Exposure stacking blows out highlights

Question

Hi folks,Trying to stack a few exposures. I import, rasterise, auto align, then auto stack. Despite the darker exposures containing all the info from the sky, this is ignored and is blown out. It seems the exposures stack on top of eachother, getting brighter and darker in relevant areas. I've tried with 2 exposure brackets up to 7, graduated, without better results. I can paint back in the windows on the mask after autostack has created the stack, but this creates harshlines where the exposures where not blended.Could someone help me stack exposures where this effect isn't happening? HDR merge yields terrible results as well. Thank you!Below is a dark and light image, and the resulting stack - windows blown out and the midtone details all darkened. I have~ 30 of these to do so doing them by hand is not feasible.

Chuck Uebele · Answer

Are you doing these in Photoshop or Camera Raw/Lightroom? Adding exposures like the bright outside will kind of mess up the HDR, as it still tries to balance to the darker images of the room. If you dial down the exposure, are the areas actually blown out? It looks like there is not much detail in the darker original images, so it might be using the bight areas as the "top" values. With shots like this, I would mask in a good outside exposure.

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