Nightscape Photography is one of the eluding styles of photography in lines of selection of photography-style by a photographer. It is sometime possible to shoot Landscape panorama, sea views, and bridges at night in such a manner as if, it has been taken at day time. A cityscape at night with lights blazing away like stars in the sky can be a scintillating show, and when captured in a photo, it can dazzle the eye. The twinkling effect in the photograph is mainly controlled by the exposure time and the size of aperture. By setting smaller apertures will create and exaggerate the star-like radiating shafts of light that can appear to emanate from small points of light in a scene. To take an excellent Night shot, you may need to setup the camera settings to different values, so I have included the common settings which most prefer for Nightscape photographs.

Useful Tips

• Tripod is very important; in fact it’s the basic need. You won’t be able to hold a camera steady enough for long time without a tripod.
• Using a remote release that will allow you to hold the exposure open for as long as you need is advisable.
• Always use ISO 100. But I have seen few recommending ISO 200, I really don’t go with that value because high value of ISO settings though reduce the capture time but it will introduce high noise in the final image.
• For Nightscape the advisable aperture is F8-F16. But it really depends on the subject you want to capture
• Use Slow shutter speed, it always depends on your subject and effect you want to reach at. Darkness is another factor to consider. Many use Bulb Mode which need ir remote control but in camera its 30 sec if you don’t have remote.
• If you are taking pictures of street lights, transportation, automobile trails, moving cars , bridge lights etc., then remove your UV filter you have in your lens, as it will cause blaze or haze which will disrupt your photo.
• Turn off your noise reduction in your camera (if have). Because if you are using a file format of large size like 6.1 megapixel then you really don’t need it, moreover you are on the long night exposure. Noise reduction on your night shot just reduces some detail on your images. Your reading and storing process of data also slows down, so turn it off and have a night shot, after your shutter turns off, you will get your image on the screen.
• White balance is really important. If you are shooting trailing lights, bridges, cityscape then you can use this settings
  WB=incandescent +3
  For other shooter, you can have auto white balance +3 too.
  You can set your exposure compensation around +1–+3
• Always hold your patience as night shooting really takes lot of time.

Night Shot Camera Settings

Camera: Canon EOS 5D ( Any of the type )
Lens: Canon 17-40mm f4 L
Exposure: 100+ sec (100 and above)
White balance: +3
Aperture: F8-F16
Focal Length: 17 mm
ISO Speed: 100 - 200
Exposure Bias: 0 EV

35+ Inspiring Nightscape Photographs

Stockholm night

A nightly prayer – Nightshot Photograph

Light Painting by MagLite – Night Shot photography

Taichung City, Taiwan – Nightscape photography

Severn Glow – Nightscape photography

Manhattan, New York City – Nightscape photography

Olympic Pacific Coast Last Light Catchers

A 30 second exposure (f/5.6 @ ISO 400) captures a purple fog produced by the lapping waves ephemeral presence along the line of an advancing tide. The longer exposure also allows the last of an already set sun to paint rocks on the beach with a warm glow.

Red clouds – Night Photograph

Magical Snow – Nightscape

Boston Skyline in the Blue Hour

The Light of Greality – Nightscape

Repose – Nightscape photography

Lonely hut at the top of the mountain in wilderness. Moon and stars shines the sky. Morning Sun starts to make some appear in the backround.

Forth Rail Bridge @ Sunset – Scotland

This is a view of the famous forth rail bridge taken from the north bank of the firth of forth in Scotland.

Tokyo tower – Nightscape

Provencher Bridge – Nightscape

Punggol beach – Late night shot

This has plenty of my favourties in one frame – long exposure (121 seconds), wide angle (17mm), late night, surreal water and gorgeous textures. From a late night shoot with the gajman. We drove up to Punggol beach to shoot something different, and were very happy with the results.

