Bluebells Wood Pano Planet Final copy

Both Android and IPhone have Apps which can do this. For far better results though it is better achieved using either full Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or the free program Gimp. This will be demonstrated using an older version of Photoshop version CS5.

The ideal way to create a small planet is to take a 360 degree panorama. This though does have its problems at the taking stage with being sure to line up the images and then create a panorama. Doing it that way is more important for complex images such as architecture.

For a simpler introduction we are going to use a single image which is flipped and joined together so it goes back to the start when the image is edited into a planet. If you just use a single image the result will be a noticeable line at the join and a failure to join up in a round planet..

Note that if you try to join an original and flipped image to create a panorama using photomerge or similar commands in other software it will not work because the pixels are the same. Instead we will join them together manually. First note down the figures for width height and resolution. Start a new picture. Double the width and enter the settings for height and resolution the same as the original. First copy in the original and use the move tool to move it to the right. See below.

Pano Right copy

Next on the original image go to Image - Image Rotation - Flip Canvas Horizontally. Copy the image and paste into the new image and move to the left as below.

Image Doubled copy

Note that the same tree is now on both outer edges.

Next we have to make the image square. Is will distort it a lot but is normal and it comes right later. To do this go to image – image size and now untick the usual options for constrain proportions. Then change the figure for pixel height to the same as width.

Make Square copy

After clicking OK we end up with this image.

Image Square Done copy

Next we have to turn the picture upside down. Not doing this creates an inside out planet. To turn upside down go to Image- Image Rotation and either 180 degrees or Flip canvas vertically resulting in this image

Image Upside Down copy

Now we get to the magic part. Go to Filter - Distort - Polar Coordinates. In the window which comes up choose Rectangular to Polar.

Rectangular to Polar copy

Click OK and we get our planet.

Planet copy

For the final mage at the top of this Post I did some additional processing with more clarity and saturation and selective brightness adjustments.

Using this technique in the middle of bluebell woods is unusual. Most small planets have large amounts of sky above creating more of a planet look. Below are a couple more examples of what can be achieved.

First a poppy field and other fields leading down into a valley filled with mist and taken at Dawn.

Poppies Dawn Planet copy

Next some fields with a track leading in and scattered clouds in the sky.

Patching Field Finished Planet copy

Edwin Jones

London Bus Parliamentary U TurnLondon Bus image

Copyright Theft How I got £500 for the Illegal Use of my picture. A Guide for Photographers and a Warning for Businesses

It is amazing that there are many people and even businesses which should know better who think that because a picture appears on Google Images it is free to use without paying the photographer. These people are also ignorant of the substantial damages which can be payable for doing this. In this case I came to an agreed settlement after a few emails without taking it to court of £500. A London based business had used my picture copied from the Internet as one of a number of images rotating to form a banner on their website. I am not going to name them or give away any information which could lead to their name. Incidentally the picture taken was listed on my website as in my top 10. On Flickr it has had 23,000 views, 350 favs and 120 comments so it was a particularly annoying one to have stolen.

What many Photographers and people taking images may not be aware of are the increasing availability of tools which can detect the misuse of picture easily and simply. In the middle of last year I signed up an organisation at https://pixsy.com/. You give them a link to say your Flickr account and they automatically search for any matches to your picture found online and do it for free. You can get them to pursue a claim for you and they charge 50% of the damages recovered. They are fairly new and have a limited capacity so you sign up and ask for an invitation. They found the misuse of the picture by the London firm but I did not use them to recover damages as I knew what to do in UK law. They have a limited number of countries they will make claims in and do not expect anybody to help with Websites in Russia, China and the far east.

The other free and easy way to find your stolen images is by a Google Reverse Image search. Just go to https://images.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl and click the camera icon to upload your image. The result will show all cases where your image has been used on the Internet. Another resource is https://www.tineye.com/ which does Reverse Image Searches though I found Google brought in more results though true with only one check.

There has been a recent important change in the UK which makes it much easier for Photographers to bring straightforward and relatively small claims for Copyright Infringement without risking large legal fees All Copyright Claims are brought in the Intellectual Property and Enterprise Court (IPEC) in London. The important change is that they have introduced a Small Claims Track for simple claims under 10,000. No legal costs can be claimed and it is a simplified procedure. The Defendant can object but it is then up to the Court to decide which procedure is involved. For small claims if both parties agree the case can be decided just on the documents without a hearing.

It is much better to settle a claim for less than the full amount than take it to Court. For this you need to know what you are talking about and be able to prove it by giving links to relevant law. I had an advantage in my case in that I used to be a Solicitor (Attorney for American readers) before retiring early and getting into Photography The following is not in any way legal advice and I am way out of date and never knew anything about copyright law. I am passing on information I found on the Internet about the relevant UK law which may or may not be accurate.

It is vital that when you first find a misuse of your picture that you take screenshots of the Website with your computers clock showing the date included and also print it out, again because this shows the date. This is because as soon as you make a claim the picture will be taken off the website removing your evidence. You can also go to https://archive.org/web/ which is called the Wayback Machine. They take snapshots of Websites over the years which will show the use of your image. This is important because how long it has been used affects the amount of damages. Not all websites are on the Wayback Machine. If you used pixsy.com their results will show the first detected use of the image.

Go to https://www.whois.com/whois/ enter the web address and usually get full details of whose name and organisation the website is registered in. These details can sometimes be hidden in which case it will say. This search can produce details when there is nothing on the Website.

If the business is a company do a search at https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/ This will give you full details including Accounts which will indicate if they are worth pursuing. For a limited number of companies those with a sole Director and the same sole shareholder there have been recent cases ruling that for copyright only the Director can be liable jointly with the company, see http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/IPEC/2014/3762.html

The essential next step is to work out what the correct amount of damages is. First it is not the lowest Stock Photo Website price provided you have not sold your images on that sort of site. The courts will look first at the price the Photographer has put on that particular image for that particular use eg in my case Website use as a banner. If the picture has not been sold for that use the courts can look at general guidelines. In my case I do not sell images for Web Use only for printed use. General guidelines include the NUJ suggested prices for various uses of photographs. Another one is the Getty Images search for Rights Managed Photos. In my case the Business used my photo on their website for 9 months. For the NUJ Rates see http://www.londonfreelance.org/feesguide/index.php?&section=Photography&subsect=Online+use+of+photos

For 9 months at full page width the NUJ rates for the 9 months use come out at between £675 and £850. You can check Getty images at  http://www.gettyimages.co.uk   if you sold stock photos which is the Royalty Free system you would get between £150 and £275 or rather Getty would get that and you would get 15% of it. I have never sold stock so could say to the court that damages should be assessed  on the Rights Managed system which depends on the exact use. On a similar image using the Getty Custom calculator for the custom usage it came out at £995. The business which took the image might say that they would never have used the image at that kind of price. However so far as the Courts are concerned that does not matter, by taking the image they deprived the photographer of the right to negotiate so it comes down to market rate

In addition to market rate the courts will also award additional damages for what is known as flagrancy. This comes down to them taking the picture when they  knew or ought to have known that it was in breach of copyright. Some flagrance will usually be assumed in the case of a business. Additional damages can be awarded of 2 or 3 times the market rate. For a business it highlights how much there is to lose by getting it wrong. The quality and originality and rarity of the picture is also relevant. In one UK case the misuse of a picture of a celebrity which was copied from social media assuming it was free resulted in an award of £5000.

I offered to settle my case for the reduced amount of £500 in my first email. The response was to take down the image, say sorry and that they didn’t have to pay anything. The main response was that they did a Google image search for  for a commercial use free to use image, came up with mine and used it. The problem was that somebody, probably in China did the initial theft with a screen capture and cropped out or photoshopped my watermark. Then others took the image from them. The problem for the business in London was that Google guarantee nothing and indeed mention there may be errors if the source of the image is not legitimate See their terms at https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/29508?hl=en

It is up to the end user of the image to check  that they have proper consent from the copyright holder. In my case the website where the image was obtained had retained the original title. This shows up in the Source code of the Website. To help to keep track I always use totally original titles. I think of a good title and do a search on it in Google with inverted commas for that exact wording. If it comes up as no results I use the Title. If the business had done a search on that title they would have found numerous references to my Website and Flickr account with the original watermarked image. A reverse image search would have found the same. Those are the basic kinds of checks any business should do for any image found on the Internet. If they make no checks they will be liable even if they are not the original thief. It is of course much better to find a Photographer or check a Stock Photo Agency.

For some official guidance on using Photos found on the Internet see https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/copyright-notice-digital-images-photographs-and-the-internet

A useful web page for photographers giving more guidance and draft letters to write and taking a claim to small claims court can be found at http://www.epuk.org/the-curve/the-infringement-pathway-a-step-by-step-guide-for-issuing-a-copyright-claim

For my claim my first email was at the end of February. After 2 more emails explaining the Law with quotes and links to various websites they agreed to settle and paid today 13^th March. Not every case will be that quick but I would suggest it is worth a go.

Edwin Jones

Tunnel Light Tunnell Light

On Friday 27^th May I went on on one of the London Transport Museum Hidden London Tours. This one was of the secret tunnels under Euston Railway Station. These are abandoned areas of the London Underground. This Tour is a new one starting 2016 and I was on the second day they were running the Tour. First how do  you get on these Tours. It should be understood that these are 75 minute Tours of 20 people each running 4 days a week over about 8 weeks spread between a set in the spring and another in the Autumn. They sell out very quickly. It is essential to sign up to the London Transport Museum Website. They then release tickets a day in advance for subscribers. They email to give advance notice of the date and time when the email will go out releasing bookings. They did a queue system on their website. When I got on a minute after their email opened the floodgates there were 250 ahead of me and a 7 minute wait. I got in and made my booking. I checked as a matter of interest an hour later and there were 4000 in the queue and over an hour’s wait.

On the day our Tour Group met at 16 Melton Street which is the street immediately west of Euston Station. The building is on the junction with Drummond Street. The guides checked our E-Tickets and Identification and handed out high viz jackets. These were intended to help keep track of us especially in the darker tunnels and to give free access at the Underground Ticket barrier.
 

Meet Point Meet Point High Viz
 

The building at Melton Street was originally  an Underground Station entrance for the  Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway opening in 1907 and closing in 1914 when all stations were consolidated at Euston. The building only survived because it was required for a ventilation shaft. Inside we started with a side show giving some of the complex history of the competing Underground Companies in the area. Euston overground station was the first intercity railway station in London and was built in 1837 as the terminus of the London and Birmingham Railway. The building was demolished in the 1960s and replaced with the present building. The demolition included a great Doric Arch and provoked a big outcry at the time but too late. Ironically the railway was built to provide fast transport between London and the Midlands and north due to be repeated when HS2 is built at Euston.

Next it was on to the current Underground station where we headed for the Northern Line, Bank branch platform and disappeared into a normally closed and locked gate at the end of the Platform.
 

Enter DoorNorthern Line enter door
 

The following picture of a plan on site gives an idea of where we were. The pale pink tunnels are the closed off ones. They were originally connecting tunnels between old competing underground lines and their different booking halls and platforms. These were closed in the 1960s.
 

Plan Plan Euston Lost Tunnels
 

Within the tunnels can be seen remnants of advertisements dating back to the 1960s  providing a sort of time capsule.
 

Signs Signs Time Capsule
 

Some of the tunnels were quite well lit and other parts much less so requiring the use of torches by the organisers. On this tunnel we are heading towards the site of an old lift shaft.
 

TunnelTunnel
 

The Lift Shaft has now been opened up and is used for ventilation.
 

Old Lift Shaft Old Lift Shaft
 

Further on and photographically the lighting made this shot ideal.
 

Tunnel Light Tunnel Light
 

Next it was on to an area where a number of ventilation grills looked down on the passengers, platform and train below. Next time you go on the underground it might be worth looking up sometimes at who is looking down at you.
 

Vent To Platform Vent To Platform
 

The cost of the Tour was £35 or £30 with concession. Well worth it for a unique experience. There are a number of other Hidden London Tours including the abandoned Down Street Station and Tunnels at Clapham South. Aldwych and Charing Cross Tours are currently not available due to planned works. More details at https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/whats-on/hidden-london

Edwin Jones
 

Opera1PeopleOpera original
 

Followed by the final version after a fair amount of editing.
 

Opera2NoPeopleOpera after editing no people
 

There are 3 possible techniques to try-

1. If you are able to use a tripod try using a neutral density filter. With something like a 10 stop filter in a situation with low lighting you can readily get an exposure lasting several minutes. Hey presto, save for anybody staying stubbornly in the same place all the people disappear. The problem with many locations inside though is that they will usually ban tripods. In a  place like Opera Garnier in Paris shown in the example photo you might get as far as getting a few tripod legs extended before being swooped on by officialdom.
 

2. Trying to hold the camera in the same place take a number of shots over a period so each shot has the people in different parts of your shot. Ideally try to get about 5 shots over say 5 minutes but less can still work as will be shown here. You then need processing software which can use layers such as Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro. Note that Lightroom does not work for this as it does not support layers. My example image was taken in 2012 before I knew about this technique. However I happened to have taken 2 shots taken from close to the same position. The first stage is to open the images in the software as 2 separate layers. There are a number of ways to do this. The simplest which will work with any of the programs mentioned is to open the first image. Then open the second image. Go to select all for the second image and then copy. Go to the first image and click edit and paste. The second image will appear above the first as a layer.
 

The next stage is align or line up the 2 images. By reducing the opacity of the top image using the slider in the layers panel we can see the difference between the 2 images, in this case a lot.
 

Opera3Layers OpacityLayer Opacity
 

It is possible to line up the images manually using the move tool and moving around the top image. To get perfect alignment though it is better to use the auto align tool. In Photoshop elements use New-Photomerge-Panorama. In Photoshop hold shift to select both layers and then go to Edit- Auto Align Layers.
 

Opera4AutoAlignAlign Layers
 

Next by adding layer masks to each image we can rub out people in seconds by painting onto the mask with a black brush which has the effect of showing through the mask the other lower image without that person in it.

3. For the people still there the final technique is cloning. This could be a Blog post on its own but for a symmetrical picture like this one a hidden part of the clone tool which can be incredibly useful is the mirror function. First bring up the clone source panel by clicking Window in the main menu and then Clone Source. You will see there a label for Offset. Click the arrow to the right of it. You can now use as a source for cloning an area opposite. As an example the stairs on the left can be used to clone over the stairs on the right and will appear as a mirror image. Now just line it up and the lady taking a picture at the foot of the stairs disappears.
 

Opera4CloneMirrorClone Source panel mirror After all the editing I liked the final image better in Black and White. See this again below.
 

Opera2NoPeopleFinal Result
 

Edwin Jones
 

Forest Floor Final This shot was taken in woodland to the East of the A29 road near Slindon in the South Downs in West Sussex. The shot was taken later in the morning after taking the tunnel of trees shot at Halnaker. <br/><br/>The aim of the picture was to get the fungi as the main focus but also showing the context of the woodland. To get the lowest pov I put the camera on the ground and improvised by using sticks to get it lined up right. With movement not being an issue I used f8 for a little more depth of field. The shutter was triggered with a remote release. The camera used was a Sony A550 with a Sigma 28-80 at 35mm. This has the advantage for this sort of shot of Live View with a flexible screen.<br/><br/>I aimed to keep a natural look in the processing but actually quite a lot of work was done to it and it is particularly interesting to see the large difference between the before and after shots. See my latest Blog Entry for the processing details and before and after pictures

This shot was taken in woodland to the East of the A29 road near Slindon in the South Downs in West Sussex. The shot was taken later in the morning after taking the tunnel of trees shot at Halnaker.

The aim of the picture was to get the fungi as the main focus but also showing the context of the woodland. To get the lowest  pov I put the camera on the ground and improvised by using sticks to get it lined up right. With movement not being an issue I used f8 for a little more depth of field. The shutter was triggered with a remote release. The camera used was a Sony A550 with a Sigma 28-80 at 35mm. This has the advantage for this sort of shot of Live View with a flexible screen.
 

