There’s a more refined method to blend two photos, though it involves a few more steps. Start by layering your two skyline photos one above the other in your editing software, just as you normally would.
Instead of using a mask at this stage, select the Rectangle shape tool from your tools panel and draw a rectangle directly over your stacked images. Next, apply a gradient to the fill of this rectangle. Configure the gradient with a solid color—black is a good choice—for both the top and bottom color stops. Initially, this will create a solid black rectangle since the gradient is set from black to black.
Now, modify the top color stop of your gradient. Reduce its Opacity to 0%. This adjustment transforms the gradient into one that transitions from fully transparent at the top to solid black at the bottom.
Take this rectangle layer and make it a Child Layer of your top skyline photo layer. You can achieve this by dragging the rectangle layer slightly below and to the right of the Top Skyline layer in your layers panel until you see a horizontal blue line appear beneath the Top Skyline layer. Alternatively, if the Rectangle layer is at the top of your layer stack, you can use the “Move Inside” command from the Arrange menu to nest it within the Top Skyline layer.
Once the rectangle is correctly nested as a child of the Top Skyline layer, set its Blend Mode to “Erase”. Because it is now a child layer, this blend mode will exclusively affect the Top Skyline layer it’s attached to. The “Erase” blend mode will then remove only the portions of the Top Skyline layer that contain visible pixels, effectively erasing the lower part of the top skyline image based on the gradient.
The real advantage of this gradient method is its flexibility. The gradient remains fully editable after application. You can easily adjust its position, length, and transparency at any point to fine-tune the blend between your two photos, giving you continuous control over the final image.