Neustift – Nightscape

A thunderstorm over Kansas at night

Chennai Marina beach Nightscape

Long Exposure Cityscape Nightscape

Jersey City, New York – Nightscape

Pacific Coast Highway – Nightscape

Playground – Nightscape Photograph

Rowes Wharf and Custom House Tower at Dusk, Boston

North Point Park at Sunset- Nightscape photography

Nightscape photography

Capetown – Nightscape Photograph

Evening Flow Nightscape Photograph by Skarpi

Dubai Marina Nightscape Photograph by Daniel Cheong

Ligth House Nightscape Photography

Dubai Nightshot by Daniel Cheong

Water candles – Nightscape

Taken from the same view point of my previous shot, but this time zooming in with my Sigma 18-200mm (Focal Length = 65mm). A total of 4 exposures, 3 at f/8 for the foreground and one at f/18 for the fountains

Austria Nightscape Photograph

South Africa – Nightscape Photograph

Need your feedback

The most important thing to remember when taking nightscapes, is that you need to be patient. When each photograph takes at minimum 10 minutes to complete, you need to be prepared to be in for a long night. After taking a few under or over exposed shots, or wobbly ones where a gust of wind blows at the wrong moment, you might end up with a keeper.

I guess that i have included most of the best Nightscape photographs available. In case if i missed your work, then please let me know via comments. I am happy to include yours.

Today i have come up with an interesting photography technique named “Time-lapse Photography”. It’s somewhat related to Long Exposure Photography, but here all the individual shots are combined together to form a slow motion video. In Time-lapse Photography, the same subject will be captured which will spread out over a period of time. Each frame thus captured at a slower rate are then smudged together to form a single video.the When the video replayed at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing.

Time-lapse Photography helps you to see the subject which will take much time to complete in a shorter interval of time. For example, If you want to admire the sky from sun rise to sunset, you need not wait till the whole day. With the help of time lapse photography you can create a video of 1 min duration or even less which will cover all the changes occurring during the entire day. Isn’t it interesting to hear? Let me explain you the process of Time-lapse photography step by step.

How it Works?

First of all we need to switch the camera into manual mode. Use your test shots exposure information to set the aperture. Be sure to pick a shutter speed that will give you a good time lapse effect. If you have a shutter speed that is too fast you’ll end up with a choppy looking video. Although based on the subject you are shooting the shutter speed will vary. The length of the event is really a major factor which you must consider while selecting the speed and the number of shots. If the event takes 1 year to complete, then you must try to take few shots with a reasonable number of shots. However if you want to create a smooth and seamless video then the shutter speed must be high.

Set your camera to use JPG and at a size that you think is reasonable. If you don’t it will make your post processing more difficult as you’ll have to convert all your RAW images to JPG and then re-size them. Auto-white balance can change and fluctuate, especially if you’ll be shooting something for a while and the light gets brighter or dimmer over time. Setting it to manual helps ensure all your photos keep reasonably the same look. And also set your camera’s exposure manual as well. Once the camera settings are over, place the camera in a tripod inorder to avoid blur effects. If you don’t have a tripod then make use of some other base supports. Remember while taking the shots, the camera must be stable and fixed without any disturbances to get the perfect effect.

If the time interval of the event is high and you want the camera to make shots automatically then make use of Intervalometers. With an intervalometer (or timer remote controller), you can program your camera to shoot at certain times and at certain intervals such as 1 frame every 5 seconds, 1 frame every minute, and so on. This leaves you free to go do something else, when you’re ready.

Leave the set up undisturbed till the event is finished completely. Once you have finished taking all the images, now import them to a PC and edit the images to adjust the brightness, contrast, size, etc. Inorder to create the video, I suggest you to use Quicktime Movie Pro. QT movie Pro is cheap ($30) and it can provide you all the necessary settings which are needed to produce a perfect video file. Make use of the below tutorial to learn how to create Time-lapse photography better.

How to do Time-Lapse Photography

Here is a tutorial which shows you how to use the camera to take the shots and how to create slow-motion videos. Hope this tutorial would be very useful for all beginners.

Time-lapse Photography Pulse Night shots

Time-lapse photography by Jason C.S. Chen.

Time Lapse Tour of Yosemite National Park

Timelapse tour of Yosemite National Park. See one of my favorite places in the world.Tunnel view, Valley View, Cook’s Meadow, Bridalveil Falls, Nevada Falls, Mist Trail, El Capitan, Yosemite Falls, Half Dome, and much more.

Time-Lapse Photography of the German city

Time-Lapse Photography of the German city Stuttgart showing 20 Locations in 24 hours. Shots are taken on the Canon EOS-1D Mark II

Timescapes Timelapse: Mountain Light

These shots are taken during the trip in August to California’s White Mountains and Yosemite, all shot on the Canon 5D2.