Many purists take the view that a picture must be taken perfectly in the camera and processing is wrong. However many steps which are done in processing can also be done in camera, Examples which apply to this shot are adjusting exposure a little in the RAW file, warming up the image by adjusting White Balance in RAW or using a filter and also cropping. As long as you do not have the problem of being a purist it is a lot easier to make adjustments on the computer rather than struggling while trying to see the screen in low light while sitting on a wet forest floor.

Lets first have a look at the original image and discuss what’s wrong with it.
 

Forest Floor Original copySONY DSC
 

Because the forest is shaded the auto white balance has come out too cool or too much towards blue. The image needs warming up. Next there are a lot of quite bright highlights in the background which take the viewers attention away from the main subject of the Fungi. For better composition cropping needs to move the fungi more off centre.

Next the processing used –

1)  Editing in RAW, White balance temperature increased for a warmer look. Recovery to tone down highlights, Clarity and vibrance increased.

2) Topaz Adjust for more warmth and detail and Topaz DeNoise to remove noise.

3) Topaz Clarity for more detail and then crop for better composition.

4) Topaz adjust but just using the vignette tool to darken the corners and focus attention on the Fungi.

5) Brightness contrast adjustment layer to reduce brightness on the highlights in the background using a layer mask for selective adjustment.

The final image is as follows.
 

Forest Floor Final copyThis shot was taken in woodland to the East of the A29 road near Slindon in the South Downs in West Sussex. The shot was taken later in the morning after taking the tunnel of trees shot at Halnaker. <br/><br/>The aim of the picture was to get the fungi as the main focus but also showing the context of the woodland. To get the lowest pov I put the camera on the ground and improvised by using sticks to get it lined up right. With movement not being an issue I used f8 for a little more depth of field. The shutter was triggered with a remote release. The camera used was a Sony A550 with a Sigma 28-80 at 35mm. This has the advantage for this sort of shot of Live View with a flexible screen.<br/><br/>I aimed to keep a natural look in the processing but actually quite a lot of work was done to it and it is particularly interesting to see the large difference between the before and after shots. See my latest Blog Entry for the processing details and before and after pictures
 

Edwin Jones
 

PillarsMetropolisFinalPillars Metropolis Final

This is a shot of One Canada Square in Canary Wharf, London taken on a London day trip on the 10^th August. The building was the tallest in the UK until the Shard usurped its title in 2010. Although the picture looks to be a long exposure it was actually faked in the processing . Setting up a tripod for a real long exposure would have been pointless as the Security Guards have a habit of pouncing in that area. 

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 15mm.

There was some quite involved processing using HDR, Topaz filters and Photoshop. The mono conversion was done with Topaz B&W Effects. There is a lot of detailed control possible with this once you get out of the presets and use the adjustments.

Photomatix

After saving the RAW files as tiffs the 3 images as 2EV exposure separation were imported into Photomatix and processed with a fusion natural setting with a little extra contrast added in final touches.

Photoshop

To start various adjustments were made to the original colour image with various Topaz Plugins.

First Topaz DeNoise using the RAW moderate preset.

Next Topaz Clarity was used to enhance edges with a layer mask used on the photoshop duplicate layer to exclude the sky from the effect.

Next Topaz Detail was used with Micro Contrast Enhancement II as a preset and some adjustments.

The Mono Conversion was done with Topaz BW Effects. Some adjustments first in the Basic Exposure and adaptive Exposure panels. Then the most important part was local adjustments. This is the really useful bit. By using the Edge Aware Slider and pushing it to maximum I was able to edit the sky and buildings using the dodge and burn tools to darken the sky and lighten parts of the buildings. The edge aware brush confines the brush to within edges such as the area of the sky without needing to make a selection.

The false long exposure effect was a little complicated. The obvious way to do it is with a pan blur effect. However this results in the buildings blurring into the sky as well. I got round the problem by making a selection of the sky and pasting it into a new image with a transparent background. The pan blur effect was then done in photoshop with angle adjustments to the blur getting it coming in the direction I wanted. The sky was then selected and pasted back into the original image. Further adjustments were made in Photoshop using selections and levels and curves

The picture was given more punch using a clarity effect using unsharp mask with settings of 29 amount and 29 radius with a layer mask to remove the effect from the sky. 

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original image at 0EV and then the HDR and then the final result.

Original

PillarsMetropolis0EVPillars Metropolis 0EV Next HDR after Photomatix

PillarsMetropolisHDRPillars Metropolis HDR

 Final Image

PillarsMetropolisFinalPillars Metropolis Final

Edwin Jones

See here for print ordering Monolith in The Metropolis

Poppy Field Sky Hole FinalPoppy Field Sky Hole final

This shot is the last of the sequence taken at a Poppy Field just south of Falmer near Brighton on the West Sussex coast, UK. For full details of the exact location see the first image in this series at https://www.flickr.com/photos/edwinjones/18801022079/in/dateposted-public/

I was taking macro images when I saw this pattern in the sky developing and quickly switched to the camera with a wide angle lens and took some 3 shot sequences for HDR. The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm. Taken handheld. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Outputted in Photomatix using detail enhancer and a stronger HDR than I usually go for to really bring out the detail in the clouds. I then used a Photoshop Saturation adjustment layer to bring down the reds and blues which were excessive.

I used Topaz DeNoise and then Topaz Clarity Landscape Pop preset.

The final edit was Unsharp Mask 47 amount and 47 radius for extra contrast and clarity applied on a layer with a layer mask and highlights excluded.

The original image before all editing.

Poppy Field Sky Hole OriginalPoppy Field Sky Hole Original

The final image after editing

Poppy Field Sky Hole FinalPoppy Field Sky Hole

Edwin Jones

3.2.1 Elevator Lift Off Final3.2.1 Elevator Lift Off Final

This is a shot of the Lloyds Building in the City of London. The inside out nature of the building extends to the elevators and at night each one has 2 red lights underneath which makes for good potential for light trails. I had tried taking this shot from the pavement and although possible it does bring in a very bright light at the top. I noticed that an open basement area extended under the elevators and unlike other areas it did not have a private – no admittance sign. Tripod was set up and I spent nearly 20 minutes tucked away under the Elevators taking pictures until a Security Guard spotted me from above and shouted out that I needed permission so I moved on.

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 on a tripod with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10mm. The image is comprised of a 3 shot HDR with 2EV spacing. The images were opened in Photoshop first and each image saved as tiffs. HDR processing was in Photomatix using Fusion Real Estate for a natural look

Photoshop

To start Topaz DeNoise and then Topaz Detail were used on the HDR. Next each of the 3 images were pasted together in layers and layer masks used to remove the ghosts of the elevator as it moved up through the images leaving in the light trails. Selections and the clone tool were used to fill the gaps in the light trail

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original image, then the image with HDR and images layered in and then the final result.

Original

3.2.1 Elevator Lift Off Original3.2.1 Elevator Lift Off Original

HDR and Layered

3.2.1 Elevator Lift Off Layered3.2.1 Elevator Lift Off Layered

Final Image

3.2.1 Elevator Lift Off Final3.2.1 Elevator Lift Off Final

Edwin Jones

DLR Warp Speed FinalDLR Warp Speed Final

This view was taken on the Docklands Light Railway as the train was in the tunnel which takes it out from Bank Station under the City. The railway is automatic, no driver except a supervisor who sits in one of the front passenger seats. This gives a great opportunity as there are passenger seats at the front and back of the train. I put the camera lens flat against the window to cut out reflections.

I used shutter priority and settled on a shutter speed of 0.7 seconds for the best feel of movement.

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10mm. Taken handheld  in RAW. The image was opened in Camera Raw and 2 additional images were created at =2EV and -2Ev for a “false HDR”  A Photoshop action I had saved was used to create the extra images automatically.

First Topaz DeNoise using the RAW moderate preset.

Next Topaz Clarity was used to enhance edges.

Next Topaz Detail was used with Micro Contrast Enhancement II as a preset and some adjustments.

Various colour balance adjustments were made both generally and on selections

General adjustments in levels and curves to enhance. A strong curves adjustment was used.

Vibrance layer increase 62 points

Brightness contrast layer with mask used to increase brightness on the tracks.

I wanted to add some sharply defined lines going into the distance. Along the track there is a sort of ledge area with a shadowed area below it. I made a selection of the shadow with the pen tool and used a saturation layer to sharply bring down the brightness of this area. Then another selection was made of the ledge and a colour balance adjustment layer used to bring up blues in this area.

The minus 2EV image was copied as a new layer and used to bring down the intensity of the light streak.

Crop tool used for composition and to remove the wiper blade.

Clone tool used for tidy up.

Duplicate layer with mask to apply extra sharpening and contrast (clarity effect) with 43 amount and 43 radius to the picture except the highlights.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original image and then the final result.

Original

DLR Warp Speed OriginalDLR Warp Speed original

Final Image

DLR Warp Speed FinalDLR Warp Speed Final

Edwin Jones

Metropolis at Lloyds FinalMetropolis at Lloyds

This is a shot of the Lloyds Building in the City of London taken on a London day trip last Monday 2^nd March.  On the left is the Willis Building. It was a very windy day though mainly sunny. While walking to this location I got a good buffeting as the wind was channelled between the skyscrapers. Setting up a tripod would have been pointless so I used a handy flat topped post to put the Camera on pointing up. I used a wireless shutter release. I used a 10 stop BW Neutral Density filter resulting in 57 seconds and plenty of cloud movement with the wind strength.

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10mm.

The image was opened in Camera Raw and edits made there to reduce exposure and increase clarity and vibrance.

Photoshop

To start various adjustments were made to the original colour image with various Topaz Plugins.

First Topaz DeNoise using the RAW moderate preset.

Next Topaz Clarity was used to enhance edges with a layer mask used on the photoshop duplicate layer to exclude the sky from the effect.

Next Topaz Detail was used with Micro Contrast Enhancement II as a preset and some adjustments.

The Mono Conversion was done with Topaz BW Effects. Some adjustments first in the Basic Exposure and adaptive Exposure panels. Then the most important part was local adjustments. This is the really useful bit. By using the Edge Aware Slider and pushing it to maximum I was able to edit the sky and buildings using the dodge and burn tools to darken the sky and lighten parts of the buildings. The edge aware brush confines the brush to within edges such as the area of the sky without needing to make a selection.

Further adjustments were made in Photoshop using selections and levels and curves

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original image and then the final result.

Original

Metropolis at Lloyds OriginalMetropolis at Lloyds Original

Final Image

Metropolis at Lloyds OriginalMetropolis at Lloyds Original

Edwin Jones

Vertigo at the Atrium FinalThis is another shot taken at the Peter Jones Department Store in Sloane Square.

This is another shot  taken at the Peter Jones Department Store in Sloane Square. I had not been there before and I was surprised to find this amazing Atrium on top of the weird looking spiral staircase in the previous shot. The escalators reminded me a little of the ones inside the Lloyds building. BTW I didn’t actually feel any vertigo, just felt like the right title.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens at 10 mm.. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. The images were opened in Photoshop first and each image saved as tiffs. HDR processing was in Photomatix using Fusion Real Estate for a natural look. The software did a good job of removing the slight movement of the people between exposures

The picture was enhanced with Topaz adjust and Denoise. Further editing was done in Photoshop for levels, contrast and brightness.

Below is the original image at 0EV of the 3 brackets and then the final image after processing.

Original

Vertigo at the Atrium OriginalVertigo at the Atrium

After processing

Vertigo at the Atrium FinalThis is another shot taken at the Peter Jones Department Store in Sloane Square.

Edwin Jones

February Spring Crocus Bloom FinalFebruary Spring Crocus Bloom

This shot was taken on Tuesday 17^th February which was very springlike with unbroken sunshine and temperatures up to 10C or 50F. The location was a small green off the Aldwick Road in Bognor Regis, UK. The crocus there were the first I have seen this year.

The camera used was a Sony A550 with a Sigma 28-80 zoom with a macro function at 80mm. Taken on a Tripod.

Taking

The 20 images were taken using manual focusing and small adjustments of the focus ring.

Photoshop

I took RAW and JPEGs but used the JPEGs and copied these to a separate folder.

The next step was in Photoshop to go to file – Automate – Photomerge. In the next window I browsed to the folder for the images. On the defaults I left it on Auto but deselected blend images together and made sure all the options at the bottom of the window were deselected. Click OK and when Photoshop is done all the images will be open as separate layers. Next select all the layers Control plus A or Command plus A on Mac. Next go to Edit and select Auto Blend Layers and from the window select Stack Images. Photoshop then proceeds to select  and stack images using the sharpest part of each image and creating layer masks for each image layer. Photoshop aligns the images automatically to compensate for small movement from the wind.

If there is more movement it might be necessary to crop a fair bit but there was very little in this case. I did though crop for better composition.

I made a selection of just the crocus and saved it for future use with layer masks. Extra detail and vibrance was brought in using Topaz Adjust HDR.

Topaz denoise to remove a small amount of noise.

Saturation yellows increased a little.

Levels used to brighten a little and a brush on a layer mask used to remove the effect from brighter areas .

Unsharp mask 24 amount 24 radius for an extra clarity effect.

The original had a good out of focus background but I used Photoshop Lens Blur applied with a layer mask to the background only to bring it down more.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original being one of the 20 images. Then the final focus stacked image.

Original

February Spring Crocus Bloom OriginalFebruary Spring Crocus Bloom

Final focus stacked Image

February Spring Crocus Bloom FinalFebruary Spring Crocus Bloom

For licences see http://edwinjonesphotography.com

Edwin Jones

CitizenM Wooden Spiral Staircase FinalCitizenM Wooden Spiral Staircase

Sorry, yet another Spiral Staircase! This one is at the CitizenM hotel at Lavington Street, Southwark, London. CitizenM is a small chain of Boutique Hotels. The ground floor is a fairly busy cafe/bar and nobody seemed at all bothered by my taking pictures of their beautiful staircase. Light levels were very low and I could only just get a decent shutter speed at 1600 ISO. For this shot I decided to place the camera on the ground at the base of the stairs and used a remote trigger release. ISO 200 resulted in 1.6 seconds. Not having an adjustable screen and live view I took quite a few pictures to get one I was happy with.

I used a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens at 20 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. The images were opened in Photoshop first and each image saved as tiffs. HDR processing was in Photomatix using Fusion Real Estate for a natural look.

This picture was enhanced with Topaz Clarity and Topaz Denoise. I cropped for better composition and did a slight vignette using a feathered elliptical selection and slight brightness reduction to tone down the corners.  

The picture was given more punch using a clarity effect using unsharp mask with settings of 20 amount and 20 radius.

The original image at standard exposure is below

CitizenM Wooden Spiral Staircase OriginalCitizenM Wooden Spiral Staircase original

Edwin Jones

Smile Underground Exit FinalThis is the exit/entrance from Kings Cross Underground Station leading from the Victoria Line to Pentonville Road. The wording can be read going both ways though perhaps smiles might be more in evidence on reaching the exit especially at rush hour. The man dressed in black wearing a hoodie came along at just the right time. Thanks go to contact <b><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/turnipfarmer/with/16146138449/
">Aaron Yeoman</a></b> for this location who got it from Dan Borg who got it from ……In the original colour image the lettering is in red yellow and blue with a dingy yellowish background. I decided it looked better in a high key mono though care was needed in the mono conversion to bring up the yellows in the lettering to avoid them fading out. See my Blog for the original.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang 8mm fisheye lens. 3 raw images 2EV spacing for HDR. Outputted in Photomatix using fusion Real Estate for a natural look.

More detail was brought in using Topaz Adjust Clarity and noise reduced using Topaz DeNoise.

