Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I was struggling with the blending side of things. I followed these tutorials
http://atalas.businesscatalyst.com/M...Photoshop.html and
http://www.astropix.com/PFA/SAMPLE4A/SAMPLE4A.HTM
The first one mentions to guassian blur with a radius of about 20 pixels. The other link says:
"low resolution images will require a smaller pixel radius and high resolution images will need a larger radius. For a 1 megabyte image, try a blur of 10 pixels. For a 10 megabyte image, try a blur of 50 pixels."
I really did have to increase the radius up quite a bit (~70-80) otherwise the blending margin was quite obvious. Was I doing something wrong? I was also having issues deciding the area the go over with the brush. After the masking, I did use the lasso tool, feathered to 30pixels, on certain areas of the core to try and blend the brightness of the masking regions.
One big learning curve hey
