The Shot
This was taken on the Playa Grande beach Puerto del Carmen, Lanzarote at close to high tide. There were also some good waves coming in and I used my recently acquired ND 8 filter which reduces light by 3 stops to get a soft feel to the waves. The HDR exposures were 1/5 sec, 1.6 sec and 6 seconds.
I was on a slightly higher bit of the beach providing a safe location as the waves came in.
The picture was taken on a Tripod with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.
Photomatix
Outputted in Photomatix to detail enhancer. Click the Camera name top right for Exif details and the settings used.
Photoshop
Detail brought back in with Topaz adjust with HDR pop with adjustments
General adjustments in levels and curves to enhance.
Vibrance layer increase 25 points
The sunset colours were enhanced in the tonemapping and Topaz and slightly taken back by reducing saturation in yellows and blues with a layer mask to keep the colour in the water.
Layers flattened before going on to sharpening
First duplicate layer Noiseware Pro and a little sharpening
Second duplicate layer with mask to apply extra sharpening and contrast with low amount and high radius using Unsharp mask (Clarity Effect) The settings were 53 amount and 53 radius.
Resources
For Licensing and more pictures see Edwin Jones Photography
Tags: ocean light sunset sun color colour beach water waves clouds reflections landscape Spain Lanzarote sand rocks wide angle hdr evening light Puerto del Carmen
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The Shot
This was taken on the Playa Grande beach Puerto del Carmen, Lanzarote at close to high tide. The ideal weather for a good sunset is high white cloud which the sun shines through. The day developed like this and the sunset followed just to order. There were also some good waves coming in and I used my recently acquired ND 8 filter which reduces light by 3 stops to get a soft feel to the waves. The HDR exposures were 1/3 sec, 1.3 sec and 5 seconds
The picture was taken on a Tripod with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.
Photomatix
Outputted in Photomatix to detail enhancer. Click the Camera name top right for Exif details and the settings used.
Photoshop
General adjustments in levels and curves to enhance.
The colours needed very little adjustment, Vibrance layer increase 31 points
The +2EV exposure was added in as a new layer. A black layer mask was added by holding alt while clicking the mask icon. Note that with an existing mask eg white which is the default for adjustment layers the colour of the mask can be changed from white to black and vice versa by clicking the mask to select it and then holding ctrl while pressing I for Invert. In this case a white brush was used on the black mask to bring more detail into the rocks with the extra exposure in this layer.
Layers flattened before going on to sharpening
First duplicate layer Noiseware Pro and a little sharpening
Second duplicate layer with mask to apply extra sharpening and contrast with low amount and high radius using Unsharp mask (Clarity Effect) The settings were 60 amount and 60 radius.
Another duplicate layer was used for Topaz Adjust to bring back more detail using HDR Presets, Dynamic Pop with adjustments. In Photoshop the effect was brought down a little by reducing the opacity of the layer used for Topaz to 86%.
Resources
For Licensing and more pictures see Edwin Jones Photography
Tags: ocean light sunset colour beach water waves clouds reflections landscape Lanzarote hdr
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The Shot
This is a combination of 3 of my images with a lot of editing to create the fantasy of the landscape of a world located in the centre of a galaxy or nebula where stars and star dust is many times denser than here.
The original images were all jpegs. The first image was of stars in the night sky locally in Pagham. The second image was of the moon again locally. The final image was taken in Lanzarote earlier this year. The volcanic landscape is ideal as the starting point for an alien world.
A lot of editing but a fun picture and learning process.
Photoshop
The Stars image did not have enough stars so I opened another copy, rotated it 3 times and copied each rotated image into the original as new layers to multiply the number of stars but in different locations.
Adjustment layers in levels, curves and brightness used to increase the brightness of the stars.
Hue saturation and colour balance layers used with layer masks to increase different colours in different parts of the star field. Light pollution and noise also coloured to start to get a little of the nebula look.
Topaz Adjust HDR Collection of filter presets, Dynamic Brightness used to strongly bring out the colours and nebula effect.
The moon picture was opened and doubled in size. Then Topaz Adjust Stylised collection glow in the dark filter used. Then selected and pasted into new layer and moved to right side.
The original moon was doubled again in size so 4 times. The clone tool was used to copy part of moon areas to other parts to make it into a different looking moon. Then Topaz Adjust Stylised, liquid chrome filter applied and extra colour. Topaz Lens adjustments fisheye used for more depth. Then selected and copied as new layer and moved to left.
The Lanzarote landscape was opened. This had an all blue sky. I used an online tutorial to make the sky fully transparent. Topaz adjust liquid chrome used on part of the landscape with a layer mask used to apply to only part and layer opacity used to adjust the effect. Some colours enhanced.
To enable flexibility selected part of the image from above the mountains down and saved as PNG to preserve sky transparency.