I used a brightness/contrast adjustment layer and pushed up the brightness. The mono adjustment was done in Photoshop with a mono adjustment layer giving the chance to play with the sliders to get the look I wanted.

The picture was given more punch using a clarity effect using unsharp mask with settings of 49 amount and 49 radius with a layer mask to remove the effect from the lights.

This is the exit/entrance from Kings Cross Underground Station leading from the Victoria Line to Pentonville Road. The wording can be read going both ways though perhaps smiles might be more in evidence on reaching the exit especially at rush hour. The man dressed in black wearing a hoodie came along at just the right time. Thanks go to contact  Aaron Yeoman for this location who got it from Dan Borg who got it from ……In the original colour image the lettering is in red yellow and blue with a dingy yellowish background. I decided it looked better in a high key mono though care was needed in the mono conversion to bring up the yellows in the lettering to avoid them fading out. See below the original image.

Smile Underground Exit OriginalSmile Underground Exit

The picture was taken handheld  with a Sony A700 with a Samyang 8mm fisheye lens. 3 raw images 2EV spacing for HDR. Outputted in Photomatix using fusion Real Estate for a natural look.

More detail was brought in using Topaz Adjust Clarity and noise reduced using Topaz DeNoise.

 I used a brightness/contrast adjustment layer and pushed up the brightness. The mono adjustment was done in Photoshop with a mono adjustment layer giving the chance to play with the sliders to get the look I wanted.

The picture was given more punch using a clarity effect using unsharp mask with settings of 49 amount and 49 radius with a layer mask to remove the effect from the lights.

Edwin Jones

Traffic Trails to Westminster FinalThis viewpoint is on Broad Sanctuary Road next to Westminster Abbey approaching Parliament Square.

This viewpoint is on Broad Sanctuary Road next to Westminster Abbey approaching Parliament Square.

The picture is made up of 3 images layered using layer blend modes and some use of layer masks. The light trail on the left comes from 2 images and the one on the right from one image. Each image was 8 to 10 seconds.

The originals of the 3 images used are as follows-

WestTrailsOrig1Traffic Trails to Westminster

WestTrailsOrig2Traffic Trails to Westminster

WestTrailsOrig3Traffic Trails to Westminster

The pictures were taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 17mm. Taken with a tripod  in RAW. The image were first processed in Camera Raw with exposure adjustments, recovery of highlights and clarity.

I used Topaz HDR to even up lighting and then Topaz DeNoise. Big Ben was straightened using filter-lens correction-custom-vertical correction and crop. The picture was given more punch using a clarity effect using unsharp mask with settings of 29 amount and 29 radius

The final image after merging and all editing follows-

Traffic Trails to Westminster FinalThis viewpoint is on Broad Sanctuary Road next to Westminster Abbey approaching Parliament Square.

Edwin Jones

Tower Bridge Exhibition viewThis is a different viewpoint of the Thames taken from one of the walkways linking the 2 towers of Tower Bridge high above the roadway. It is accessed as part of the Tower Bridge Exhibition. One nice little touch was that within some of the windows they had little sliding windows with a camera icon next to it. Provision for Photographers instead of bans, well done Tower Bridge!!. I took the picture by putting the camera way out through the little window and guessing composition as my camera does not have live view. <br/><br/>The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Samyang 8mm fisheye lens. Taken handheld. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Outputted in Photomatix on fusion real estate settings for a natural look for an HDR. The minus 2EV image was copied in as a new layer and masked off except for the bright areas to tone them down. <br/><br/>I used Topaz Adjust Vibrance sunset dynamic to bring more yellow and oranges into an otherwise far too blue scene.<br/><br/>I used Topaz DeNoise on a duplicate layer with a mask to apply it only to the sky. <br/><br/>The picture was given more punch using a clarity effect using unsharp mask with settings of 36 amount and 36 radius<br/><br/>For

This is a different viewpoint of the Thames taken from one of the walkways linking the 2 towers of Tower Bridge high above the roadway. It is accessed as part of the Tower Bridge Exhibition. One nice little touch was that within some of the windows they had little sliding windows with a camera icon next to it. Provision for Photographers instead of bans, well done Tower Bridge!! I took the picture by putting the camera way out through the little window and guessing composition as my camera does not have live view.

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Samyang 8mm fisheye lens. Taken handheld. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Outputted in Photomatix on fusion real estate settings for a natural look for an HDR. The minus 2EV image was copied in as a new layer and masked off except for the bright areas to tone them down.

I used Topaz Adjust Vibrance sunset dynamic to bring more yellow and oranges into an otherwise far too blue scene.

I used Topaz DeNoise on a duplicate layer with a mask to apply it only to the sky.

The picture was given more punch using a clarity effect using unsharp mask with settings of 36 amount and 36 radius

Halnaker Stars FinalHalnaker Stars Final

Last Saturday night 13^th December was very clear very cold and very still. It was also the peak of the Geminid Meteor Shower. I saw at least 10 during the time I was out but only one was bright enough to show up with the exposure length used. The image was taken near Halnaker north of Chichester looking towards the South Downs. The sky glow visible is from London 60 miles to the north.

The image was taken with a Sony A700 and a Samyang Fisheye Lens using a Tripod.

I used my Interval Timer and set the camera at ISO 200 and bulb and the timer at 2 minutes at f3.5. I set the timer for 1 hour 38 minutes but did not use the first 18 minutes as it was still a bit too light so the star trails shown are for 1hour 20 minutes. I had some extra kit for Star Trails this time. First a Head Torch which was very useful for taking things down in the dark. The second bit of kit was even more useful. This was LensMuff which is a holder for chemical hand warmers which secures round the lens with Velcro. The night was perfect for a heavy dew and frost and by the time the sequence finished at 18.45 my tripod was thick with frost but the lens stayed clear of any dew or frost.

The images were stacked in Startrails.exe. It would normally be very time consuming to blend all the pictures together but there is now free software available to do it for you at http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html

With the method of stacking together shorter exposures noise is not such an issue so I turned off the Cameras noise reduction settings. If these are turned on it doubles the exposure length as a second image is taken automatically of the same length for the noise reduction process. This also causes gaps in the Star Trails if multiple images are blended. Noise was corrected later with software.

The circular pattern is formed by pointing the camera towards Polaris the Pole Star near the Plough. As the Earth turns stars more above the pole do not appear to move as much as those more above lower latitudes. I had with me an HTC Android Smart Phone with the Google Sky App. This enabled me to locate the pole star while there was still light. The foreground comprises an image taken while there was still light. With the Camera and Tripod locked in position the star trail images were taken later when the stars were out.

The Sky Glow is from London 60 miles to the north. Also I kept frames with some remains of blue in the sky which avoids any orange glow from light pollution..

The images used were taken over 1 hour 20 minutes with 40 images of 1 minutes 59 seconds  exposures each with 1 second gap between each exposure on the timer. These were stacked with the startrails software.

All the settings and equipment were as follows

- Sony A700 Camera.

- ISO 200, f3.5, 1 minute 59 seconds.

- Long Exposure and high ISO noise reduction set to off. Otherwise the Camera would take One minute and 59 seconds between each shot for its own noise reduction resulting in great gaps in the Star Trails.

- Samyang Fisheye lens 8mm.

- Tripod.

- Interval timer

- LensMuff holder for chemical hand warmers wrapped around the lens to prevent condensation.

See this post for a review of this Timer

http://edwinjonesphotography.com/blog/2012/5/timer-interval-remote-review

Tips

- Arrive early, bring a compass or Smartphone, to help find the north star.
- Setup gear while it’s still light, get your composition and wait.
- Shoot test shots, make sure you can see the first stars.
- Wait for that perfect moment and then start the exposure.
- Bring a torch, so you can find you way and make adjustments after dark. A head torch is especially useful.
- Bring warm clothing and a snack and drink.

Photoshop

For the Star Trails the stacking software works on jpegs which are then saved as a Tiff.

After opening in Photoshop some extra detail was brought in with Topaz Adjust and Noise reduced with Topaz DeNoise.

The Star Trails were brightened using Astronomy Tools Action to select the brighter stars and contrast and brightness adjustment..

After flattening the image duplicate layers were brought up to sharpen.

For the foreground this was a standard with light still in the sky.

On the foreground image I selected the foreground using the quick selection tool. Then I copied the selection and pasted it in to the star trails image. I used the move tool to line it up with the silhouetted  foreground.  

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First one image of the stars, then the Star Trails Image after merging of the frames but before other processing and then the final result.

Single image including the meteor

Halnaker Stars One imageHalnaker Stars One image

Merged Star Trails image

Halnaker Stars Before EditingHalnaker Stars Before Editing

Final Image

Halnaker Stars FinalHalnaker Stars Final

Edwin Jones

Alien City Travelator copyAlien City Travelator final

I have just discovered this new software from Topaz called Topaz Glow. It is available as a standalone program or as a plugin and for Windows or Mac. I really like discovering software which can create amazing effects in minutes rather than the hours it would take to do the same in Photoshop. Another reason to do a review now is that it is available from Topaz at an introductory discount and a price of $49.99 (normally $70) until 31 December 2014. You just need to use the coupon code -    introglow        at checkout to get the savings! It is worth taking a look with a free 30 day trial. See

Topaz Labs Glow

Review

First the basics

System Requirements

Mac OS X 10.8 or higher

Windows 7/8 x64 + Open GL 2.1

*Does not support Windows 32bit

Compatibility

Glow can be accessed as a plugin in:

• Photoshop CS4+

• Photoshop Creative Cloud

• Photoshop Elements 6+

• Corel Paintshop Pro X

• Serif PhotoPlus X5+

• Lightroom as an external editor

• NOT compatible with photoFXlab or Fusion Express

I would strongly advise taking up the free trial to make sure it works on your computer.

This is not the sort of program for you if you dislike anything stronger than mild processing of photos. This is more for a wild fantasy look. However if you prefer the effects can be dialed down substantially. If you use the software as a plugin in a program with layers the effects can be applied to just a part of the image which can look quite effective.

The main image I tried it out on was taken a few day ago getting the camera low down on a travelator. Luckily a man in a hoodie walked past and got in the frame. Hoodies are real gifts to photographers and this program allowed me to give him some seriously weird treatment, cruelty to hoodies? Possibly or he might think it quite cool. The first image shown is the original before any editing.

Glow Original ImageGlow Original Image

Used as a standalone program you bring a picture into Glow by browsing or drag and drop. When used as a plugin open the picture in your program, do a duplicate layer if you have that facility. For Elements and Photoshop go to filters and select Topaz Glow. To make Glow available for any compatible program as a plugin all you need to do is run it once as a standalone program.

In the following picture the main screen is shown. I have selected one of the 70 presets Natural Neon 3.

Natural Neon 3 Presets copy

By clicking the dropdown you can narrow down the presets into categories as follows –

• Featured
• My Presets
• All Effects
• Neon
• Graphic
• Liquid Designs
• Fur and Feathers
• Fantasy
• Afterglow

On the work screen shown the changed image is shown full size with a small inset for the original. In the top left you can choose instead side by side or one above the other.

By clicking the box with lines in it far top right you get to the nuts and bolts of the sliders to play around with the various settings to get the image looking just as you want it. First there is a the main glow settings, then secondary glow.

Further down is the colour adjustment panel where you can adjust overall or colour by colour.

Here I made adjustments to bring in more red and yellow.

Natural Neon 3 colours Finishing Touches Natural Neon 3 colours and Finishing Touches

 Finally there is  finishing touches. Under this last section I find the vignette adjustment very handy.

As you are making your own adjustments you will see in the menu bar top right a plus sign. Just click this to save your current adjustments as one of your own presets. Note that this is the only sort of history feature available so if your playing with the sliders produces something you really like be sure to save it as a preset. This feature also enables you to set up your own style and preferences so if you prefer the effects dialed down just set up your own presets for future use.

The image was finished off in Photoshop with a crop and extra sharpness and clarity.

Alien City Travelator finalAlien City Travelator final

Those who read my blog will know that I use Topaz plugins a lot. There are currently 16 Plugins available which can be bought all at once as a collection or individually. I bought the bundle a couple of years ago but the ones I use the most are in order Topaz Adjust, Topaz DeNoise and Topaz Lens Effects. Unlike some other software Topaz provide all updates of software you buy for free. This does not include new additions and I have not bought all the latest additions to the bundle as I did not think I would make enough use of them. However I have bought Glow as I expect to find it very useful for my style of photography.

Below are a few more examples using different types of images, first a sunset, then an Owl and finally a flower.

Glow Sunset Screenshot copyGlow Sunset Screenshot copy Sunset Glow copySunset Glow done Owl Screenshot Owl Screenshot

Flower Glow Brill on Black3Flower Glow Brill on Black3

It should be noted that the built in presets are at the extreme end towards the abstract surreal look without editing. If you want a more subtle boost to a normal picture it can be achieved easily by dialing down the strength of the effect using the slider  in the bottom left of the work screen and or using the blend modes next to the strength slider.

If you are interested in Glow remember to use the coupon code -     introglow             at checkout to get the savings until 31 December See

Topaz Labs Glow

For the Bundle and individual details of the other software/plugins see Topaz Labs

Note that free trials are available for any of the plugins.

NOTE - Fair disclosure. The links on this page are affiliate links which give me a small commission if you download a free trial after clicking one of the links and then decide to buy. This is done to help meet the costs of keeping this Blog going.

Edwin

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10mm. Shutter Speed was 1/8 second for the train movement.

The main image was processed initially in Camera Raw. I also processed a false HDR and brought that in with a layer mask only on the 2 people in the foreground to make them stand out. The blur tool was used on the people in the background and a viginette added. The image was cropped for better composition

Below is the original image

London Underground ‘Like the Hair’ OriginalLondon Underground Like the Hair Original

Next is the final image after all processing and cropping

London Underground ‘Like the Hair’ FinalLondon Underground ‘Like the Hair’

Channel4EyesFinalThis is another shot taken at the Open House London weekend in September. This is the Channel 4 Television headquarters on Horseferry Road. I visited this on the Sunday and it was a pre-booked only building with a though guided tour. It is similar in some ways to Lloyds of London and was designed by the same architect Richard Rogers. Unlike with Lloyds Channel 4 were easy going enough to allow the Architect to put a signature mark on the building only visible from this outside walkway

The viewpoint is looking down at the main entrance and a covered walkway.

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10mm. Taken handheld. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.

Outputted in Photomatrix to detail enhancer. I used various adjustments to the sliders changing the preset including highlight saturation to bring up the existing blue on the roof of the walkway. The scene is very mono and I thought of converting to mono but preferred this with the touches of colour.

Photoshop
Extra Detail was brought in with Topaz Adjust Clarity with a layer mask confining the effect to the foreground.

Various adjustment layers were used in the processing including curves and brightness with layer masks. I went to some trouble to reduce brightness at the top and cropping and cloning to remove some cars from the top. We get it drummed into us by Camera Club Judges to remove distractions from the edges of pictures, good advice.

Extra punch to the picture using the clarity effect of high radius unsharp mask, Amount 29 and Radius 29.

This is another shot taken at the Open House London weekend in September. This is the Channel 4 Television headquarters on Horseferry Road. I visited this on the Sunday and it was a pre-booked only building with a though guided tour. It is similar in some ways to Lloyds of London and was designed by the same architect Richard Rogers. Unlike with Lloyds Channel 4 were easy going enough to allow the Architect to put a signature mark on the building only visible from this outside walkway
 
The viewpoint is looking down at the main entrance and a covered walkway.

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10mm. Taken handheld. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.

Outputted in Photomatrix to detail enhancer. I used various adjustments to the sliders changing the preset including highlight saturation to bring up the existing blue on the roof of the walkway. The scene is very mono and I thought of converting to mono but preferred this with the touches of colour.

Photoshop
Extra Detail was brought in with Topaz Adjust Clarity with a layer mask confining the effect to the foreground.