Time-lapse Photography : Singapore Awakens

A visual tale of Singapore as it awakens to a new day. Shot with the Canon 5DMKII using Time Lapse Photography, this short film was shot entirely in Singapore during the month of April 2010. During the filming I used a Canon 24mm Shift & Tilt lens, a 100-400mm Zoom, a 24-105mm zoom, a 50mm f1.4 and a Lee 10 stop filter. These filters are glass and while fragile, deliver a really nice clean image with very little colour cast.

The Forest of Dean – Time-lapse 03

Taken in the Forest of Dean January 2010. The time-lapse image was taken over a period of 1 Hour using a Canon 5D still camera. One frame was shot every 30 seconds using a 10 stop filter to give 25 second exposure with 5 second intervals between exposure. The long exposure time was used to try and smooth the effect of the uneven lighting caused by the sun passing behind the trees.

Time Lapse in Motion

Motion Time Lapse Cinematography by Aidan Maguire

Aurora Borealis – Iceland 2010

Time-lapse video of the northern lights.

HDR time lapses in and around Essex

Last year the photographer decided to set himself a bit of a project / challenge – and that was to shoot a series of HDR time lapses in and around Essex. Well, one thing or another got in the way of that project and only part of it was actually completed.

Time Lapse Reel

This is a compilation of some of our Time-Lapse Photography taken in 12 cities in the United States.

Feast of Northern Lights

Most of this is done on Canon 40D but some is done on Canon 400D.
Canon 400D is now preferred camera for time lapse as he only produce medium sized jpg files (easy to process and I get more frames per memory card). Most of these shots were taken with a 15-20sec exposure. He has been doing this for about a year now and he am keen to learn how to get better quality video.

Nuuanu Pali Lookout | Time Lapse HDR

An HDR time lapse video from 318 HDRI images. Soundtrack is “Hale Ipukukui” by slack key guitar master John Keawe.

Diamond Head Time-lapse

Time-lapse shot in Waikiki under the full moon. The long exposures and light from the moon make it feel like daytime. I did a bit of grading in MB Looks to get the cool blues, the gold buildings are pretty close to what they looked like straight out of the camera.

Filmed on Canon 7D, exposures timed with the Satechi Intervalometer. Used the Tokina 11-16 lens for the wide look on this piece.

Mindrelic – time lapse summer/autumn

Tilt Shift Time Lapse Video

This video was created while on a balcony in down town Reykjavik, Iceland for 2 whole hours. 3 different lenses from a Canon 500d were used to shoot this video.

Oh Yeah | Time Lapse HDR

241 bracketed exposures were batch processed into HDRI images in Photomatix. Slideshow created with Memories on TV Pro.

Nature Time Lapse by mockmoon

It is a video dome by Nagano, Gunma and Saitama from Japan using a Nikon D3 Fujifilm S5pro. They have a great use of color and show several beautiful clips of nature. The music really ties this together as well.

Palma de Mallorca’s Bay, a 24 hour Timelapse

I love Timelapse Photography. I especially enjoy looking for the patterns that show up when time appears to be moving faster than usual. I first felt in love with it when I watched the films “Baraka” and “Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance”, where it is used heavily to show everyday life from a different perspective. For some time I wanted to create a Timelapse of Palma de Mallorca’s Bay, in Spain. There’s magic in this Bay and after 24 hours and 4320 photographs, (and a little help from the weather gods!) here’s what came out. Filmed with a Canon DSLR 7D, and a 17-40mm lens. One photo taken every 20 seconds remotely with a intervalometer. Put together in Quicktime Pro, and final edit in Final Cut Pro.

Time-Lapse with Nikon D60 by Inofaith

A time-lapse sequence with my new Nikon D60 SLR camera.

Timelapse Northern Lights And Startrails

A storm on the surface of the sun known as a “coronal mass ejection” pushed billions of tons of superheated gas into the solar system, which is now appearing over some parts of the northern hemisphere in the form of aurora borealis. The Telegraph reports: “Dramatic auroras were seen in Denmark, Norway, Greenland, Germany and across the northern United States and Canada” Tuesday night. Watch in HD! 2900+ still images taken with Nikon D40 through a Sigma 10-20mm f4 lens and nikon 35mm f1.8. I used Camera control pro for some clips, but most of them were taken only using the Nikon ML-L3 remote since D40 doesn’t have a built in intervalometer. One clip is taken in Bergen, Norway, the remaining clips are taken in Levanger, Norway. Some aircraft navigation lights and even a few meteors are captured in this timelapse.

