I am trying to merge two photos taken of the sunset tonight. Luckily it was a crappy sunset (not much colour in the sky), so I can muck around with it as much as possible and not worry about the outcome....

I had it on a tripod, mirror lock up (I remembered this time), Av setting f9. I took one image of the hill (blew out the sky) and one image of the sky (very dark hill).

I went into PSE and tried to use the Photomerge Exposure. I did it in manual and followed the advice in my book from Scott Kelby. It turned out awful!! Very bad fringing on the tree top horizon and just looked so wrong.

Is there another way of maybe doing layers using both images (layer one on top of the other and then erasing part of the image to reveal the one below) or is this a bit hard especially with tree tops on the horizon??

I would love to get the hang of doing this, so I can further my sunset/sunrise photos.

Or is there another application to use other than PSE???