Various adjustment layers were used in the processing including curves and brightness with layer masks. I went to some trouble to reduce brightness at the top and cropping and cloning to remove some cars from the top. We get it drummed into us by Camera Club Judges to remove distractions from the edges of pictures, good advice.

Extra punch to the picture using the clarity effect of high radius unsharp mask, Amount 29 and Radius 29.

Below is the original image before any processing.

Channel4EyesOriginalChannel 4 Eyes Original

Below is the final image after HDR and Photoshop processing

Channel4EyesFinalThis is another shot taken at the Open House London weekend in September. This is the Channel 4 Television headquarters on Horseferry Road. I visited this on the Sunday and it was a pre-booked only building with a though guided tour. It is similar in some ways to Lloyds of London and was designed by the same architect Richard Rogers. Unlike with Lloyds Channel 4 were easy going enough to allow the Architect to put a signature mark on the building only visible from this outside walkway

The viewpoint is looking down at the main entrance and a covered walkway.

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10mm. Taken handheld. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.

Outputted in Photomatrix to detail enhancer. I used various adjustments to the sliders changing the preset including highlight saturation to bring up the existing blue on the roof of the walkway. The scene is very mono and I thought of converting to mono but preferred this with the touches of colour.

Photoshop
Extra Detail was brought in with Topaz Adjust Clarity with a layer mask confining the effect to the foreground.

Various adjustment layers were used in the processing including curves and brightness with layer masks. I went to some trouble to reduce brightness at the top and cropping and cloning to remove some cars from the top. We get it drummed into us by Camera Club Judges to remove distractions from the edges of pictures, good advice.

Extra punch to the picture using the clarity effect of high radius unsharp mask, Amount 29 and Radius 29.

Original Image

White Tunnel OriginalWhite Tunnel Original

After Processing

WhiteTunnel FinalWhite Tunnel after processing

HairySpotted Orchid FinalFinal

This shot was taken at West Dean Gardens, Nr Chichester, West Sussex. The real name of this Orchid is Kohleria Jester. In this picture the flower looks quite big. Actually the flower part is no more than an inch long. It is in one of the greenhouses. I immediately recognized  it from a picture taken last year, better than this one, by Camera Club friend and Flickr contact Roger Crocombe.  Although Photoshop can align images to be used for focus stacking it helps if the flower does not blow about too much so being in a greenhouse helped.

The camera used was a Sony A550 with a Sigma 28-80 zoom with a macro function at 80mm. Taken on a Tripod.

Taking

The 20 images were taken using manual focusing and small adjustments of the focus ring.

Photoshop

I took RAW images and converted them to Tiff using automate and batch and a Photoshop action.

The next step was in Photoshop to go to file – Automate – Photomerge. In the next window I browsed to the folder where I stored all  the images. On the defaults I left it on Auto but deselected blend images together and made sure all the options at the bottom of the window were deselected. Click OK and when Photoshop is done all the images will be open as separate layers. Next select all the layers Control plus A or Command plus A on Mac. Next go to Edit and select Auto Blend Layers and from the window select Stack Images. Photoshop then proceeds to select  and stack images using the sharpest part of each image and creating layer masks for each image layer.

If there is more movement it might be necessary to crop a fair bit but there was very little in this case. I did though crop for better composition.

A little extra detail with Topaz Adjust Clarity preset with adjustments to cut down the effect. I used a mask of the flower created with the quick selection tool to apply the edit to the flower only.

Tip – for these sorts of edits create the selection. If you will use it again go to Select and save selection and name it. For future edits of the same picture go to Select and Load Selection. To create a mask from the selection first if you have a blank mask on the layer or adjustment layer remove that mask. To create a mask so that edits will only affect the selected area click the icon in the layers area to create a mask. Your mask will appear as white where the selection was on and black everywhere else. To create a mask where adjustments will be made to everything outside the selected area hold down alt while clicking to create a new mask. Note- using masks instead of editing directly with selections gives much more flexibility to change the area the edits apply to later

Topaz DeNoise to remove a small amount of noise.

Levels used to reduce overbright areas away from the flower using a mask to exclude the flower .

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original being one of the 20 images. Then the final focus stacked image.

Original

Hairy Spotted Orchid OriginalOriginal

Final focus stacked Image

HairySpotted Orchid Final

For licenses and prints see Hairy Spotted Orchid

Edwin Jones

Wild Flower Buds Focus Stacked FinalWild Flower Buds Focus Stacked Final

This shot was taken in the Bishops Palace Gardens adjoining Chichester Cathedral. The Gardens are quite extensive but the area I was in is called the walled garden and a part of it called the wild garden having wild flowers. Although Photoshop can align images to be used for focus stacking it helps if the flower does not blow about too much. The walls in this part of the Gardens help a lot in cutting out the wind.

For visitors not in the know the Gardens are tucked away behind buildings. Access can be gained along a passage from the Cathedral Cloisters or along Canon Lane which has an entrance though an archway off South Street.

The camera used was a Sony A550 with a Sigma 28-80 zoom with a macro function at 80mm. Taken on a Tripod.

Taking

The 16 images were taken using manual focusing and small adjustments of the focus ring.

Photoshop

I took RAW and JPEGs but used the JPEGs and copied these to a separate folder.

The next step was in Photoshop to go to file – Automate – Photomerge. In the next window I browsed to the folder for the images. On the defaults I left it on Auto but deselected blend images together and made sure all the options at the bottom of the window were deselected. Click OK and when Photoshop is done all the images will be open as separate layers. Next select all the layers Control plus A or Command plus A on Mac. Next go to Edit and select Auto Blend Layers and from the window select Stack Images. Photoshop then proceeds to select  and stack images using the sharpest part of each image and creating layer masks for each image layer.

If there is more movement it might be necessary to crop a fair bit but there was very little in this case. I did though crop for better composition.

A little extra detail with Topaz Adjust Clarity preset with adjustments to cut down the effect.

Topaz denoise to remove a small amount of noise.

Levels used to brighten a little and a brush on a layer mask used to remove the effect from brighter areas .

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original being one of the 16 images. Then the final focus stacked image.

Original

Wild Flower Buds Focus Stacked OriginalWild Flower Buds Focus Stacked Final

Final focus stacked Image

Wild Flower Buds Focus Stacked FinalWild Flower Buds Focus Stacked Final

For licences see Wild Flower Buds Focus Stacked

Edwin Jones

Transform Canada Water Train Wait FinalCanada Water Train Wait

This shot was taken on my latest day trip to London which included some London underground shots. This one was the Jubilee Line at Canada Water. I have previously passed through this station without stopping so it was a good one to explore. This underground  line is always good for a modern shiny look.

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 20mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.  The image was taken at 1/4 second handheld for the longest of the 3 exposures for the train movement.

One particular problem with the picture was that there was not enough space on the right of the passenger and the newspaper disappears off the edge. I tend towards perfectionism and I know from experience a camera club judge would quickly pick up on the fault at the edge. Rather than ditch an unrepeatable picture I used an interesting processing technique to repeat pixels on the edge and solve the problem.

First take a look below at the original image after the initial processing. It is important in composition to avoid a subject being too close to the edge and especially having anything disappearing over the edge of the picture. In this picture one corner of the newspaper goes over the edge.

Transform Canada Water Train Wait Before TransformCanada Water Train Wait

The technique involves adding a little canvas space on the edge and then using the free transform tool to stretch pixels into the extra space. The sorts of pictures where this can be successfully used are those with little detail on the edge or an area of repeating patterns. The out of focus background in a flower picture would work well. It is simpler to do if you have some space round the subject but need a little more. When, as in this case, something disappears off the edge it can still be done though with a little more work.

First be sure to save the original picture after all other processing as a Photoshop file with a different file name, it will be needed later.

Go to Image – Canvas Size. In this case we want extra space just to the right of the original. In the window you will see to start with arrows all round, click on the arrow to the left which will then come up showing extra squares on the right as shown on the screenshot below.

Transform1Canvas1Canada Water Train Wait

Choose the extra space, I went for a small proportion of the original of 1cm. Click OK and you get the extra as shown below. Background colour does not matter.

Transform2Canvas2Canada Water Train Wait

Next step use the rectangular marquee tool to select the edge of the original picture. About the same width as the extra space works well. See below.

Transform3SelectionCanada Water Train Wait

Then go to Edit – Free Transform or hold Ctrl and T while clicking inside the selection. Then click on the small square which appears on the centre right of the selection and drag to the right. The effect is to drag out the pixels in the selection to fill our the extra canvas space with the result as shown below.

Transform4TransformCanada Water Train Wait

OK, we now have extra space to the right of the seated man. However the newspaper has also spread out and still disappears off the edge. This is where the original file you saved at the start comes in, you did save that didn’t you?.

Open that up. Use the rectangular marquee tool to select the right edge. Copy the selection and paste into our new image. Use the move tool to move the pasted selection to line it up roughly in the space it would have been in before the extension. To avoid messing up the rest of the picture cover it with a black layer mask. Hold alt while clicking the white circle for a layer mask. Now using a white brush bring the selection back in just over the paper.

Now we have a new edge for the paper and using the clone tool with the floor as a source remove the stretched part of the paper clearing this from the edge. The result is a much better picture and you can feel amazingly clever. The final image is shown below.

Transform Canada Water Train Wait FinalCanada Water Train Wait

For licences and prints see Canada Water Train Wait

Edwin Jones

Stop Forbidden Picture FinalStop Forbidden Picture

I was out photographing round Canary Wharf on Saturday. I spotted this good composition with reflections in the skyscraper glass, I got lined up right just as a security guard came rushing over to me shouting Stop, Stop, Stop …(click, click, Click) ….Stop. Bear in mind this was not Beijing but a financial district in London. The really hilarious bit was that when I pointed out that I was entitled to take a picture in a public place he got a bit desperate and said it was a very special building. In fact it was not MI5 or similar but an ordinary Bank.

The problem with Canary Wharf is that it is a purpose built development and the developers retained ownership of the streets and pavements rather than having them publically maintained. However they give free access to 10’s of thousands of members of the public daily. There may well be vehicle restrictions but most people arrive through 2 public train lines part of the London underground network. The Jubilee line has one station and the Docklands Light Railway has 2 stations. A fourth station is under construction for the new Crossrail line project. Apart from the office workers many thousands of tourists arrive in the area plus many others arrive to shop at the retail areas. No notices or restrictions are posted anywhere and any visitor seeing a large financial district with streets, pavements and squares would make a reasonable assumption that these outside areas were public. I suspect if this were ever tested in court a Judge with any common sense would rule such a location to be effectively a public area for the purpose of freedom to take photographs. At the very least under English law by leading the public to assume they were in a public place they would be prevented from succeeding in any action against a photographer.( a legal principal called estopple) For this reason I rather doubt that the owners of Canary Wharf would ever want to risk the point ever being tested in a court.

Knowing the definition of a public space is important to photographers because if you are on a public space you are entitled to photograph anything including buildings located on a private place without obtaining permission. The same applies to people. These rules though do differ with different countries so this is a general view for western democracies except France where the strict privacy criminal code prevents the photographing of individuals even in a public place without permission.

Areas which are technically private but have been thrown open to free use by the public are the places where security guard problems are the most likely. The other area of London like this is a location of skyscrapers near City Hall called More London.

Until a few years ago security guards and even police officers seemed delighted to take advantage of laws relating to terrorism whereby they made the assumption that anybody taking photographs in London was a potential scout for terrorist. Perversely the most obvious photographers those with a large SLR camera and especially a tripod were the most targeted. After a lot of protests about pretty clear misuse of the powers the law was changed. Both police officers and security guards received training about the strict limits of the security powers and that more was needed to raise suspicions than just taking photographs.

My own experience since then is that approaches from security guards now tend to be quite polite and usually use the tactic of what are you taking the photograph for and are you a professional. One point here is that the definition of a professional photographer is quite nebulous. It is generally somebody who earns a living from photography. If like me you are mainly amateur but offer your pictures for sale and occasionally sell one you are not a professional.

There is a little confusion here both by Photographers and especially by security guards and those who instruct them. The assumption seems to be that if you take a picture of a building with the intention of offering it for sale for commercial purposes you must have the consent of the building owner. This is NOT correct. Taking a picture from a public space and offering it for sale is not commercial use. The same applies to taking pictures of people in a public space for possible sale. Commercial purposes means to use the image to promote or advertise another person, company or product. Only then is a building or model release required. Effectively it is up to the purchaser to decide if they want a release. If a picture is current you might sell it to a newspaper, no release is required. You might sell the picture for use as an illustration within a book. No release is required. If the image is sold for the cover of a book a release is required because the use there is to promote a product.

There is no point in getting into legal argument with ignorant security guards so I would say that the picture is for my own use and to enter into photographic competitions such as my local camera club, which is true enough. Even more to the point though is that the vast majority of the pictures I take, like most people I suspect, stay on my hard drive and are never used for anything. Only the best are processed.

One important point to note when photographing people is that in some countries including the UK you can take photos of police and security personnel in a public place but in some places this is illegal including Italy as an example.

Disclaimer – this article is not intended as legal advice to be relied upon but is the Authors opinion based on legal principals within the public domain.

Going back to the forbidden photo which started all this. The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs. The picture was enhanced with HDR processing, Topaz and Photoshop to bring in more detail. The Contrast Optimiser setting was used in Photomatix for a natural look. The image was converted to Mono in Photoshop with the Black and White adjustment layer. To correct distortions caused by the wide angle and being so close to the building I made use of the transform – puppet warp tool to pull things roughly straight.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Stop Forbidden Picture originalStop Forbidden Picture

Tonemapped image

Stop Forbidden Picture TonemappedStop Forbidden Picture

Final Image

Stop Forbidden Picture FinalStop Forbidden Picture

Edwin Jones

Spiral Up Heals FinalSpiral Up Heals

This is another shot of the famous staircase at Heals Department Store on Tottenham Court Road with the changes made last year. The notable new feature is the chandelier going from top to bottom. There has also been an extension of the part of the staircase accessible to the public to the lowest floor but not the highest floor. This is a shot from the ground floor not previously open to the public.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 17mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. As it was a bit dim down there I created an additional image by using the +2 EV image in Camera Raw and increasing the exposure by 2EV. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix using Real Estate settings for a natural look

Camera Raw

I opened the Tiff image in RAW and adjusted the White Balance to get it looking right, went for a cooler look.

Photoshop

The image was adjusted in Topaz vibrant preset group and clarity preset. Adjusted settings to suite and added a viginette to focus attention towards the stairs.

Hue saturaturation reds decreased a little.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 38 amount and 38 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from outer edges of the picture, again to focus attention towards the stairs..

A slight crop was used to improve composition.

Clone tool used for tidy up and in particular to remove some distracting areas of the bottom of the stairs.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Spiral Up Heals OriginalSpiral Up Heals

Tonemapped image

Spiral Up Heals TonemappedSpiral Up Heals

Final Image

Spiral Up Heals FinalSpiral Up Heals

For licences and prints see Spiral Up Heals

Edwin Jones

Spiral Down Heals FinalSpiral Down Heals

I have photographed the famous staircase at Heals Department Store on Tottenham Court Road before but not since the changes made last year. The notable new feature is the chandelier going from top to bottom. They have also added subtle lighting on the steps. There has also been an extension of the part of the staircase accessible to the public to the lowest floor but not the highest floor.

This seems a fairly common composition probably because it is the best. I felt that using a fishey lens enhances the view.

One problem with using a fisheye looking down is avoiding the feet getting in the picture. I had to lean on the banister and get my feet as far back as possible.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang fisheye lens at 8mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix using Real Estate settings for a natural look

Photoshop

The image was adjusted in Topaz vibrant preset group and boost preset.

Contrast and vibrance increased a little with adjustment layers.

Hue saturation yellows decreased a little to avoid overdoing the wood.

