Benz World Blog » Photomatix

Wave Rock

Jason Benz — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:36:00 +0000

This is Wave Rock in Western Australia. It must be said Australia does rocks in a big way. This particular rock is made of granite and is more than 2.7 billion years old. The wave part of the rock is 14m high and 110 m long and has been created by a process of fluvial erosion. The stripes on the rock are caused by water which flows down from the top of the rock which slopes up from the wave at its base. This image was created by taking three exposures and combining them using HDR processing. The rock has attracted a number of eclectic tourist businesses over the years. There is an Animal Park where we saw the Koala, A Lace Museum, A Toy Soldier display, A Wild Flower Farm and a well provisioned if expensive Caravan Park where we spent the night. There are a number of walks and drives and I would recommend spending a couple of days there.

El Qasr

Jason Benz — Tue, 17 May 2011 12:24:44 +0000

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.

Fractal Hieroglyphics

Jason Benz — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:25:26 +0000

These Hieroglyphics are from Luxor in Egypt. To process this image I took an existing stock image which had undergone HDR processing then I used the Photoshop Plugin Fractalius. I took a while for me to locate the Plugin in the first time I used it. Then I realized it only ran on the 32bit version of Photoshop. I guess it is too much to expect a third party Plugin to run in 64bit.

Petra Siq

Jason Benz — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:12:24 +0000

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 sun light had blown the highlights.

Nottingham World

Jason Benz — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:59:50 +0000

This world was made from a 360 degree panorama. Read this to find out how to make your own planet. The biggest problem with making planets out of city panoramas is you need to be far enough away from the buildings to get them all in, and at the same time you need do get enough of the ground in to avoid getting heavy distortion in the centre of the image when you convert it into a planet. Fortunately this spot in Nottingham market square was just right. The clouds at the edge of this image had some distortion so I used the dodge tool set to highlights to isolate the image on pure white.

Rutland Snow

Jason Benz — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:12:19 +0000

We went for a drive today and shot this snow shot on the south shore of Rutland Water. I built up the image in two stages. First I used Photomatix to make an HDR image.

Next I used the Black and White adjustments panel in Photoshop to change the tone brightness of each colour.

Finally I used a levels layer to get the tones right on the final image.

Pharaoh Skirt

Jason Benz — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 09:50:44 +0000

Ever wondered what a Pharaoh keeps under his skirt?

This is the Temple of Hathor in Egypt. It was dedicated to the Nubian Queen Nefertari. The image was made with layers of As Shot and HDR blended in various modes.

Seaton Viaduct

Jason Benz — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 11:10:18 +0000

This railway viaduct was built in 1878. It is three-quarters of a mile long and crosses the Welland Valley. To create this image I used alternate layers of HDR Detail Enhancer and HDR Tone Compressor. I used a variety of blending modes to build up the image.

Tree Sun

Jason Benz — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:47:22 +0000

This silhouette of a tree in front of the sunset was on the north shore of Rutland Water. It was processed with Photomatix to produce two HDR images. I loaded these and an unprocessed image into three layers in photoshop. As all three layers are very different it is possible to get some extreme results from changing the blending modes.

Pyramid Sphinx

Jason Benz — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:37:36 +0000

These are the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. This started life as a very flat image with a low dynamic range. To bring it to life I developed it in the cameras own raw developer with a tone curve and in Photomatix to produce an HDR image. I blended the two in Photoshop taking the best bits from each image. Interestingly the HDR image had extra pixels round every edge so it had a higher pixel count than the cameras own software.

This image has been accepted by Dreamstime for Stock Photography and is available for download here.