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I am stacking several night sky shots using HDR Merge . The subject has a shot of the Moon very bright set at correct exposure. shots allowing for moonlight on foreground and a large structure building in the midground .The problem I am having is that when I adjust the tones after merge with an acceptable level I cant get the sky dark enough to show off the stars its either one or the other leaving far too much editing as a result . The foreground has snow in it illuminated by the moon the sky has to be dark to show off the Moon and stars, the Horizon has a residue of after sunset light civil Twighlight.so very difficult but if I can get it close to what I saw great dont mind small amount of tweaks . The final result Im getting is leaving the sky as if it was daylight and when i pull the tones control down to get the sky dark everything looks Muddy with all the colours looking yuck! any help would be appreciated .

I decided to do some nighttime photographing in my hometown with my iPhone7 and my tripod. I used the NightCap Pro app for these shots. The dark exposure (2) was shot at ISO100, f/1.8, 25s to protect the highlights and the bright exposure (1) was shot at ISO1000, f/1.8, 25s. I believe the iPhone 7 can only take long exposures of about 3s, so what this app basically does is stacking several photos for noise reduction and ISO controls the brightness of the photo. Nevertheless I was pretty amazed by what is possible with current smartphone cameras! I blended the dark and the bright exposure in Affinity Photo for iPad to bring some details in the highlights, especially for the windows on the right of the image. Then some color correcting, white balance, etc. and some dodging and burning. I wanted a warm image, because I am thinking of using this photo as a Christmas postcards for my family and friends - so I still need to do some lettering... Anyways, it was fun to do and I learned a lot about Affinity Photo for iPad and my iPhone 7... Best regards, Wetterhoun