To avoid an over blue look in some small areas of the rails I used a mono layer, adjusted to match the rails, excluded the mono with a layer mask and then brushed it back in just in the small problem areas.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 31 amount and 31 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

A slight crop was used to improve composition to exclude one of the lights at the edge of the picture.

Clone tool used for tidy up and in particular to remove a distracting light switch at the edge of the picture.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Spiral Down Heals OriginalSpiral Down Heals

Tonemapped image

Spiral Down Heals TonemappedSpiral Down Heals

Final Image

Spiral Down Heals FinalSpiral Down Heals

For licences and prints see Spiral Down Heals

Edwin Jones

Premier Spiral London 2 FinalPremier Spiral London 2

This spiral staircase is located at Premier Inn, Blackfriars located on Dorset Rise off Tudor Street a few minutes walk from Blackfriars Station.

The hotel was built in 2012 and is indeed so new that when I checked on Street View the location was still a building site. When I visited at about 2.00 pm it was very quiet with only cleaners around.

One thing I really like about the Spiral is the height, much greater than most.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 16mm at 1/60 second at 500 ISO. One RAW image had its initial editing done in RAW. This included editing white balance to bring more blue into the centre of the Spiral and increasing Clarity.

Photoshop

The image was first adjusted in Topaz HDR preset group and smooth preset.

I rotated the image 180 degrees for better composition with the rail coming in from the bottom left rarther than top right.

Next the image was put through Topaz again, this time using vibrant detail dramatic with a layer mask to exclude the plain areas away from the railings.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

Duplicate layer Noiseware Pro and a little sharpening.

Heal and clone tools used for tidy up.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original  and then the final result.

Original

Premier Spiral London 2 OriginalPremier Spiral London 2

Final Image after edits

Premier Spiral London 2 FinalPremier Spiral London 2

For licences and prints see Premier Spiral London 2

Edwin Jones

February Spring Bognor Regis FinalFebruary Spring Bognor Regis

On Wednesday 26th February Spring made a brief appearance before the resumption of the deluge. I found a spread of Crocuses and Daffodils together at a small Green near Gossamer Lane roundabout on a beautiful sunny day. Last year I aquired a Sigma 28-80 zoom with a macro function at 80mm. This was a pretty good bargain at £42 on ebay and a cheap way to try out Macro

The picture was taken hanheld with a Sony A550 which has the benefit of a fold out screen for low shots like this one. I used one RAW image to create 2 extra exposures for a false HDR. The images were opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.

Photomatix

The 2 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix Detail Enhancer method Smooth preset with adjustments.

Photoshop

The 0EV image was opened and then copied in as a new layer. A black layer mask was used to exclude this. Then a white brush at 50% opacity was used to apply it to highlight areas to tone them down.

More detail was brought in especially to the foreground using Topaz Adjust clarity setting. The adjustment was used with a layer mask by first making a selection of the foreground area with the crocuses, inverting the selection and then adding a layer mask to create a layer mask excluding the background to keep this soft.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

Duplicate layer Noiseware Pro.

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 43 amount and 43 radius. A layer mask was created from the

The clone brush was used to end leaves in the bottom left and right from going out of the picture and thus improve composition..

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

February Spring Bognor Regis OriginalFebruary Spring Bognor Regis

Tonemapped image

February Spring Bognor Regis TonemappedFebruary Spring Bognor Regis

Final Image

February Spring Bognor Regis FinalFebruary Spring Bognor Regis

For licences see February Spring Bognor Regis

Edwin Jones

View of Galactic Black Hole FinalView of Galactic Black Hole

The picture is intended to depict the view from a planet near the super massive Black Hole at the centre of our Galaxy. The fire planet in the sky is being broken up by the gravity and the planet of the viewpoint will soon follow. No need for us to worry about that particular Armageddon though as our Solar System is way out on the fringes of our Galaxy and so incredibly far away that however much the Black Hole grows its gravity will never be enough to draw us in even after billions of years.

This was done entirely photographically from my own images. No digital painting and no planet or star images from others.

4 main layers were used.

Landscape Image

First for the landscape I used a picture taken from the side of the Caldera Colorada volcano, near Masdache, Lanzarote. This image was taken during a series of Star Trail images but exposed a little earlier to get light on the landscape. The land was selected and pasted onto a new transparent image and various distortions used including, twirl, shear and transform to create the weird landscape.

The image below is the original landscape before processing

View of Galactic Black Hole LandscapeView of Galactic Black Hole

Stars Image

The Stars were taken from one 2 minute exposure of the stars and brightened with Topaz.  Then the stars were duplicated and multiplied by selecting, pasting into a new image, rotating and pasting back in areas of few stars. The clone tool was used to add more and cover joins. Then the distort twirl command was used for the rotation.A high setting was used of 659. Brightness contrast was used to brighten more.

The image below is the original star field

View of Galactic Black Hole StarsView of Galactic Black Hole

Fire Planet Image

The next image was the Fire Planet. This was taken from a picture I took of a rock on Lanzarote. This was cropped to square. Then the distort spherise command followed by colour balance and hue saturation. Brightness was increased.  One point I discovered after research was that to use the elliptical marquee tool to draw a perfect circle from the centre requires that the smallest part of the drawing has to be started before holding down the shift and alt keys to constrain to a circle. Holding down the shift and alt keys at the start doesn’t work

The image below is the rock image before edits.

View of Galactic Black Hole Fire PlanetView of Galactic Black Hole

Black Hole

The Black Hole was created by drawing a circle, filling with black and using layer styles, outer and inner glow to greate the light emitted at the Event Horizon. The gravity is so strong that once a star falls below the Event Horizon and is crushed, nothing even light can escape.

The star field was used as a base and selections of the landscape and fire planet pasted in. The image below is the final result.

View of Galactic Black Hole FinalView of Galactic Black Hole

Edwin Jones

Wave and Lava Lanzarote FinalWave and Lava Lanzarote

This shot was taken on the south west coast of Lanzarote where 250 years ago a large lava field flowed into the sea creating great lava cliffs where now a spectacular road runs along the top. With no interruption great waves come rolling across the Atlantic.

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Tamron 28-200 wide zoom lens at 10mm. Taken at 1/3000 second.

1 raw image was taken and then 2 additional images were created in Camera Raw at 2EV separation to create a false HDR. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix with fusion natural settings

Photoshop

The image was adjusted in Topaz vibrant preset group and vibrant preset.

I reduced brightness overall but used a layer mask to remove that from the centre and the main rock and water so that was brighter and stood out more.

Saturation reds increased to bring out the reds in the lava rock to give the impression they were stil hot.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 61 amount and 61 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

Crop closer to the main rock.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Wave and Lava Lanzarote OriginalWave and Lava Lanzarote

Tonemapped image

Wave and Lava Lanzarote TonemappedWave and Lava Lanzarote

Final Image

Wave and Lava Lanzarote FinalWave and Lava Lanzarote

For licences and prints see Wave and Lava Lanzarote

Edwin Jones

Thames Boat Light Stream FinalThames Boat Light Stream

This shot was taken on my last day trip to London in December. The image is taken from Hungerford Bridge, a pedestrian bridge linked to the railway bridge taking trains to Charing Cross. Although taken with a Tripod not all my pictures from here were steady with vibrations from pedestrians not helping and trying to take pictures when trains went by was hopeless. 2 pictures were taken at 6 seconds exposure each and the images later combined to make a combined trail of the river boat.

The pictures were taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 20mm. Taken at 6 seconds with a Tripod. The pictures were taken one after another.

Photoshop

The image was adjusted in Topaz vibrant preset group and clarity preset with a layer mask to part to apply the effect only to the foreground not the sky to avoid enhancing noise.

Vibrance adjustment layer increased by 40 points.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 44 amount and 44 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the two original images  and then the final result.

Original first

Thames Boat Light Stream Original 1Thames Boat Light Stream

Original second

Thames Boat Light Stream Original 2Thames Boat Light Stream

Final Image

Thames Boat Light Stream FinalThames Boat Light Stream

For licences and prints see Thames Boat Light Stream

Edwin Jones

Bestsellers DSLR Cameras UK

Bestsellers DSLR Cameras US

Lanzarote Lava Cave Path FinalLanzarote Lava Cave Path

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 in the upper gallery. The view is on the path on the way out at the end of the tour.

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Samyang 8mm fisheye lens. 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

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix Contrast Optimizer preset which for this particular image produced the most natural look.

Photoshop

The plus 2EV image was opened and then copied in as a new layer. A black layer mask was used to exclude this. Then a white brush at 15% opacity was used to darken the highlights in the distance and bring detail into them.

More detail was brought in using Topaz Adjust clarity setting with some manual adjustments. The adjustment was used with a layer mask used to exclude highlights.

Hue saturation increase in reds a little used with a layer mask only to apply to the redder area in the distance..

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

Duplicate layer and a little standard 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 66 amount and 66 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

A slight crop for better composition bringing the area at the end of the path onto a third.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Lanzarote Lava Cave Path OriginalLanzarote Lava Cave Path

Tonemapped image

Lanzarote Lava Cave Path TonemappedLanzarote Lava Cave Path

Final Image

Lanzarote Lava Cave Path FinalLanzarote Lava Cave Path

For licences see Lanzarote Lava Cave Path

Edwin Jones

Bestsellers DSLR Cameras UK

Bestsellers DSLR Cameras US

Surf Splash HDR FinalSurf Splash HDR

This shot was taken on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. I aimed to capture the surf against the rock using a 200mm lens and at 1/45 second for the movement.. This was taken on the Playa Grande beach Puerto del Carmen about 30 minutes before sunset.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Tamron 28--200 zoom at 200 mm. I took 3 pictures for HDR but the plus 2EV was the best. I used this image to create extra exposures at minus 2 EV and minus 4EV for the correct range

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix fusion method Real Estate preset which for this particular image produced the most natural look.

Photoshop

The plus 2EV image was opened and then copied in as a new layer. A black layer mask was used to exclude this. Then a white brush at 30% opacity was used on the drop at the top to brighten this.

More detail was brought in using Topaz Adjust crisp setting. The adjustment was used with a layer mask used to exclude highlights.

Hue saturation decrease in blues for the water and increase in yellow for the rock.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 26 amount and 26 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Surf Splash HDR OriginalSurf Splash HDR

Tonemapped image

Surf Splash HDR tonemappedSurf Splash HDR

Final Image

Surf Splash HDR FinalSurf Splash HDR

For licences see Surf Splash HDR

Edwin Jones

Hot Sunrise From Mercury FinalHot Sunrise From Mercury

The picture is intended to depict a view of the Sun from the planet Mercury which is the closest of the Planets to the Sun.

I wanted to achieve this image entirely photographically from my own images. No digital painting and no planet or star images from others like NASA.

Landscape Image

3 main layers were used. First for the landscape I used a picture taken from the side of the Caldera Colorada volcano, near Masdache, Lanzarote. There is a 45 minute walk round the base of the cone. One side is an unusual rich red, made up from cinder, rich in iron oxide. This image was taken with an 8mm fisheye. Processing was first in Camera RAW to adjust exposure and increase Clarity and Vibrance. I used Topast Adjust boost preset to enhance colours and detail.  The blue sky was removed with a selection.

The image below is the original image after processing

Hot Sunrise From Mercury LandscapeHot Sunrise From Mercury

Sun Image

The next image was the Sun. I followed an online tutoriaI step by step although it was based on an earlier version of Photoshop. This was quite complex and rarther than go over it again here, if you are interested see http://www.devppl.com/forum/photoshop-tutorial-creating-a-sun-fire-planet-ss-part-3-vt2534.html  One point I discovered after research was that to use the elliptical marquee tool to draw a perfect circle from the centre requires that the smallest part of the drawing has to be started before holding down the shift and alt keys to constrain to a circle. Holding down the shift and alt keys at the start doesn’t work

The image below is the Sun after edits.

Hot Sunrise From Mercury SunHot Sunrise From Mercury

 Stars Image

The last image was a combination of various Star field images taken on various trips to take star trails. 3 images were used and pasted together in layers using the lighten layer blend mode so each image added to the previous one rather than overlaying it to provide a denser star field. I used some Photoshop Actions called Astronomy Tools to brighten the stars, enhance the colours and add some star effects.

The image below is the star field after edits.

Hot Sunrise From Mercury StarsHot Sunrise From Mercury

 The star field was used as a base and selections of the landscape and planet pasted in. The image below is the final result.

Hot Sunrise From Mercury FinalHot Sunrise From Mercury

Edwin Jones

Lanzarote Rocky Sunset HDR FinalLanzarote Rocky Sunset HDR

On Tuesday I flew to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands for my usual mid winter warm weather break. The next day 8^th January the weather was sunny but with streaks of wispy white cloud lasting all day, ideal for sunset colours. This was taken on the Playa Grande beach Puerto del Carmen, Lanzarote about 2 hours before high tide.

The picture was taken on a Tripod with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 15 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs. As the brightest image did not provide enough detail in the rocks I used the plus 2EV RAW image to create an extra exposure a further 2 EV brighter.

Photomatix

The 4 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix fusion method Natural preset with adjustments.

Photoshop

The 0EV image was opened and then copied in as a new layer. A black layer mask was used to exclude this. Then a white brush at 50% opacity was used on a selection of the sky to confine the brush to that area and in order to darken the sky a little and bring in the original colours.

The sky selection was saved for future use in the processing by using select – save selection and naming it. This could then be brought back in by using Select – load selection.

More detail was brought in especially to the foreground using Topaz Adjust Specify setting. The adjustment was used with a layer mask and the sky selection used to exclude part of the adjustment from the sky.

Hue saturation decrease in magenta saturation applied with a layer mask only to parts of the sea which looked too purple.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

Duplicate layer Noiseware Pro and a little sharpening.

The healing brush was used to remove sensor dust marks.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Lanzarote Rocky Sunset HDR OriginalLanzarote Rocky Sunset HDR

Tonemapped image

Lanzarote Rocky Sunset HDR TonemappedLanzarote Rocky Sunset HDR

Final Image

Lanzarote Rocky Sunset HDR FinalSONY DSC

For licenses see Lanzarote Rocky Sunset HDR

Edwin Jones

Landsdown Cresent Bath FinalLandsdown Cresent Bath

This was taken over Christmas while saying at Bath. On one photographic walk I went up to Landsdown Cresent on the hills above the City. The architecture is Georgian in line with much of the City.

The picture was taken on a Tripod with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 13 mm. To get the long exposure in daylight I used a 10 stop filter with ISO of 100 and an Aperture of F22.

 Processing started with adjustments in Camera RAW for better detail and colours. The sliders used included exposure, Vibrance and clarity.

Photoshop

Topaz adjust was used with Vibrance presets group with vibrance preset to enhance colours. With Topaz applied on a layer a layer mask was used to exclude the effect from some highlight areas.

General adjustments in levels to enhance.

Saturation adjustments, blue channel down to tone down the blues in the sky.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 45 amount and 45 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from the highlights.

Verticals corrected using lens correction, Custom, Vertical Perspective. The image was then cropped.

The healing brush and clone brush were used to remove sensor dust marks.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original, then after RAW editing and Topaz and then the final result.

Original

Landsdown Cresent Bath OriginalLandsdown Cresent Bath

After RAW edit

Landsdown Cresent Bath afterRaw and TopazLandsdown Cresent Bath

Final Image

Landsdown Cresent Bath FinalLandsdown Cresent Bath

Edwin Jones

London Underground Station Seat FinalThis shot was taken on my latest day trip to London which included some London underground shots. This one was the Jubilee Line at Baker Street. The thing about the Jubilee line is that they have these really cool shiny metal seats. For a short period as a train loads up and leaves all the seats are empty giving the opportunity for this kind of shot
The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10mm. Taken at 1/8 second handheld for the train movement.