Startrail Timelapse Compilation – Nevada Nights

Here is a short timelapse from stills taken with my Nikon D3 & Nikon D300. The stills from each scene were then combined to create star trails photos.

Any Suggestions?

I hope that i have tried to collect the best Time-lapse Photography available. If I missed any of your works, then do let me know via comments. I will be glad to add your works along with a backlink to your site.

Today I’ve planned to show you some of the inspirational photographs taken by Eric Gustafson. Eric currently resides in Austin, but has lived throughout the United States (including Seattle, Florida, Indiana, Virginia & Texas) during his lifetime. He has been working odd jobs and taken small freelance work to support his love of digital photography. Hoping to continue his work on a more broad level, he is currently open to the possibility of any new opportunity that would allow him to continue doing what he loves.

In one of an Online interview, while questioning his process of creating and shooting both urban and rural environments, he said :

To achieve my results, I either drive or bike to various locations and explore on foot, armed with only my camera and sometimes a tripod for the low light situations. Nothing is ever pre-arranged. No lighting setup. No props. No actors. When I find myself exploring and traversing areas unknown and new to me, armed only with my camera and a curious perspective, time slips away and I see things the way I feel they were always meant to be seen. I capture them. I take them afterwords and play with them. I get lost in them. To me it is an intimate process of projecting myself and my perspective onto the world, and the images that I produce are a very personal reflection of myself.

I always try my best to get everything right before I snap the shutter, but if I feel there is something I can do in the post (coloration, adjust lighting, etc.) I have no problem doing it. Ansel Adams is quoted as saying dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships. I couldn’t agree more and treat the use of Photoshop the same way (since it is, essentially, a digital dark room). Photography snobs with their rule of thirds and immediately dismissive view of any aesthetically chosen post work as “ruining” an image are essentially slapping him and many others in the face. In my opinion the only sort of photographic ‘morals’ that should exist for anyone who takes pictures should be for photo-journalists. And one I am not, so I choose to see the world as well as I can imagine it!

source : Interview by Artistaday
Eric has taken Photographs in various categories, let me present you the best in all of them.

25+ Inspirational Photography by Eric Gustafson

Check his other works

Hope you liked the photographs of Eric Gustafson. Those above photographs are selected by me, if you want to check the entire collection of Eric Gustafson’s Photo gallery then you can check them at antilimit.com . You can also check his portfolios at DeviantArt as well.

If you want me to showcase your Photo gallery here in smashingtips.com , then let me know via email or contact form. I am happy to include your works for free.

In Infrared Photography the image sensor used is highly sensitive to infrared wavelengths of light. We all know that white light is composed of several bands of colours known as spectrum and the wavelengths ranging between 750nm to about 1200 nm, falls on infrared (IR) band. The spectrum used is in this technique is termed as near-infrared, to distinguish it from far-infrared, which has been Domain for Thermal imaging. By near-infrared we want to say: the wavelengths ranges from 750-900nm, rather than having the extremities (1200nm).Generally an infrared filter is being used for this purpose ,so the filters looks dark red or black. This filter blocks all other wavelengths of light and allows IR light to pass through it. Sometime Professional shooters use this filters along with infrared-sensitive film to obtain in-camera effects; black and white images with lurid appearance is known as wood-effect. This wood effect is mainly caused by the foliage, trees, in the same way as you see the light reflected from snow.
Some other features of infrared photography includes penetration of atmospheric haze, dark skies, caused by Mie scattering and Rayleigh scattering, in a reduced way.

Equipment

The cheap solution for infrared photography is to use processed E-6 film strip as filter. The filter you want to use completely depends on your desire for getting results. There are many filters available in the market but B+W 77nm 093 F-PRO is quite good in removing the visible spectrum.
The Best way to do infrared photography is to convert your camera into an IR one. This gives more space for doing your photography. DSLR’s have low-pass filter which block the infrared light, so by replacing this filter with infrared sensitive one. By doing this, the camera becomes highly sensitive to IR light, as it is to Normal light.
If you don’t want to convert your camera then Nikon D1,D1h/x, Nikon D2H are some good hotties for buying. These cameras have low pass filters which are very less sensitive to infrared light thereby allowing IR light to be captured.
There many choices for filters and cameras so be aware of what you take as there many bad lenses also which will totally ruin your campaign.

