Blend Mode (Lighten)

[tx_pilot]

I have just started using PSP 2021 Ultimate a few days ago and I'm looking for a little explanation and help.
I have been trying to mimic Richard Tatti's method of blending a foreground image with a background image (foreground landscape w/ sky background).
After following his steps (he is using PS) in PSP, which I think I'm doing correctly; when I get to the point where he selects the foreground layer and changes the blend mode to "lighten" - I am not getting the same results.

https://youtu.be/zy3GY019jI4

Attached is a link to his YT video showing what I am trying to achieve.
Skip to 13:45 where he starts editing in PS (17:08-17:47 mark is the blend mode step that I can not get to work like he does)

I'm hoping that someone can reproduce his results with PSP and let me know what I am doing wrong.
I've been trying to get this to work for about 3 days now, so I'm hoping that someone on here can point me in the right direction now.
I really thought I would have figured out what I was doing wrong by now.

[Jean-Luc]

when I get to the point where he selects the foreground layer and changes the blend mode to "lighten" - I am not getting the same results.

Could you explain how you do in PSP?

[hartpaul]

I have tried to keep it a bit simpler and am using two images resized to 800 x 533 pixels.

The top image has an area surrounded in red . This is like the star image that the guy had in his video where he wanted to erase the lighter areas in that area using a mask so that they would show black.
The area in blue is where I want the fireworks to show - representing his sky replacement image with the stars.
My method will be a lot shorter as I have found in a lot of cases that Photoshop lessons seem to be very long and try to show off many different features .
Using the main image I want to remove all bright lights and buildings on the background - it is only the boats, water and part of the hillside I want to keep.
1. Choose Selection Tool > Frehand Selection and Selection type Freehand. Set Feather to 20 to give a soft edge rather than a hard black area . I draw around the top area I want to be black. Then fill it with black using the Flood Fill tool.

2. Copy and paste the firework image as a new layer and then use the pick tool to position and size it down to fit in that space. (This caused some distortion in the fireworks because I did not want to find a better image nor place the resized smaller firework image on a larger black background to suit.)
3. Promote the background layer and then move the firework layer below the boats layer.
4. Make the boats layer active and set the blend mode to Lighten.

What this does is compare the pixels in corresponding positions on each layer in the Red, Blue and Green values and selects the lightest one(highest value) in each case. Here it is a choice between 0,0,0 (RGB) on the boats layer and the value on the fireworks layer. Any values on the fireworks layer greater than 0 are then displayed.
5. Right click layer and choose Merge > Merge All.
I tidied up at the bottom of the firework section using the clone tool.

There are many other ways that could be done using masks, selections.

[LeviFiction]

I remember this tutorial. Small problem, I don't have any light painting photos to "get the same results' and he doesn't provide them to play with.

Could you provide examples? What you're seeing that doesn't look quite right? Also, because of the way PSP does masking, make sure that the lighten blend mode is set on the group, not the layer.

[migf1]

EDIT: I just saw that Levi already explained it! Well, maybe my post is still useful in the future just for showing it visually too.

Masks in PSP are laid out differently in the layers palette compared to Ps (and Gimp).

Instead of having them as a 2nd thumbnail next to the layer you mask, you get an auto-created group containing the mask as a separate layer on top of the layer it masks. So instead of changing the blend-mode of the layer, you should change the blend-mode of the group itself. like so: https://gyazo.com/754c7978996898a45ec2e1107391b6a8

PS. I used just 2 quick screen-shots taken directly from that yt tutorial vid.

[LeviFiction]

Okay I saw the link to their main website and their online workshop option -https://www.nightscapeimages.com.au/wor ... nline.html

I downloaded the Space Junk Sky shot and Foreground shots next to the "Episode 5: Focus stacking & blending"

I then loaded the files into PS and created the full image result. I saved the PSD file and opened it in PSP. What you see here are the results of both PSP and PS.
PS - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T6U2h_ ... sp=sharing
PSP - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oicz1D ... sp=sharing

The difference is minor the PSP one is slightly darker.

The biggest difference was when I imported the files directly into PSP, the result was a lot flatter. But that's the RAW processing that's the biggest part. It was still close in appearance.