This shot was taken on my latest day trip to London which included some London underground shots. This one was the Jubilee Line at Baker Street. The thing about the Jubilee line is that they have these really cool shiny metal seats. For a short period as a train loads up and leaves all the seats are empty giving the opportunity for this kind of shot

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10mm. Taken at 1/8 second handheld for the train movement.

1 raw images was taken and then 2 additional images were created in Camera Raw at 2EV separation to create a false HDR. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix detail enhancer with fusion natural settings

Photoshop

The OEV image was copied in as a new layer, excluded with a black layer mask and a white brush used to bring back in the nearest parts of the roof top left to even out tones.

The image was adjusted in Topaz vibrant preset group and vibrant preset with a layer mask to part to apply the effect only to the seat.

Crop to focus more on the seat.

One extra processing step I took was on the man in blue. In the original he was dressed all in black and was lost in the background. I did a precise selection of his jumper using the pen tool and then used the colour fill from the edit menu. One important step was to set transparency at 30% to give a natural look with the fabric showing through rather than a solid colour.

Brightness reduced applied with a layer mask only to highlights and the area in the top right including the too bright poster. Saturation reds reduced applied with a layer mask only to the distracting red area of tiles top right.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 26 amount and 26 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

Heal and clone tools used for tidy up.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

London Underground Station Seat OriginalLondon Underground Station Seat

Tonemapped image

London Underground Station Seat TonemappedLondon Underground Station Seat

Final Image

London Underground Station Seat FinalThis shot was taken on my latest day trip to London which included some London underground shots. This one was the Jubilee Line at Baker Street. The thing about the Jubilee line is that they have these really cool shiny metal seats. For a short period as a train loads up and leaves all the seats are empty giving the opportunity for this kind of shot
The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10mm. Taken at 1/8 second handheld for the train movement.

For licences and prints see London Underground Station Seat

Edwin Jones

Descent to Warmth Tate Britain FinalDescent to Warmth Tate Britain

I took another day trip to London on Monday 9 December. This was an opportunity to visit an all new Spiral Staircase, red letter day! This is at the Tate Britain Museum in Pimlico. After 2 years of renovations the oldest part of the Museum re-opened on 19^th November complete with a new Spiral Staircase to the lower levels.

The stairs lend themselves to B&W photography and I was originally going to do that with this image until I saw the possibilities of the contrast with the warm tones on the lower level.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens at 10 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. The ISO setting was 800 to give a fast enough stutter speed in the light.

 The images were opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs. 

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix with a custom preset.

Photoshop

The 0EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. A black layer mask was used to exclude this. Then a white brush at low opacity was used to build up detail in highlight areas on the stairs.

Topaz Adjust Vibrant colour boost preset was used to bring in more detail and colour especially in the lower area with a layer mask used to exclude some areas towards the top.

Adjustments with adjustment layers to increase contrast overall and then saturation yellows to bring down the over yellow look of the ground floor.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 39 amount and 39 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

The clone tool was used to remove distracting area on the plinth top right and to even out some areas.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Descent to Warmth Tate Britain OriginalDescent to Warmth Tate Britain

Tonemapped image

Descent to Warmth Tate Britain TonemappedDescent to Warmth Tate Britain

Final Image

Descent to Warmth Tate Britain FinalDescent to Warmth Tate Britain

For licences and prints see Descent to Warmth Tate Britain

Edwin Jones

New Change Evening Reflections FinalNew Change Evening Reflections

I took a similar shot from this location earlier this yearwhen it was just before sunset. This was taken a few months ago and when the sun had set and the lights were coming on. The building is One New Change near St Pauls.

One New Change is a major office and retail development in the City of London and was completed in October 2010. The centre is located at Cheapside, one of the areas within the City historically associated with retailing and markets, and is very close to St Paul's Cathedral and its entrance lines up perfectly. The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10mm.

Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs. 

Photomatix

The image was processed first with the recently released Photomatix 5 using the new Contrast Optimizer method which produces more natural results than the more commonly used Detail Enhancer.

Photoshop

The image was adjusted in Topaz vibrant preset group using vibrant Preset with adjustments to suit to bring in more detail. A layer mask was used to part exclude the adjustment from some areas such as highlights.

Contrast adjustment layer increased 20 points.

Vibrance adjustment layer increased 28 points.

Hue Saturation yellows adjustment layer to warm up the image.

Hue Saturation blues adjustment layer saturation reduced 20 points for a more natural look.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 30 amount and 30 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

The clone tool was used to remove some distracting highlights on the right.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

New Change Evening Reflections OriginalNew Change Evening Reflections

Tonemapped image

New Change Evening Reflections TonemappedNew Change Evening Reflections

Final Image

New Change Evening Reflections FinalNew Change Evening Reflections

For licences and prints see New Change Evening Reflections

Edwin Jones

Autumn Leaf South Downs FinalAutumn Leaf South Downs

This shot was taken in mid November 2013. I headed up to some woods on the South Downs to try some Autumn Woods shots with the colours at about their peak

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 28-200 lens at 200 mm.

Photoshop

The RAW file was first opened in Camera Raw and edits made to recover highlights and increase clarity and vibrance.

In Photoshop Topaz Adjust was used on a duplicate layer with a layer mask to bring in more detail on the main leaf only.

Further adjustments were made in adjustment layers To quickly make a layer mask so adjustments only applied to the leaf I first used the quick selection tool on the leaf. Then with the existing mask removed I clicked to create a new white layer mask which automatically created a layer mask with the leaf in white so all adjustments applied to the leaf and were blocked from everything else.

Note that this is a much more flexible than making the adjustments directly to the selected area of the image as it is not destructive and can be easily undone or partly undone using a brush on the mask.

To duplicate the layer mask on another adjustment layer just hold down alt click and drag the mask, drop and click yes to the dialog “Replace Layer Mask”

I used the Hue Saturation adjustment layer with the layer mask and the red and yellow channels to bring out more of an autumn look.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 40 amount and 40 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some areas.

A vignette was applied using the Elliptical Marquee selection tool, then inverse to select the outer edges with wide feathering and brightness reduction. The effect was to darken the edges of the picture to focus more on the leaf.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original and then the final result after processing.

Original

Autumn Leaf South Downs OriginalAutumn Leaf South Downs before processing

Final Image

Autumn Leaf South Downs FinalAutumn Leaf South Downs Final

For licences and prints see Autumn Leaf South Downs

Edwin Jones

City Hall Curves and Spirals FinalCity Hall Curves and Spirals Final

At Open House London in September I took numerous photos of City Hall so I thought it worth processing another one. This shot was from high up looking down at the start of the spiral stairs which gradually widen out as the domed shape of the building widens towards its base. This was another shot with my Samyang 8mm fisheye lens which is just right in this building.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang Fisheye lens at 8 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix 5 Beta using Fusion Interiors preset.

Photoshop

Topaz Adjust Vibrant Dramatic 2 preset with adjustments was used to bring in more detail.

Levels and brightness contrast used to brighten the interior with layer masks used to exclude the sky and highlights.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 20 amount and 20 radius. A layer mask was used to apply this effect only to parts of the interior.

A vignette was applied using the Elliptical Marquee selection tool, then inverse to select the outer edges with wide feathering and brightness reduction.

The healing and clone tools were used to tidy up.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

City Hall Curves and Spirals OriginalCity Hall Curves and Spirals Final

Tonemapped image

City Hall Curves and Spirals TonemappedCity Hall Curves and Spirals Final

Final Image

City Hall Curves and Spirals FinalCity Hall Curves and Spirals Final

Edwin Jones

Ocean Rapids Pagham FinalOcean Rapids Pagham

This shot was taken was taken at the entrance to Pagham Harbour, Sussex, UK. Where the picture was taken there is a sandbar across the Harbour Entrance so as the tide comes out the water is channelled at high speed. It then hits this Groyne supported by large rocks and pours over it like rapids. The effect is especially pronounced at a high spring tide which it was on Monday when the picture was taken.

To see the exact location go to the picture on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwinjones/10721609856/in/photostream/ and click on the location on the right to see a map

Thanks to friend and Bognor Camera Club member and flickr contact Roger Crocombe for a heads up about this location at a Club workshop on Landscape earlier this year. Roger has some great shots, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/dailyshotz/

The picture was taken with a Tripod with a Sony A550 with a Sigma 10-20mm zoom at 20mm. I used a BW 10 stop filter to reduce the light and get a 2.5 second exposure for the movement.

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 using Fusion natural settings

Photoshop

The image was brightened with a brightness contrast adjustment layer.

In Photoshop Topaz Adjust was used with detail 1 settings to add more detail with a layer mask used to remove the effect from highlights.

Curves were used to enhance

Saturation reds were used to bring up the red on the marker only using a layer mask.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

Duplicate layer Noiseware Pro and standard sharpening with Unsharp mask.

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 28 amount and 28 radius. This effect was removed from highlights using a layer mask.

Crop for better composition.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original image. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Ocean Rapids Pagham OriginalOcean Rapids Pagham

Tonemapped image

Ocean Rapids Pagham TonemappedOcean Rapids Pagham

Final Image

Ocean Rapids Pagham FinalOcean Rapids Pagham

For Licence see Ocean Rapids Pagham

Edwin Jones

South Downs Fungi FinalSouth Downs Fungi

And now for something completely different! I recently aquired a Sigma 28-80 zoom with a macro function at 80mm. This was a pretty good bargain at £42 on ebay and a cheap way to try out Macro.

This shot was taken on Tuesday 29^th October a rare sunny skies day in recent weather. I headed up to some woods on the South Downs to try some macro on fungi

The picture was taken using a mini tripod with a Sony A550 with a Sigma 28-80 lens at 80 mm. I used one RAW image to create 2 extra exposures for a false HDR. The images were opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs. 

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix 5 Beta using detail enhancer settings with manual adjustments.

Photoshop

The tonemapped tiff file was first opened in Camera Raw using the Open as command in Photoshop. Extra exposure was then added to the main fungi only to make this really stand out from the background.

Topaz Adjust was used on a duplicate layer with a layer mask to bring in more detail on the main fungi only.

General adjustments in levels to lighten a little with a layer mask and brush used to exclude highlights.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 38 amount and 38 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

The healing tool and clone tool were used to remove the distracting fungi from the right of the picture.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

South Downs Fungi OriginalSouth Downs Fungi

Tonemapped image

South Downs Fungi TonemappedSouth Downs Fungi

Final Image

South Downs Fungi FinalSouth Downs Fungi

For licences and prints see South Downs Fungi

Edwin Jones

Pico Veleta Snow Climb FinalPico Veleta Snow Climb

Last Saturday I did a workshop on Sport and Action for Bognor Regis Camera Club. I scanned some early slides to show some of my early photography. This was taken on one of my earliest bike tours and was of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and in particular this ride up Europe’s highest surfaced road to the summit of the Pico Veleta at 11,142ft. This was made especially memorable because the first snow after the summer had just fallen making for dramatic views while still accessible, just, by bike. The image is taken not far from the summit, shortly after this the cleared road ended and we had to drag the bikes though snow and clouds to get to the summit marker.

The picture was taken on the bike while riding with one hand on the handlebars and one hand holding the camera. The camera was a Minolta SLR film camera using Fuji Velvia.

Photoshop

Cloning was done in the corners to bring detail in which had otherwise turned black due to the image being into the light.

Topaz adjust clarity was applied to bring up more detail.

Levels adjusted.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 33 amount and 33 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from highlights.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original and then the final result.

Original

Pico Veleta Snow Climb Original copyPico Veleta Snow Climb

Final Image

Pico Veleta Snow Climb FinalPico Veleta Snow Climb

For licences and prints see Pico Veleta Snow Climb

Edwin Jones

Nelson Stairs Somerset House London FinalNelson Stairs Somerset House London

This shot was taken during a visit to London on 21 October which included a visit to Somerset House. The Nelson Stairs are in the South Wing near the River. Though the Stairs are in an area open to the public it seemed more offices than galleries so it was not as busy as some spiral stairs.

The vast Somerset House was designed by Sir William Chambers and built 1776-1801. The Nelson Staircase covers 5 stories. The description on the Somerset House website reads “In designing the Navy Staircase (later renamed the Nelson Stair) in the southern part of the building, Chambers had the space to give free rein to his imagination. Here he created a sweeping staircase, soaring dramatically into space over the drop to the ground floor. The Navy Staircase suffered severely from bomb damage in 1940 and was carefully restored by Sir Albert Richardson.”

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang Fisheye lens at 8 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing.The low lighting resulted in too much movement in the last exposure so I decided to use the middle exposure RAW file to create the 2 extra exposures for a false HDR. The images were opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs. 

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix 5 Beta using the new Contast Optimiser setting.

Photoshop

The -2EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. A black layer mask was used to exclude this. Then a white brush at low opacity was used to build up detail in highlight areas.

Topaz Adjust Vibrant Clarity preset was used to bring in more detail

General adjustments in levels to lighten a little with a layer mask and brush used to exclude highlights.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 55 amount and 55 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

The healing tool and clone tool were used to remove the distracting part of a curve from the right of the picture.

A brightness adjustment layer was used to add more brightness.

The crop tool was used to crop a little while straightening

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Nelson Stairs Somerset House London OriginalNelson Stairs Somerset House London

Tonemapped image

Nelson Stairs Somerset House London TonemappedNelson Stairs Somerset House London

Final Image

Nelson Stairs Somerset House London FinalNelson Stairs Somerset House London

For licences and prints see Nelson Stairs Somerset House London

Edwin Jones

Waterloo Infinity Tunnel FinalWaterloo Infinity Tunnel Final

This is one of my favourite tunnels on the London Underground and is the travelator to the Jubilee Line at Waterloo . This picture was taken crouching down for a low angle using a fisheye lens. The travelator belts are either side of the central stationary walkway. Hardly anybody uses the stationary part so there was no problem taking time to get a symmetrical picture save for the usual strange looks “what on earth is he taking a picture of!”

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang sisheye lens lens at 8 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing.

Photomatix

I used Photomatix 5 Beta the not yet formally released draft new version. The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix using the new Contast Optimiser for the most natural settings with manual adjustments.

Photoshop

Topaz Adjust Vibrant Crisp preset with adjustments was used to bring in more detail

General adjustments in curves to get the colours right using the grey sample tool, no shortage of grey tones to get that right..

Saturation blues was used to bring up the blue on the stripes a little.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 44 amount and 44 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

Filters – Lens Correction- Custom – Transform – Horizontal Perspective was used to straighten out the angle of view for better symmetry.

The healing and clone brushes were used to fill in some of the resulting blank areas which would otherwise need to be cropped

The crop tool was used and then dragging the arrows at the corners for manual straightening and to improve symmetry.

The healing and clone tools were used for tidy up

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Waterloo Infinity Tunnel OriginalWaterloo Infinity Tunnel

Tonemapped image

Waterloo Infinity Tunnel tonemappedWaterloo Infinity Tunnel

Final Image

Waterloo Infinity Tunnel FinalWaterloo Infinity Tunnel

For licences and prints see Waterloo Infinity Tunnel

Edwin Jones

Leadenhall Market Empty View FinalLeadenhall Market Empty View

When I stayed the weekend in London last month I was able to make an early Sunday morning start and get shots of an empty Leadenhall Market Building in the City of London. The site was used for market trading from Roman times though the first building for a Market was built in the early 14^th century. The present magnificent wrought iron and glass structure was designed in 1881 by Sir Horace Jones, architect and surveyor for the City of London Corporation. Jones’ other work included Tower Bridge. The market is directly adjoining Lloyds of London so it’s Cafe’s and Restaurants are popular with City Workers. The Market was included in the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10mm.

3 raw images were taken at 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.

Photoshop

The -2 EV image was copied in as a new layer and was then excluded with a black layer mask and a brush used to bring in more detail in the highlight areas.