Some of the best IR filters

• Tiffen 49mm Infra-Red 87 Filter
• Opteka HD² 58mm R72 720nm Infrared X-Ray IR Filter
• Hoya 52mm RM-72 Infrared Filter
• Hoya 58mm RM-72 Infrared Filter

Focusing Infrared

A red dot, diamond or line with red “R” known as infrared index marking, is designated to many manual focus SLR of 35mm and SLR with medium format lenses. This helps to gain absolute focusing without any harassment. Normally single-lenses-reflex cameras are attached with a filter which opaque to all wavelengths, as a results both focusing and framing gets ruined. So one must detach the filter during focusing and for this to be done, one must use a tripod, a lean, narrow aperture with mild shutter speed but without any sacrifice in focusing. If you use a wider aperture then it too can produce sharp images only if refocusing is done to the index mark.

45+ Surreal IR photography

Infrared Photography taken using Nikon D50, Cokin P007 infrared filter

Surreal Infrared Photography taken with infrared filter R72 and Nikon D80

The Winter Solstice at Midnight in a Perfect World Infrared photography with HDR effect

infrared Photography : The Fisherman by Roie Galitz

Taken using SONY DSC-H9 + R72 filter

This photo was taken on June 21, 2009 using a Fujifilm FinePix S7000.

This IR photograph is taken using Hoya IR R72 Filter with Focal Length: 18mm and Aperture: f22

This IR photograph is taken using Cokin 007 (89B) IR Filter with Focal Length: 18mm

Infrared shot taken with modified Nikon d80

This IR photograph is taken by JustOldPurpleAngel an Deviantart user. No much info about the filter used.

Castle Molsdorf – IR photography taken by Blackdaddy of devaintart

Its Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Garden at kilometer 163 on Sukhumvit Road in Chonburi Province, Thailand. Taken using 950nm infrared filter.

Infrared Photography taken using Canon PowerShot A640

Infrared Photography : Nong Nooch tropical Garden by Michilauke

Infrared Photography taken with Hoya R72 IR filter and Lens used is the Nikkor 17-35mm 2.8

Pengail Cilik Malaysia Infrared photography

Blue sky Infrared Photography

Bridge Infrared Photography taken with Nikon D70 1/500s f/4.5 at 44.0mm

Malaysia National Zoo Infrared Photography

Silent Lake Bukit Cahaya, Shah Alam – Infrared Photography

Infrared HDR Palmer Park Colorado Springs

Tasik Banding Infrared photography

Infrared shot of Lake Louise

Infrared Photography taken with Nikon D80 – 18-70 @ 18mm – 30 sec – iso 100 – Cokin P007 infrared filter

Infrared Photography taken with Nikon D80IR

Infrared Photography taken with infrared filter, suntec ir72

Infrared Photography taken with infrared filter

Infrared Photography taken with infrared filter R72

Infrared Photography taken with infrared filter R72

Surreal Infrared image taken with Hoya IR filter and Nikon 17-35mm

Mirror of Ice Infrared Photography

Xanthorrhoea Preissii taken with Canon EOS 50D, Canon EF-S 17-85mm AF IS USM lens, Manfrotto 144B Tripod, Velbon 157Q Head, Hoya R72 Filter

Dresden Zwinger from behind with the Zwinger Lake in the foreground taken with Hoya R72 infrared filter

The Horse infrared taken with Hoya R72 infrared filter

sacre caeur IR taken with Hoya R72 infrared filter

The park Infrared Photography taken with Nikon D70 / Kood R72 filter

Infrared Photography taken with 950nm IR filter

Fishing Women Infrared Photography by Awan Setiawan

Infrared Photography taken with EIR False Colour Infrared Film

Japan infrared photography taken by lrargerich

Boston in Red infrared photography taken by Werner Kunz

Tree Reflections infrared photography taken by John Brian Silverio

An infrared shot of Barrett Lake without channel swapping

An infrared shot of Palm Springs

Keraton Cirebon – IR photography taken by Aerobozt of devaintart

End Smile Infrared photography By Awan Setiawan

Marine Park of Brazil Infrared Photography taken with Pentax ist D and lens Pentax-F FISH-EYE 1:3.5-4.5 17-28mm

Daisetsuzan National Park infrared Photography taken with Nikon D70s.

My words

So as a whole we can see it is better to convert camera by attaching filters rather than buying a new one. There are different types of filters which I already discussed above and there are more which you can easily opt in market, but remember one thing: always take your camera with you and have background report of what you are buying; remember even the costliest one can fail you .Infrared Photography is one of the hotshot photography in today’s generation and it will surely elude you as time passes.

