This jet surfer is a composite of four images. The desert dunes of western Egypt, A kite surfer from Dahab, The moon from an earlier post and a methane engine I found on this site. Unlike the last composite these images did not need as much adjustment as the lighting conditions were similar. The dunes did need their tonal range increasing. This was done by increasing the contrast to 100 and moving up the black point in Camera RAW. To compensate for the black point shift the Exposure also needed to be increased.

This was taken in the Bahariya Desert in Western Egypt. Although I have spent the last three years using Photoshop to flatter the subjects of studio images some shots are beyond even my ability to make look pretty. The main problem with this image was where the sun had caught the white fur and blown the highlights. Fortunately I had a RAW copy of this image so I could get back most of the detail using the recovery slider in Camera RAW. This would not be possible if you shot in jpegs as you cannot change the exposure after you shot.

This is part of the ancient desert capital of Bahariya which is in present day central Egypt. The scene had a very wide range of tones and looked a little dull. In order to capture the detail one copy was processed using HDR. A second copy was processed using Camera RAW with some subtle Split Toning added to warm the light. The HDR copy is then imported onto a new layer in Photoshop. Its blend mode is set to Luminosity and 70% Opacity. By doing this you get the detail benefit from HDR without getting an unnatural look. A mask of the sky was made using the Color Range tool. The mask was applied to a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer so the sky could have its colour restored to a more saturated blue. A stamp layer was made by holding down Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E at the same time. The stamp layer is needed before applying Lens Correction or any general retouch as it stops you from having to repeat yourself on each effecting layer. If photoshop is running slowly you can flatten the image instead of creating a stamp layer. I try to avoid this as it can be useful to having the building blocks of the image on the layers under your stamp layer. Even though they no longer effect the image they can be called upon to make changes later by moving them to the top layer and adjusting the opacity.

This is the White Desert in Egypt. To process this image I have been experimenting with Photoshops inbuilt Camera RAW processor. Developing images from RAW files gives the best results. For this image I developed the RAW file three times, then once in Photoshop I blended them together to create a more dynamic image. Finally I applied a little vignette to darken the edges.

This shot of the White Desert in Egypt has become my fifth Enhanced License sale.  The original image had a very narrow tonal range giving it a dull greyish look. It is situations like this where it helps to shot in RAW.

If your camera saves jpegs or any 8-bit format the tonal range will start to exhibit banding when you apply a Tone-Curve to fix the image. This banding results in the image breaking up and in extreme cases giving an old poster look.

By shooting in RAW you record more data. In my case 12-bit. This means you can stretch the tonal range over the full 8-bit range without losing the nice smooth gradients between tones.

Both images are available at Shutterstock. Original Image / RAW Curved Image

This planet took 22 exposures build up due to a broken lens. The panorama I used to make this planet was taken in the western deserts of Egypt. Although you cannot see it I was stood on a monument to the French explorer René Caillié. Below are the layers used to build up the image. This older post has details on how to make your own world.

This stunning sunset was taken by the side of the road in the deserts of western Egypt. Capturing a sunset can have it’s problems. The first thing to do is turn off the cameras automatic white balance. If you let the camera decide you could lose most of your warm golden tones. This is because it tries to give a mix of colours even if its looking at a big red sky. The next problem is the dynamic range of the scene will probably be much higher than the camera can record. You can take multiple exposures with a tripod and blend them with HDR. This was a hand held shot so I used Photoshop to bring back the colours which the camera did not capture. I’ve also had some interesting results from split toning sunsets.