Detail was brought back in with Topaz adjust with vibrant presets group with Detail 2 preset with adjustments. Some areas were excluded from the effect by applying Topaz on a duplicate layer with a layer mask.

The image was enhanced with curves to brighten. The effect was excluded from the highlights with a layer mask.

Hue Saturation reds were used to bring down the colour intensity.

Hue Saturation yellows were used to bring down the colour intensity in yellows especially the lights.

The burn tool was used to bring more detail into the highlights 1% brush used

Layers flattened before going on to 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. This effect was excluded from the highlights with a brush on a layer mask

The crop tool was used for better symmetry.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original image. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Leadenhall Market Empty View OriginalLeadenhall Market Empty View

Tonemapped image

Leadenhall Market Empty View TonemappedLeadenhall Market Empty View

 Final Image

Leadenhall Market Empty View FinalLeadenhall Market Empty View

For Licence and prints see Leadenhall Market Empty View

Edwin Jones

Mark Cavendish Sprint Lineup FinalMark Cavendish Sprint Lineup

This is a picture from the final stage of the Tour of Britain held in London Sunday afternoon 22 September 2013.

The race was the last stage. Starting from Whitehall there was a circuit which went along the Thames Embankment road to turn by the Tower of London and then back past Big Ben and back into Whitehall. I based myself on the corner by the houses of Parliament. This is on the last of 10 circuits and the last corner and Mark Cavendish, 2^nd in line, has positioned himself for the final sprint which he won.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 28-200 zoom at 60mm. A 1000 ISO was used to get a

Camera Raw

Edits were carried out in RAW to improve exposure, clarity and vibrance. An adjustment brush was used to darken the background and lighten the riders.

Photoshop

The image was cropped to focus on the riders.

The image was adjusted in Topaz lens effects to add a zoom blur. The zoom centre was fixed on Mark Cavendish. The effect was applied on a duplicate layer and a layer mask. A brush was then used to exclude more of the other cyclists from the effect and make them stand out.

Topaz adjust clarity was applied with a layer mask to the cyclists excluding the rest of the picture.

Levels adjusted.

Hue Saturation and vibrance increased.

Hue saturation layer reds used with a layer mask to tone down the reds on the left.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 37 amount and 37 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from highlights.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original and then the final result.

Original

Mark Cavendish Sprint Lineup OriginalMark Cavendish Sprint Lineup

Final Image

Mark Cavendish Sprint Lineup FinalMark Cavendish Sprint Lineup

For licences and prints see Mark Cavendish Sprint Lineup

Edwin Jones

Lights of the City St Pauls FinalLights of the City St Pauls

When I stayed overnight in London for Open House last month I was able to get time and the dark for some light trail shots. This one was taken at St Paul’s Cathedral. This is looking towards it approaching from the west on Ludgate Hill Road. The road is busy with London Buses and the double deckers with the iconic red make for ideal light trails.

The picture was taken on a tripod with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 15mm.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix detail enhancer with fusion natural settings. I made a fair few manual adjustments to the Photomatix sliders to get the image looking just right

Photoshop

The bright lighting on the dome was brought down by bringing in the minus 2 EV image in a new layer and applying it only to the Dome with a layer mask.

The image was adjusted in Topaz vibrant clarity and a layer mask to exclude from some areas including all of the light trail to retain a softer look to that.

Slight increase in brightness and contrast

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 45 amount and 45 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from the light trail to keep a softer look to this.

Verticals corrected using lens correction, Custom, Vertical Perspective. The image was then cropped but some parts of the left edge were filled in with the healing content aware tool to avoid having to crop too much.

A wobbly looking reflection in the bus window of the crossing pole was removed with the healing brush.

Some cloning to tidy up

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Lights of the City St Pauls OriginalLights of the City St Pauls

Tonemapped image

Lights of the City St Pauls TonemappedLights of the City St Pauls

Final Image

Lights of the City St Pauls FinalLights of the City St Pauls

For licences and prints see Lights of the City St Pauls

Edwin Jones

Lloyds of London Atrium View FinalLloyds of London Atrium View

This is another picture from London Open House on 21^st and 22 September 2013. This one was taken on the Saturday morning. I went to the inside of the Lloyds Building in 2011 and had not originally planned to go there. However as this was only a short distance from my last building I decided to pay another visit.

 The queue was round the block but I knew from previous experience that it moved quickly and I was inside within half an hour. By contrast I heard the very long queue for the Gherkin opposite moved very slowly. I think this is because for Lloyds you go up by escalators to the main area whereas for the Gherkin people have to enter the viewpoint via lifts. At Lloyds I visited the main floor and the higher viewpoints.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix fusion with natural settings and manual adjustments.

Photoshop

The -2EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. A brush was then used on the window at the top  to reduce highlights.

Topaz Adjust Vibrant Crisp preset with adjustments was used to bring in more detail

General adjustments in levels to lighten a little with a layer mask and brush used to exclude highlights.

Saturation greens and yellows were used to bring out the colours on the escalators more.

The crop tool was used and then dragging the arrows at the corners for manual straightening and to improve symmetry.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 49 amount and 49 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

A viginette was applied using the elliptical marquee tool and a brightness adjustment to bring more attention to the escalators and the people on the right.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Lloyds of London Atrium View OriginalLloyds of London Atrium View

Tonemapped image

Lloyds of London Atrium View TonemappedLloyds of London Atrium View

Final Image

Lloyds of London Atrium View FinalLloyds of London Atrium View

For licences and prints see Lloyds of London Atrium View

Edwin Jones

City Hall Descending Spirals FinalCity Hall Descending Spirals

The idea of this shot was to show the domed shape of the building which confines the spiral staircase and determines its shape and also to show the scale and context with the Thames visible through the windows.

My visit to the Open House weekend started with City Hall on the South Bank. The amazing spiral staircase inside is the centrepiece of this building. I had been to it in 2011 but wanted to try out my fisheye lens on it. I took so many shots inside that processing another one was a must.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang Fisheye lens at 8 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix detail enhancer with custom settings

Photoshop

The minus 2EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. A brush was then used on the area of sky in the top left which was too bright to brighten to darken this to match the main sky area.

The plus 2EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. A brush was then used on the area of spiral overhead to lighten this.

Topaz Adjust Vibrant clarity preset with adjustments was used to bring in more detail.

Levels and brightness contrast used to brighten the interior with layer masks used to exclude the sky.

Vibrance adjustment layer increased 12 points.

Saturation Greens used to bring down the green hue on the steps while retaining it in the interior glass

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 37 amount and 37 radius. A layer mask was used to apply this effect only to parts of the interior.

The healing and clone tools were used to tidy up.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

City Hall Descending Spirals OriginalCity Hall Descending Spirals

Tonemapped image

City Hall Descending Spirals TonemappedCity Hall Descending Spirals

Final Image

City Hall Descending Spirals FinalCity Hall Descending Spirals

For licences and prints see City Hall Descending Spirals

Edwin Jones

Angel Building Pointing Skyward FinalAngel Building Pointing Skyward

This is another picture from London Open House on 21^st and 22 September. After City Hall my next stop was the Angel Building north of the Barbican. There is a great Atrium at the Angel Building with a black sculpture in the centre all enhanced with the fisheye. I decided to leave in the man looking up bottom right to give a sense of scale and help make the image more than an abstract.

The number visiting was quite small. After viewing the Atrium from the ground floor there were regular tours taking the lift to view it from the top floor.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang Fisheye lens at 8 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix fusion natural amended with custom settings

Photoshop

The minus2EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. A brush was then on a layer mask to apply the darker image only to the sky

Topaz Adjust Vibrant group of presets vibrant preset with custom adjustments was used to bring in more detail with a layer mask and brush used to remove the effect from highlights.

Some brightening with a layer mask used to exclude the sky

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 38 amount and 38 radius. A layer mask was used to apply this effect only to the nearer parts of the building.

The clone tool was used to tidy up.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Angel Building Pointing Skyward OriginalAngel Building Pointing Skyward

Tonemapped image

Angel Building Pointing Skyward TonemappedAngel Building Pointing Skyward

Final Image

Angel Building Pointing Skyward FinalAngel Building Pointing Skyward

For licences and prints see Angel Building Pointing Skyward

Edwin Jones

City Hall So Next Century FinalCity Hall So Next Century Final

This is my first shot to be processed from this year’s London Open House on 21^st and 22 September. City Hall is on the south bank of the Thames near Tower Bridge and was my first visit.

The amazing spiral staircase inside is the centrepiece of this building. I had been to it in 2011 but wanted to try out my fisheye lens on it. I was surprised that the queues were quite light. I arrived an hour before opening but very few people were there and when I came out there was no queue. Last year there was apparently a long wait. The picture shows how incredible this place is inside.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang Fisheye lens at 8 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix detail enhancer with custom settings

Photoshop

The 0EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. A brush was then used on the sky to brighten this and cut out the muddy look.

Topaz Adjust Vibrant gritty 2 preset was used to bring in more detail with a layer mask and brush used to remove the effect from highlights.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 35 amount and 35 radius. A layer mask was used to apply this effect only to the foreground area.

An adjustment layer was used to convert to mono.

Brightness contrast adjustment layer used to increase both brightness and contrast.

The healing and clone tools were used to tidy up.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

City Hall So Next Century OriginalCity Hall So Next Century Final

Tonemapped image

City Hall So Next Century TonemappedCity Hall So Next Century

Final Image

City Hall So Next Century FinalCity Hall So Next Century

For licences and prints see City Hall So Next Century

Edwin Jones

Open House London 2013 City Hall1Open House London 2013

I spent the weekend of the 21^st and 22^nd September viewing buildings open to the public just the one weekend of the year and on the Sunday afternoon taking photos of the final stage of the Tour of Britain Cycle Race through the streets of London.

Highlights of Open House included the insides of City Hall, Lloyds and Battersea Power Station. I tend to be a perfectionist in terms of choice of picture and getting the processing just right to display and image at its best before it appears on Flickr or appears on my website for sale. It is likely to be months before I finish processing and showing the best of these pictures

For this preview I will be telling the story of the weekend while it is still fresh and showing some of the pictures in small resolution all without any processing save for sizing.

The light was pretty rubbish all weekend with dull overcast skies but for photos of the inside of build Open House London 2013 City Hall 2Open House London 2013 ings this was an advantage as it meant less contrast.

The weekend started with City Hall on the South Bank. The amazing spiral staircase inside is the centrepiece of this building. I had been to it in 2011 but wanted to try out my fisheye lens on it. I was surprised that the queues were quite light.

I arrived an hour before opening but very few people were there and when I came out there was no queue. Last year there was apparently a long wait.

The pictures show how incredible this place is inside.

Next it was on to the Angel Building north of the Barbican. Tube engineering work meant a bus for part of the journey. A one day travel card from my local station made transport quite easy with the train to London and all underground and bus travel included. There is a great Atrium at the Angel Building with a black sculpture in the centre all enhanced with the fisheye.

Angle Building London Open House 2013

Next it was on to the Broadgate area north of Liverpool Street. The Broadgate Tower was not open this year but I went first to the lobby of nearby Exchange House.

Open House London 2013 Exchange HouseOpen House London 2013

Then a few blocks along the lobby of 155 Bishopsgate.

Open House London 2013 BishopsgateOpen House London 2013

I went to the inside of the Lloyds Building in 2011 and had not originally planned to go there. However as this was only a short distance I decided to pay another visit.

Open House London 2013 Llloyds Trading FloorOpen House London 2013 The queue was round the block but I knew from previous experience that it moved quickly and I was inside within half an hour. By contrast I heard  the very long queue for the Gherkin opposite moved very slowly. I think this is because for Lloyds you go up by escalators to the main area whereas for the Gherkin people have to enter the viewpoint via lifts. At Lloyds I visited the the main floor and the higher viewpoints.

Open House London 2013 LloydsOpen House London 2013

I just made my last visit of the day the Foreign Office by about 3 minutes before last entry. No queue at that time, straight in. There is a great courtyard, lavish rooms and last a splendid staircase.

Open House London 2013 Foreign OfficeOpen House London 2013

On the way to night shots round St Paul’s I stopped off for a sunset view of I New Chance offices and shops.

Open House London 2013 New ChangeOpen House London 2013

I stayed at a hotel overnight and made an early start Sunday to get shots of Leadenhall Market empty.

London Open House weekend Leadenhall Market Leadenhall Market

The main target for Sunday morning was Battersea Power Station or its ruins.  This was open for one time only over the weekend before its redevelopment starts. I later heard that 18,000 people got in on Saturday with 5 hour queues.

I was quite lucky. I arrived there just before 10.00 for the 11.00 opening and joined a fast walking queue as they decided to open an hour early at 10.00. I probably only waited about 40 minutes. There was a tent inside with details, plans and models of the redevelopment and then an open area in the front of that for viewing and photos .

Open House London 2013 Battersea Power ChimmeysOpen House London 2013

I did find it difficult photographically to get a good shot. With the fisheye I did manage to get all 4 chimneys. Some went for the Camera Club "details of rust" kind of shot much to the puzzlement of everybody else. I went for the multiple photographers shot.

Open House London 2013 Battersea PhotographersOpen House London 2013

My last Open House visit was to Tower Bridge House where the Atrium could be viewed from the ground and top floors.

Open House London 2013 Tower Bridge HouseOpen House London 2013

Next it was on to the Tour of Britain final stage being held in London in the afternoon. Starting from Whitehall there was a circuit which went along the Thames Embankment road to turn by the Tower of London and then back past Big Ben and back into Whitehall. I based myself on the corner by the houses of Parliament. Not long before the race start about 6 official Agency Photographers settled on the road just in front of me but sitting down for low angles. I decided my choice of location had been pretty good. As expected Bradley Wiggins won the Gold Jersey for overall race winner and Mark Cavendish won the day’s stage.

Edwin Jones

British Museum Overlook FinalSONY DSC

This is another shot from my latest day trip to London and the British Museum. This is one of those viewpoints which has been photographed numerous time. I went for a different look by framing it with the surrounding stonework. This is not normally possible because it is full with photographers! This was achieved because it was late afternoon and the crowds were thinning out.

The Museum was established in 1753. The formerly open area at the centre was glassed over in 2000 and is the largest covered square in Europe.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix fusion with natural settings

Photoshop

The -2EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. A brush was then used on the sky to reduce highlights.

The +2EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. The layer opacity was set at 25% to bring it in a little to brighten the walls.

Topaz Adjust Vibrant Crisp preset was used to bring in more detail

General adjustments in levels to lighten a little with a layer mask and brush used to exclude highlights.

Saturation greens and a colour balance adjustments layers were used to bring down a green cast.  

The ruler tool was used to straighten and then a small crop to improve composition.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 41 amount and 41 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

British Museum Overlook OriginalSONY DSC

Tonemapped image

British Museum Overlook TonemappedSONY DSC

Final Image

British Museum Overlook FinalSONY DSC

For licences and prints see British Museum Overlook

Edwin Jones

Starship Corridor Southwark Final

This is another shot from my last London Day Trip. This was taken at Southwark on the Jubilee Line. Each station on the line is different but all with a futuristic look and this one perhaps most of all.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sony 10-20mm wide angle lens at 10mm. I took 3 pictures for HDR. As Tripods are not allowed I used ISO 800 to get a fast enough shutter speed of 1/30 second for the 0EV shot.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix detail enhancer.

Photoshop

First the OEV and minus 2 EV images were brought back in as new layers with layer masks and applied with brush strokes on the mask only to highlights to bring these down.

Topaz adjust was used with vibrant presets group with clarity preset to bring in more detail. The effect was applied on a layer with a layer mask which I used to exclude some of the highlights from the enhancement.

Light was brought up with levels with highlights excluded with a layer mask..

Contrast increased a little.

Vibrance decreased a little.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 39 amount and 39 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights and parts of the ceiling.

