Tent Rocks - Landscape

[olgabe]

Hi all,
This is a composite landscape, original images were taken on a very boring flat lighting day. This is not an HDR, the rocks and the sky are from two different exposures, I think they were 3 stops apart, and they were tweaked with levels/curves separately, and there was a soft light blending applied to the rocks.

What I am not sure about is the transition between sky and rocks - it looks a bit fake to me... I'm generally happy with the image otherwise... Any opinions? Does the border look fake to you??


Thank you!!

[Murtasma]

I think it looks good, before reading your post I did not suspect the sky was added in which is a good thing. After you mentioned the sky was put it became slightly more noticeable. I think the problem may be with perspective. Depending on how you took the image of the clouds. If you took the picture of the clouds with your lens exactly perpendicular to the clouds the perspective of the clouds would be slightly off if you had to point your lens up toward the mountain. You can try using the Lens > Distort filer in photoshop to correct the perspective of the clouds.

Where it stands now I think it looks goods and wouldn't bother, just something to keep in mind next time.

Thank you for sharing I really like the dramatic feel to this image I think it works well.

Oh one more thing the depth of field appears to be larger then the clouds. I can see the rocks in the distances start to get slightly blurry but the clouds remain pretty sharp.

[Silverz]

If you didn't mention it I would not have known

[olgabe]

Thank you for the comments. The sky was not "added" from another frame - it is just copied from another exposure (3 stops less or so, the rocks look almost black ) of the exact same shot taken on a tripod just seconds apart. So these are The Real Clouds from that frame, just exaggerated with exposure and color/saturation adjustments. I'll try to find the two original imaged to show where it was coming from...

I see the point on depth of field - that may be a result of my blending.. will watch out for that in the future.

It's kind of funny because the way the image turned out is the way I hoped the rocks would look like in real life, but the weather was not cooperating at all! We were there about an hour before sunset, and had one glimpse of this kind of colors for just a second from our car, and then the sun went under the clouds, so we did not get the golden glow of the red rocks when we actually got to the site.. thank god for photoshop!!!

[andreasrapp]

I think it just might be a bit blurred in the middle and a bit sharp on the far right.
But as the others, I wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't mentioned it =)

[mikedugganphotography]

You did an excellent job in blending these two images, would not have noticed had you not mentioned it.

[fletch]

It does look a little stuck on to me, especially when viewing in large. You need to be a bit more subtle when selecting an masking the sky, new skys with that much difference in exposure are really difficult to blend. Try playing with the "Modify Edge" tool when selecting the sky and adding a bit more feather and expanding/contracting the selection. Then just use the brush tool on the mask to tidy up any bit where you can see the joins.