Merging two moon exposures

[AstroNebulee]

Hi

I have taken several exposures with my dslr of the moon to give good detail on the moon at a short exposure and then several images of the surrounding sky, with clouds, how do I go about merging the short exposure moon on to the longer exposure image, as on the longer exposure obviously the moon is over exposed. I've normally done this by selecting the short exposure and copy then paste as a layer on the long exposure image, then using the screen option in ps to bring them together but this time the moon is being washed out by the overexposed one. I'm reading something about using a layer mask but can't see anything regarding my subject. Sorry if I made it sound all complicated. 

 

Clear skies 

[Scooot]

Hi, I’m no expert but tried a few ways. This is one method I’ve used to combine moon images.

https://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/elements/fake-layer-mask/

However, using the gradient tool probably won’t work very well if you’re trying to show clouds surrounding a nicely exposed moon, so you could use one of the other brushes to reveal the moon in the layer below.

The other method I’ve used is to create an HDR image using the hdrcomposition tool in Pixinsight, but I guess there’s an equivalent in photoshop. However I usually need 3 or 4 exposures to get it to work.

[AstroNebulee]

12 hours ago, Scooot said:

Hi, I’m no expert but tried a few ways. This is one method I’ve used to combine moon images.

https://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/elements/fake-layer-mask/

However, using the gradient tool probably won’t work very well if you’re trying to show clouds surrounding a nicely exposed moon, so you could use one of the other brushes to reveal the moon in the layer below.

The other method I’ve used is to create an HDR image using the hdrcomposition tool in Pixinsight, but I guess there’s an equivalent in photoshop. However I usually need 3 or 4 exposures to get it to work.

Thank you for your help, I shall give this workflow a go later on a see what results I get. 

[Scooot]

1 hour ago, LeeHore7 said:

Thank you for your help, I shall give this workflow a go later on a see what results I get. 

It’s not always that easy because if you try to reveal a perfectly exposed moon in the overexposed moon image, it can look very odd because of the extremely bright background surrounding the moon in the overexposed moon image. If you have a foreground with the moon higher in the sky it’s easier to use the gradient tool because gradually revealing a darker background surrounding the moon wouldn’t be such an issue.

For example the following image is an HDR image whereby the moon detail was able to be revealed because the huge dynamic range was embedded into the moon HDR image. That’s why the moon in the image still retains its brightness. The perfectly exposed moon in the shorter exposure was a dark grey with a black background. Had I tried to reveal that using a layer it would have looked quite odd. Similarly I could have revealed a darker more detailed image in the HDR image but it would have begun to look more unnatural. 
 

Anyway it’s difficult to suggest one method that suits all images, and I’m sure other more experienced imagers have other ways.

[AstroNebulee]

Yes that's the issue I'm trying to deal with, I can use the selection tool and feather it then cut it from the image then paste into the overexposed one but gets washed out by the brightness  whether I can select the overexposed moon and use exposure tool to lower it

[AstroNebulee]

I've had a bit of a go using this link for processing my two images https://www.astropix.com/html/j_digit/laymask.html

I lost myself at the gaussin blur bit, I could do some of it but got so confused as I'm using ps cc2 version 9,yes it's very old but got this from it so far. It's very poor though, need another fresh head moro to do it again.