The clone tool was used for tidy up.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Starship Corridor Southwark Original

Tonemapped image

Starship Corridor Southwark Tonemapped

Final Image

Starship Corridor Southwark Final

For Prints and licence see Starship Corridor Southwark

Edwin Jones

Long Sunset Pagham Final

This was taken looking North West across Pagham Harbour. In this area of the UK’s south coast at this time of year there are few areas where a sunset can be taken across water with the sun setting well to the north. This is taken from the spit of land across part of the Harbour entrance and is only a mile from home. Pagham Harbour is a nature reserve.

The image was a 58 second long exposure taken with a 10 stop filter. This reduces the amount of light coming through the lens nearly a thousand times.

As can be seen from the before and after pictures below the original colours were disappointing but improved a lot with the processing. The day was windy and the water choppy but the long exposure has the benefit of smoothing out the water and improving reflections.

The picture was taken on a Tripod with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10 mm

 Processing started with adjustments in Camera RAW for better detail and colours. The sliders used included exposure, Vibrance and clarity. I aimed to brighten the beach areas and enhance colours

Photoshop

Topaz adjust was used with Vibrance presets group with Specify preset to enhance colours. With Topaz applied on a layer a layer mask was used to exclude the effect from some areas especially the sky to bring down the effect on blues.

Adjustments in levels to brighten the foreground excluding the sky with a layer mask.

Saturation adjustments, blue channel down by 50 points to tone down the blues in the sky and clouds

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 30 amount and 30 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original, then after RAW editing and then the final result.

Original

Long Sunset Pagham Original

After RAW edit

Long Sunset Pagham RAW edit

Final Image

Long Sunset Pagham Final

For Prints and licences see Long Sunset Pagham

Edwin Jones

Lines towards St Pauls Final

This shot was taken on my latest day trip to London. This one was at One New Change near St Pauls.

One New Change is a major office and retail development in the City of London and was completed in October 2010. The centre is located at Cheapside, one of the areas within the City historically associated with retailing and markets, and is very close to St Paul's Cathedral and its entrance lines up perfectly. The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 20mm.

The image was taken into the light with the sun behind the Cathedral making it an ideal candidate for HDR. 3 raw images were taken at 2EV spacing. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.  The images taken were not sufficient to cover the full range of light so I added extra exposures at either end using Camera Raw.

Photomatix

Camera Raw was used to add extra images either end. There were then 5 images at 2EV separation which were outputted in Photomatix with fusion natural settings

Photoshop

The Plus 2EV image was brought in as a new layer and applied with a layer mask to only St Paul’s to bring more light in.

The minus 2EV image was brought in as a new layer and applied with a layer mask to only parts of the clouds to control highlights.

The image was adjusted in Topaz vibrant Autumn Preset with adjustments to suit to bring in more detail and warm up the image. A layer mask was used to part exclude the adjustment from some areas such as highlights.

General adjustments in levels to enhance and brighten with a layer mask to exclude the highlight areas

Hue Saturation yellows  adjustment layer to warm up the image.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 30 amount and 30 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

The crop tool was used for better composition and symmetry.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Lines towards St Pauls Original

Tonemapped image

Lines towards St Pauls Tonemapped

Final Image

Lines towards St Pauls Final

For licences and prints see Lines towards St Pauls

Edwin Jones

Waiting Passenger London Underground Final

This shot was taken on my latest day trip to London which included some London underground shots. This one was the Central Line at Tottenham Court Road.

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10mm.

3 raw images were taken at 2EV spacing. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.  The picture was taken handheld at 1/5 of a second.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix detail enhancer with fusion natural settings

Photoshop

First adjusted in Topaz vibrant clarity with adjustments to suit and a layer mask to part exclude from some areas including all of the roof.

General adjustments in levels to enhance with layer mask to exclude the highlight areas

Vibrance layer was increased by 10 points.

Colour balance adjustment layer used to to warm up the image.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 46 amount and 46 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

Heal and clone tools used for tidy up.

The crop tool was used for better composition and to remove distracting areas including the lights.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Waiting Passenger London Underground Original

Tonemapped image

Waiting Passenger London Underground Tonemapped

Final Image

Waiting Passenger London Underground Final

For licences and prints see Waiting Passenger London Underground

Edwin Jones

British Museum Roof Fisheyed Final

This is another shot from my latest day trip to London this time from the British Museum. There must be millions of pictures of the central Atrium so I got out my trusty Samyang Fisheye lens to try for a different approach.

The Museum was established in 1753. The formerly open area at the centre was glassed over in 2000 and is the largest covered square in Europe.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang Fisheye lens at 8 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. The images were opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs. 

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix detail enhancer with natural settings

Photoshop

The +2EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. To get an exact selection the pen tool was used on the sky. A brush was then used on the sky with varying opacities to partly bring back the darker sky from the HDR. The lighter +2EV image was retained for all of the building area.  

Topaz Adjust Vibrant Clarity preset was used to bring in more detail

General adjustments in levels to lighten a little with a layer mask and brush used to exclude highlights.

Vibrance and Saturation blues used to bring up the blue areas in the sky.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 42 amount and 42 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

British Museum Roof Fisheyed Original

Tonemapped image

British Museum Roof Fisheyed Tonemapped

Final Image

British Museum Roof Fisheyed Final

For licences and prints see British Museum Roof Fisheyed

Edwin Jones

Courtauld Gallery Stairs Somerset House Final

I took another day trip to London yesterday, Monday 19 August which included a visit to Somerset House. I have been a little into spiral staircases this year so this was another one to bag.

The vast Somerset House was designed by Sir William Chambers and built 1776-1801. These stairs are in the North Wing or Strand Building. This was completed by 1780 and occupied, for its first 57 years, by Royal Academy of Arts. It now gives access to the Courtauld Gallery. 

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang Fisheye lens at 8 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. The ISO setting was 1000 to give a fast enough stutter speed in the dim light. The images were opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs. 

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix fusion with the Natural preset

Photoshop

The -2EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. A black layer mask was used to exclude this. Then a white brush at low opacity was used to build up detail in highlight areas.

Topaz Adjust Vibrant Detail 2 preset was used to bring in more detail

General adjustments in levels to lighten a little with a layer mask and brush used to exclude highlights.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 33 amount and 33 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

The clone tool were used to remove the distracting light from the left of the picture.

A brightness adjustment layer was used to add more brightness.

The crop tool was used to crop a little while straightening

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Courtauld Gallery Stairs Somerset House Original

Tonemapped image

Courtauld Gallery Stairs Somerset House Tonemapped

Final Image

Courtauld Gallery Stairs Somerset House Final

For licences and prints see Courtauld Gallery Stairs Somerset House

Edwin Jones

Perseids Meteors Star Trails Final

I was not planning to take any Star Trail shots until the autumn when the sun will be setting earlier. However there was a happy coincidence on Monday evening of the peak of the Perseid Meteor shower and clear skies, rare in the UK.

The shot was taken from Pagham Harbour Wall looking due north. Pagham Harbour is a Nature Reserve and the water in the shot is a lagoon north of the Harbour. Overhead the Milky Way is visible but there is a lot of light pollution on the horizon with Bognor Regis to the East, Chichester 5 miles to the North and the city of Portsmouth being 20 miles to the West. It does have the considerable benefit though of being only 1 mile from home.

I used my Interval Timer and set the camera at ISO 200 and bulb and the timer at 2 minutes at f3.5.  I took 2 hours of pictures starting about 11.00 so finished at 1.00 am. The picture was taken with my Samyang 8mm Fisheye lens.

There are 3 meteors visible on the left of the picture. The trails look shorter than they were due to the fisheye. I saw about 30 in all while I was out. One especially, not in the frame, was very bright and left a smoke trail.

The images were stacked in Startrails.exe

There are 2 methods of taking Star Trail images, either one long exposure of 20 minutes plus or a lot of shorter exposures later blended together. The problem with the first is if something goes wrong such as a walker with a flashlight or condensation you can lose the whole thing so I went for the second. It would normally be very time consuming to blend all the pictures together but there is now free software available to do it for you at http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html

With the method of stacking together shorter exposures noise is not such an issue so I turned off the Cameras noise reduction settings. If these are turned on it doubles the exposure length as a second image is taken automatically of the same length for the noise reduction process. This also causes gaps in the Star Trails if multiple images are blended. Noise was corrected later with software.

The circular pattern is formed by pointing the camera towards Polaris the Pole Star near the Plough. As the Earth turns stars more above the pole do not appear to move as much as those more above lower latitudes. I had with me an HTC Android Smart Phone with the Google Sky App. This enabled me to accurately locate the pole star

All the settings and equipment were as follows

- Sony A700 Camera.

- ISO 200, f3.5, 1 minute 59 seconds, 8mm.

- Long Exposure and high ISO noise reduction set to off. Otherwise the Camera would take One minute and 59 seconds between each shot for its own noise reduction resulting in great gaps in the Star Trails.

- Samyang Fisheye lens 8mm.

- Tripod.

- Interval timer

See this post for a review of this Timer

http://edwinjonesphotography.com/blog/2012/5/timer-interval-remote-review

<b>Photoshop</b>

For the Star Trails the stacking software works on jpegs which are then saved as a Tiff.

After opening in Photoshop some extra detail was brought in with Topaz Adjust Crisp preset

Overall Brightness increased.

Brightest stars selected with an Action from Astronomy tools and their brightness increased.

Noise reduced with Noiseware Pro.

Extra boost using Clarity setting of unsharp mask, amount 59 radius 59

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the Star Trails Image after merging of the frames but before other processing and then the final result.

Original Blended Images

Perseids Meteors Star Trails Original

Final Image

Perseids Meteors Star Trails Final

For Prints and licences see Perseids Meteors Star Trails

Edwin Jones

Pont de Normandie Coloured Sketch Effect Final

This is a shot taken while travelling over the Pont de Normandie bridge over the River Seine near Le Havre, France. I was in the front passenger seat of the car so had a good chance to take quite a sequence of pictures.

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10mm.

The bridge is pretty surreal to start with so I decided to experiment with Topaz Simplify and Coloured sketch preset.

Photoshop

Detail was brought back in with Topaz adjust with vibrant presets group with Clarity preset with adjustments.

The main sketch effect was then added using Topaz Simplify, coloured sketch preset with some adjustments. This was applied on a layer with a layer mask. The road area was darkened by removing the effect by about 20% using a brush on the mask.

A brightness Contrast Adjustment layer was used to increase contrast.

Layers flattened before going on to 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. This effect was excluded from some areas with a brush on a layer mask

The healing and clone tools were used for tidy up..

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original image and then the final result.

Original Image

Pont de Normandie Coloured Sketch Effect Original

Final Image

Pont de Normandie Coloured Sketch Effect Final

For Licence and prints see Pont de Normandie Coloured Sketch Effect

Edwin Jones

Leadenhall Market Roof City of London Final

This is a shot of the Leadenhall Market Building in the City of London taken on a London day trip in June. The site was used for market trading from Roman times though the first building for a Market was built in the early 14^th century. The present magnificent wrought iron and glass structure was designed in 1881 by Sir Horace Jones, architect and surveyor for the City of London Corporation. Jones’ other work included Tower Bridge. The Market was included in the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens at 10mm.

3 raw images were taken at 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.

Photoshop

The -2 EV image was copied in as a new layer and was then excluded with a black layer mask and a brush used to bring in more detail in the highlight areas.

Detail was brought back in with Topaz adjust with vibrant presets group with Clarity preset with adjustments. Some areas were excluded from the effect by applying Topaz on a duplicate layer with a layer mask.

The image was enhanced with curves to brighten. The effect was excluded from the highlights with a layer mask.

Hue Saturation reds were used to bring down the pinks in the walls a little.

Layers flattened before going on to 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 46 amount and 46 radius. This effect was excluded from the highlights with a brush on a layer mask

The ruler tool was used to straighten and crop.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original image. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Leadenhall Market Roof City of London Original

Tonemapped image

Leadenhall Market Roof City of London Tonemapped

 Final Image

Leadenhall Market Roof City of London Final

For Licence and prints see Leadenhall Market Roof City of London

Edwin Jones

Sky Train London Surrey Classic Final

This shot was taken on the Inaugural Prudential London Surrey Classic Pro Cycle Race on Sunday 4^th August. This was and will certainly be a high profile race for the future with a finish on the Mall. The shot was taken on the most southern part of the course at Walliswood Surrey which was also part of a 3 lap circuit of Leith Hill giving the chance to photograph the riders 3 times. Ben Swift was the best known rider in Sky's team for this race and he finished 10th.

I had only decided to go there on Saturday after realising that Sunday’s destination for my Club’s standard 60 mile bike ride was that day coincidentally only 8 miles short of the southern part of the race route. 4 club mates joined me to ride up there after lunch.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A550 with a Sigma 10-20mm zoom at 16mm. 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 using Detail Enhancer with natural settings

Photoshop

The crop tool was used to focus on the 5 Team Sky riders.

In Photoshop Topaz Clarity was used with landscape sunny preset to light up the scene better.

Topaz Adjust was used with a layer mask to bring more detail into the cyclists.

Levels were used to enhance

Brightness was increased overall.

Saturation blues was used to bring up the blues on the Sky Team Kit.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

Duplicate layer Noiseware Pro and standard sharpening with Unsharp mask.

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 41 amount and 41 radius. This effect was applied only to the riders for a final extra boost.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original image. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Sky Train London Surrey Classic Original

Tonemapped image

Sky Train London Surrey Classic Tonemapped

Final Image

Sky Train London Surrey Classic Final

For Licence and prints see Sky Train London Surrey Classic

Edwin Jones

Summer Wheatfield Chichester Final

This shot was taken a week ago on a beautiful hot summer’s day at a wheat field a few miles outside Chichester, West Sussex, UK. I was interested in the soft effect from the ends of the wheat contrasting with 3 stems which stood out.

The pictures were taken handheld with a Sony A700 camera with a Sigma 28 – 200mm zoom at 200mm.  One RAW image was opened in Photoshop Camera RAW first to create 2 extra exposures for HDR at 2EV separation.

Photomatix

From the original picture 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix fusion natural settings.

Photoshop

Topaz adjust was used to bring in an additional detail using vibrant preset group and Crisp preset and a layer mask to apply only to the 3 stems of wheat.

Topaz adjust simplify was used with additional warmth and a vignette with a layer mask to exclude the 3 stems

Levels used to enhance the stems.

Vibrance was reduced on everything except the 3 stems

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 73 amount and 73 radius. To keep most of the picture soft this effect was restricted with a layer mask and brush to just the 3 stems.

The healing tool was used for tidy up.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original image, then the tonemapped  image and then the final result.

Original image

Summer Wheatfield Chichester Original

Tonemapped image

Summer Wheatfield Chichester Tonemapped

Final Image

Summer Wheatfield Chichester Final

For licence see Summer Wheatfield Chichester

Edwin Jones

Cycling Cares Gorge Picos de Europa Final

This is a scan of a slide taken about 20 years ago in the Picos de Europa mountains of Northern Spain. It was during a 2 week cycle club tour I had organised. At the time there was no ban on cycling along this path. Since then a strict ban has been imposed. I assume either because the path became much better known and busier or the Spanish decided it might be dangerous!

The scan was with the Nikon Coolscan 4 slide scanner

Photoshop

In Photoshop Topaz Adjust was used with the vibrant preset group and spicyfy preset to bring in more detail

Some areas, mainly highlights were excluded from the effect by applying Topaz on a duplicate layer with a layer mask.

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 28 amount and 28 radius. A mask was used to partly exclude the effect from highlights.

The clone brush was used for tidy up including a small scratch on the slide.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original scanned image and then the final result.

Original scan

Cycling Cares Gorge Picos de Europa Original

Final Image

Cycling Cares Gorge Picos de Europa Final

For Licence see Cycling Cares Gorge Picos de Europa

Edwin Jones