This was taken on the West coast of Jamaica in a place called Negril. The Photoshop layers I used to build up the image are below.

This is the back of the Cairo Museum in Egypt. I took the shot from the street looking up. I used Photoshops Filter>Distort>Lens Correction to restore the perspective. Making the verticals vertical.

Ciao ai miei lettori italiani. I’m not sure why this blog has had more visits from Italy in the last month than any other country. Especially as I’ve never photographed Italy. All I can offer is this one of my Grandfathers Pictures which was taken in Duomo Square, Syracuse in 1926. I used Red Sepia Split Toning to add the colour.

This was taken from our hotel in Jordan. I used a Nodal Ninja to get the shots needed to make the panorama. I stitched them together using Panorama Studio. To process the image I used the Orton Effect to give the light a hazy glow. I also had to add a layer to darken the sky.

This is another shot from Dahab in Egypt. The sun was in the wrong place to illuminate the surfer so I reduced the contrast with a curves layer then used a mask to boost the saturation of the surfer. I then reversed the mask to desaturating the background and adding a slight tint with a colour balance layer.

This was our hotel pool in Dahab, Egypt. I used a tripod and a 30 second exposure to get the lights to sparkle. To process this image used a colour balance layer to make the pool a nicer shade of blue. I used a tone curve to boost the mid tones. Finally I moved the black point in on a levels layer to make the sky jet black.

This is a rose from our old garden in Nottingham. I used a time saving trick to desaturate the greenery. Normally you would add a Hue/Sat layer and cut out a mask to get this effect. Instead I added a Black and White layer above the base layer and set the layer above that to lighter colour blend mode. The Black and White layer lets you adjust the brightness of individual colour channels. This setup lets you adjust which colours you want to desaturate. It gives you a lot of control and creates more natural effect than applying a mask to one area. I applied another layer to give a subtle Orton Effect. Finally I added a colour balance layer to achieve the velvet red colour of the original rose and give the leaves a slight tint.

This is the siq on the way to the Treasury in Jordan. To process this image I used Photomatix to produce an HDR image. I then layered the HDR with copies of the original image using various blending modes. I then used the clone tool to remove the area where the sunlight had blown the highlights.

This is my most popular stock photo. It has been accepted at five agencies. Putting the same image at different agencies is a common practice as a the photographer keeps the copyright to an image whoever sells it. Since taking it in 2006 is has sold 263 times and made USD$82.52 so far. In an attempt to replicate its success I have been to a further five firework displays but not yet matched it popularity. In the end I took the original image turned it blue and resubmitted it to Shutterstock. The blue version has now sold 42 times.

For this blog post I used the Orton Effect on the images to see what would happen.

I shot this beautiful car in Cienfuegos in Cuba. This is my first attempt at using the Orton Effect. At this point I must mention the very cool photoblog zOOm and thank Florence for sharing this technique. In essence the effect is created by duplicating a layer, blurring it and setting the blend mode to multiply. I applied a little vignette and some masked desaturation to keep the focus on the subject.