This is Elvaston Castle in Derbyshire, UK. The original image was a little underexposed in the shadow areas. I used Fill Light in Camera RAW to bring back some detail. Lens Correction was also used to straighten the walls.

These are the Al Hassan and Al Rifa’i Mosques of Cairo in Egypt. The image was created from two separate exposures stitched together in Photoshop. A mask of the sky was made to add some blue however it clashed with the warm tones of the buildings. By changing the blend mode to Exclusion the blue sky layer added a soft brown which looked like a dust storm and balanced with the other colours in the image.

This was created by compositing three separate images. The Pyramids of Egypt, The Seas of Dahab and Rutland Water. Many adjustment layers and masks were needed in an attempt to balance the shot as each component was taken with different lighting conditions at different angles with different cameras in different countries.

This is Braunston in Rutland, UK. It is a beautiful old English village. To make it look a little older I removed all the pylons, wires, concrete and tarmac. To add some colour to the sky I used the color range tool to select the bright areas of the sky. This selection was used to create a mask which was applied to a gradient. The Blend mode Multiply was used as this is the most forgiving when it comes to masks of light colours over dark colours. A rough mask set to Multiply will not cover the branches or leave a halo. The worst that can happen is the thinnest branches get a slight hint of blue. Even this could be argued as a natural effect of soft focus so the end result looks natural.

This simple use of spot colour is achieved by painting black on the layer mask of a Black & White layer. The Hue/Saturation layer above was used to make the ladybird nice and red. It was a little orange in the original capture. Vignette was achieved using a gradient layer and lens correction.

This is the Hawthorn Blossom at the end of our garden in the UK. I tried to get the focal plane through the Stamen but is in front of the petals. To emphasize the anther at the tips I needed to increase the mid range contrast. This can be done with the clarity slider in Camera RAW or In Photoshop by using a high pass layer set to overlay blend mode. I never realized these two methods use the same technique until I read about it in this book. Thanks to Fliss and Alex for the birthday present. In this example I imported the image as a smart object. This means you can edit the RAW camera data in Photoshop and you reduce the chance of degrading the image. In this example I used a smart filter also which allows you to go back and change settings after they have been applied.

These are the Austrian Alps. It was taken on a family holiday in 2008. I used Camera RAW to do the heavy lifting then once in Photoshop I used masks to selectively adjust the colours in different areas of the image.

We went for a walk today and Karen spotted this Jew’s Ear Fungus in a small patch of trees. It was taken around midday on a cloudy day in the shade. These are all factors which make it the bluest that daylight gets. The cameras auto white balance does not know its looking at a red object under blue light. In an attempt to balance the image it set the colour temperature to 3850K. Instead of changing the colour temperature a Color Balance layer was used to bring back the hues of the fungus and the wood.

This is Tahrir Square in Egypt. This part of Cairo saw the start of the Pro Democracy marches which ended Hosni Mubarak’s reign and started a chain reaction which is now sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East. When I took this image in 2007 I was spotted by someone in the government building on the right. A short while later I was politely asked to stop taking pictures. Hopefully the new regime will allow greater freedom for the Egyptian people.

We went for a walk in Rutland today. Karen spotted these Crocuses outside a cottage. I have used Orton Effect and Desaturation layers in an attempt to make the flowers stand out of the busy background.