Please feel free to make comments and don’t forget to add any info about cameras, lenses, filters I missed.

Tilt-Shift photography is the technique of using selective focus. This is used to reduce the magnitude of large size photos to make it into miniature models. One moves the lens adjacent to the plane of the image in the shift phase while moving the lens through an angle to that of the image plane is termed as tilt.

During the tilt step, a large aperture is used so as to obtain a shallow depth of the field under focus. The ultimate aim is to tilt the lens so that only a small portion of the larger perspective is under focus. In some cases the lens might be rotated in an axis parallel to that of the film. In this case it is termed as the shift as mentioned above.

With the help of a view camera it is easy to achieve tilt and shift. Most view cameras enable you to adjust the lens and camera to increase or decrease the point of focus. A tilt shift lens which is also known as the perspective control lens is often used with a medium format camera which might have as much freedom as a view camera. Further in a medium or a small format camera even with the help of a perspective control lens you may not be able to achieve a lot of range.

A short focus Perspective control lens is used in architecture planning, while longer focus lenses are used in landscape modeling and close up shots. The Perspective control lens has an image circle that is unarguably larger than most other lenses enabling it to cover the entire image area. The film is usually large and lens movements are restricted. This ensures that one cannot shift the image area to outside of the image circle.

There are several Perspective control lens including the ones by Nikon and PC Nikkor both of which were used in SLR lenses. SLR cameras are very good for tilt-shift photography. The SLR lens gives you a great alternative for enabling tilt and swing in the cameras. The design behind the SLR lens is quite simple and thus it results in a curvature of the field of focus. The sharpest area of focus is near the axis.

With the same theory of tilt photography you can achieve selective focus. This is the process emphasizing on a part of the photograph while delimiting the resolution of the other parts of the age. The use of selective focus as discussed above is used primarily for faking scenes as miniature things.

In the era of digital processing it is not a difficult proposition to do miniature faking with the aid of a tool like Photoshop!!

50 BreathTaking Tilt Shift Photography

Photoshop is a powerful image editing software which is very useful for web designers and photographers to create desired effects in the images. But sometimes it’s difficult to perform certain tasks manually in photoshop. Once there was a belief that only designers who have mastered photoshop can create special effects on photographs or images. But now with the help of Photoshop Plug-in anyone can create desired effects on their images.

Photoshop Plugins are actually add-ons to the main program which helps to attain additional image effects or performing tasks that are impossible or hard to fulfill using Adobe Photoshop alone. And they make the complicated task much easier and help users in creating amazing effects, designing faster & better.

200+ FREE PHOTOSHOP PLUGINS

In this post , I would like to share more than 200 photoshop plugins which are available for free. Hope it will help all photoshop newbies to create their desired image effects with much ease.

Water Ripples creator – photoshop plugin

Water Ripples is a freeware Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in filter. The highly realistic water ripples effect designer has numerous options as well as an impressive 3D quality. The random settings generator produces unlimited variations of rippled surfaces.

Jama 3D photoshop plugin

Jama 3D is a freeware Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in filter. It’s the simplest way to create corrugated and cellular like patterns from 2D images. You can easily make various bricks and herring bone textures. Sequenced filtering produces bizarre unreal deformations of the original picture, crumpled paper effect, etc. Using different 2D shapes on a transparent layer produces complicated 3D border effects. The edge antialiasing option improves the dithering. The filter is extremely compact and accessible.

Lattice Composer – Photoshop Plugin

Lattice Composer is a freeware Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in filter. It effectively designs grids and nettings. It produces a variety of weave patterns, fabric textures, body art tattoos and skeleton simulations.

Luce Photoshop plugin

This plugin helps to control the light exposure and lets designers to create stunning effects with their images.

ScreenWorks – Simple Pattern Generation

Screenworks is a free Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 30 options for creating screen/mesh patterns. It provides you with a quick way to add small detailed and repetitive texture overlay effects to areas of your image in one easy step. The single slider setting gives you the option to add the chosen pattern on top of your image, or make the layer background white.

AlphaWorks – Transparency Effects

AlphaWorks is a free Photoshop-compatible plug-in filter which is very useful for removing black or white values and making the region transparent. There are 6 different options for you to choose from, depending on the type of image you are working on (colour photo, mono photo, lineart).

ColourWorks – Colour Modification

Free Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 20 effects for modifying image colour values in different ways. You can use them for subtle correction of your digital photos or experiment with the more dramatic transformations that are available.

