Calm Down, Calm Down, I'm Published Again

[Marzipanogram]

haha, that's what I do as well with the mono conversion. I always find it hard to paint in the layers without there being an obvious line between the two layers. Do you use a low opacity brush at the edges or just 100%?

Sorry for all the questions, I love shooting churches/cathedrals/interiors and I'd love to be able to produce shots as clean as yours.

No problem at all, I'm glad to help when I can

I use a mixture soft and hard edge and alter the opacity.
It really depends on what I'm trying to blend.
A soft brush and low opacity, is probably best, as you've more control and you can just add more brush strokes.

But, I do use a hard edge and high opacity for windows, as an example.
I start in one corner (small hard brush, 100% opacity), then SHIFT click to another corner (so I'm getting a straight line), once I've gone around the edge of the entire window.
I then ALT click the Layer Mask, which shows clearly which areas you've painted, then I just fill in the "centre" area.
Using the ALT click method, takes away the guessing of where you've painted.

If when you've blended the window and surround and the window looks too dark, you can always paint in white with a very large brush, at a lower opacity to back it down.

If I were doing a stained glass window, I'd just paint with black on the bright areas.

But, if I had a shot of a wall of a building and wanted to blend the exposures together (i.e. sun light on part of the wall), I'd just use a soft brush and and low opacity, and brush multiple times, until I got what I liked.

 

[Devrij]

That's an awesome tip with the shift clicking for the windows. They're the bane of my life! That's really helpful, thanks! I've yet to figure out how to do intricate crenelations and other pointy bits against the sky (almost as bad as a treeline), but that's less of an issue for me as I prefer the interior shots anyway.

 

[Marzipanogram]

That's an awesome tip with the shift clicking for the windows. They're the bane of my life! That's really helpful, thanks! I've yet to figure out how to do intricate crenelations and other pointy bits against the sky (almost as bad as a treeline), but that's less of an issue for me as I prefer the interior shots anyway.

Are you aligning all the layers together before you create and paint on the Layer Mask ?
That will make blending the layers a bit easier and will cut out some of the misalignment caused by any camera movement.