to be in front of the (really nice) clouds, rather than behind it. Perhaps putting the moon in the back layer and having the cloudy layer mostly transparent on top would seem more realistic. The moon has way too much contrast within it for the contrast within the clouds. I'd adjust the brightness curve so that the darkest portion of the moon is still about three quarters of the way to the bright end of the histogram. (Even the dark parts of the moon are really bright.) But also bring down the highlights a bit (in the moon) - the crater Tycho is just too blown out.

The moon is also small - just about half a degree. In this case, that means your whole field is about 3 degrees on the long side, which means your shot “looks like” it was taken with an extreme telephoto - 35 mm equivalent of 1000 mm. That would compress the scene so much that there should be no apparent depth to it what so ever. In other words, I'd remove the obvious foreground leaves up top.

The mostly smooth line in front leaves me puzzled - is this a fence rail over which you're shooting? No, not straight enough. A hill? No, too smooth. The trees stick up in a way that just doesn't make sense. Maybe if you had trees silhouetted along most of the width of the picture it would seem more reasonable.

The terminator on the moon (the edge away from the sun, in this case from about 7:00 to 11:00 on the face) is too black - when you select it, shrink your selection by a bit and then feather it. You might also try tinting the moon just a bit with the same color gradient as the (essentially monochromatic) surrounding sky. Finally, try rotating the moon about 90 degrees - this moon is within 2 degrees (four moon widths) of the horizon - the only way for that to be possible is rising or setting, and that puts the terminator either toward or away from the horizon, but never off to the side.

Good luck - it's an interesting concept, but it's going to be hard to make it look realistic.