POTD - Two Exposures Blended

A common challenge with capturing the sky and earth - expose for the sky and the earth is too dark. Expose for the earth and the sky is blown. My overall post processing skills are basic to say the least - I don't own Photoshop or Lightroom.

Fortunately, I do have PSE 6 and access to the wealth of information that is the Internet and I was able to blend two exposures, using a tutorial from the Luminous Landscape.

The original exposure, exposed for the sky:


I adjusted the exposure to +1.0EV using Nikon ViewNX (One of the many benefits of shooting in RAW):


I followed the tutorial, using the Layer Mask approach. I had to introduce in a Layer Mask manually, using this video tutorial from Renee Pearson. Even with PSE, the technique was really easy.

The result of blending the two exposures:


Then I played a bit by adding a radial gradient adjustment layer, with the linear burn blending mode.