Copied the landscape into the nebula sky image as a new layer and moved the landscape down a little for more sky in the image
Duplicate layer with mask to apply extra clarity with low amount and high radius.
Resources
For Licensing, Prints, Products and more pictures see Edwin Jones Photography
Tags: Puerto del Carmen Lanzarote Canary Islands rocks HDR Spain Crater Volcano Montana Cuervo landscape desolate alien world planet moon stars nebula star dust galaxy universe fantasy science fiction star wars space another world alien world cosmos photoshop layer layers transparent montage dream surreal editing photo editing topaz topaz adjust
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The Shot
This shot was taken on my last day trip to London on 9 December. This was taken in Parliament Square looking towards Big Ben and Westminster Bridge. The turning into Whitehall is on the left. There is a constant flow of the iconic Double Decker red London buses which supply great light trails. With lights to delay them there is a guaranteed flow of traffic trails from the traffic and buses when the lights turn green. The light trail was obtained with a 10 second exposure.
The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10mm. Taken on a tripod. . One RAW image. The image was opened in Camera Raw and 2 additional images were created at =2EV and -2Ev for a “false HDR” with each image having Noiseware Pro applied. A Photoshop action I had saved was used to create the extra images automatically. The images were saved as tiffs.
Photomatix
Outputted in Photomatix to tone compressor for a more realistic look. Click the Camera name top right for Exif details and the settings used.
Photoshop
The +2EV image was copied in as a new layer, excluded with a black layer mask and then painted back in with a white brush at varying opacities to brighten some areas. These were the building on the left and the top of Big Ben.
Another image taken with exactly the same setup a few minutes later was copied in as a new layer, excluded with a black layer mask and then painted back in with a white brush in the middle right of the picture. This removed a distracting stationary bus and some cars from the far lane and also brought in the blue light trails
General adjustments in curves to enhance with layer mask to exclude highlights.
Brightness adjustment layer with mask to bring down brightness on the clock face of Big Ben and a bright area on the far left.
Vibrance layer increase 48 points
Saturation adjustment layer was used for a slight increase in the reds to enhance the colours in the light trails.
The moon was present in the original picture but the exposure resulted in a bright star like flare. I used another picture taken at home exposed for the Moon. Then I reduced the size of the image as the original was zoomed in. Then I used the elliptical marquee tool to select the moon and a little dark sky around it. Then copied this into this image and moved it to cover the original moon.
Blur filter used in a new layer with layer mask to apply only to small area of the road middle right to bring down visibility of some distracting traffic cones.
Used filter, lens correction, custom vertical to correct verticals in the buildings and then cropped.
Healing brush with content aware in Photoshop CS5 used to remove some flare spots .
Noiseware Pro
Unsharp Mask a little sharpening low radius and higher amount.
Duplicate layer with mask to apply Unsharp Mask for extra sharpening and contrast (clarity effect) with low amount and high radius to most of the image save some highlights. The settings were amount and radius both about 40 and threshold zero.
Resources
For Licensing and more pictures see Edwin Jones Photography
Merry Christmas to all
Tags: traffic trails light parliament big ben. colour night dark london england
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The Shot
Cueva de los Verdes , the Green Caves is a part of a large lava tunnel system in northern Lanzarote. The caves can only be accessed as part of a guided tour every 20 minutes. In the caves artificial but subtle lighting has been added. This view is at the end of the Tour in the upper gallery. They are just kidding when they say photos of this view are not allowed. Photos are allowed at the end though best to wait until the crowd thins out and the flashes stop popping. The best view is from the left side.
The pool is only about an inch deep but because of the absence of air movement it gives a perfect mirror reflection. Low light conditions like this really demonstrate the benefits of HDR, see the original image in my comment below.
The picture was taken with a Sony A550 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10mm. Taken on a Tripod. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.
Photomatix
Outputted in Photomatix to detail enhancer. Click the Camera name top right for Exif details and the settings used.
Photoshop
General adjustments in levels and curves to enhance.
Saturation layer reds with layer mask used to reduce red saturation in places bottom right
Extra background layer with layer mask used with despeckle and dust and scratches filters to reduce white spots due to low light level noise in bottom right
Original image -2EV copied in as new layer with layer mask and used to reduce highlights at far end of pool.
Noiseware Pro
Unsharp Mask
Resources
For Licensing and more pictures see Edwin Jones Photography
Tags: Lanzarote Canary Islands rocks cave caves lava ”lava tube” underground HDR Spain wide angle sigma wide angle Sony A550 prom photography photos photo reflections picture pictures color colour farbe licht reflexion wasser spanien tunnel ”cueva de los verdes” los verdes green ”green caves”holiday vacation island travel nature tours caverne cavern grotte caverna cavita covo grotta grotto water reflection canarias
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