Local Contrast Enhancement – Photoshop Plugin

This is accomplished by increasing the contrast between a pixel’s value and the mean value of the adjacent pixels in a local area of the photo.You can control the amount of the increase of contrast, the size of the local area and the amount of blending with the original photo.

Smart Refinment Filter plug-in for Adobe Photoshop

Smart Refinement Filter is an Adobe Photoshop plug-in for photographic images enhancement. This plug-in allows: sharpness and depth-of-field (DOF) enhancement, and noise (dust) reduction.

SuperPNG photoshop plugin

SuperPNG is a free Adobe Photoshop plug-in for using PNG (“ping”) files. It is faster than Adobe’s own PNG plug-in and saves considerably smaller PNGs. PNG is an open source file format that supports tight lossless compression. It can be read on any platform by most graphics applications and is fully supported by all modern web browsers.

High Pass Sharpening

This plugin sharpens photos with the classic high pass method. The user can adjust the high pass filter radius, and control the blending with the original image. A high pass output preview is also available to help the user adjust the filter radius up to the point the edges to be sharpened show up.

Photoshop black-white conversion plugin

This is a powerful plugin which is very useful to Black and White conversion.It takes total control over the tonal response of Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue and Magenta, and the intermediate hues. The user can boost each color’s tonal response all the way up to white or limit it down to black, without affecting the other colors at all . The plugin offers presets that accurately simulate the tonal response of the most popular b/w films. The plugin can introduce a grain effect of controllable intensity and density.

EdgeWorks – Cool Artistic Styles

It’s a free photoshop plug-in with 20 effects for creating dramatic edge and colour modifications. They are best used when experimenting with intense photo transformations for a highly stylized look. They are also handy when creating interesting texture effects.

SwapShop – Colour Exchange

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 15 effects for switching the colour values in your images. Useful for experimenting with interesting combinations and creating surreal results.

Maximum Colour Toning Adobe Plugin

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 20 effects for “blasting” intense colour into your images. Ideal for when you need to add dramatic impact to your photos or work.

Fur 2 – free photoshop plugin

The plugin Fur 2, disperse a simple figure (line or circle, configurable dimensions/thickness) over the whole image. Solid: The figure is filled with a single color (determinated by the figure’s center).180 deg: Image source content is kept; but rotation of 180 degrees around the figure’s center is performed.

Artistic Grain and mezzo style generator

This plugin is used for creating a selection of simple grain and mezzo styles. Give your photos a new look with these various effects.

Selective Saturation – Photoshop Plug-in

Quite often some parts of a photo require a saturation adjustment while others do not. If we increase the saturation globally, the most saturated parts get over saturated and if we decrease it, the less saturated parts get under saturated. So this Free photoshop plugin will definetly help designers to create saturation effect only in specific areas.

Soft Focus – Free Photoshop Plug-in

This plugins applies a soft focus effect, which is often usefull in portraits or fashion photography. There are controls to adjust the focus softness, the overall strength of the effect and the blending mode of the overlayed blured image.

Contrast Mask – Free Photoshop Plugin

This plugin uses a contrast mask to reduce the overall contrast of the image, simultaneously bringing out more detail in both highlights and shadows.A b/w negative of the image is blured (with a radius controlled by the “Smoothing” slider) to avoid hard edges and then overlayed with the original, darkening the highlights and lightening the shadows.

Gradient Blur- Free Photoshop Plugin

This plugin apllies a gradient blur that can help us draw the viewes attention to the photograph’s main subject.There are sliders to control the position where the blur starts and it’s strength.

Xpose – Photoshop plugin to adjust exposure

Xpose is an exposure adjustment plugin. It was written to offer quick adjustment of highlights and shadows with a rapid preview feedback and a simple, intuitive interface. With just a few sliders you can attain better exposure of your digital photos

DepthDither provides color dither for Photoshop

Graphest DepthDither is a free filter plug-in for Photoshop, it mainly concerns on generating color dither in Photoshop. When you wants to use the image on LCD screen, such as mobile phone, the color depth is not 24 bit, and mostly it’s 16 bit. If the image fills with gradient colors, the screen will display color steps, not continuous color.If you use the DepthDither to process the image, the result on PC and on mobile phone will be the same. DepthDither uses 3 ways to make the image seems to be continuous when the color is below 24 bit. It’s just like Photoshop, provides diffusion, pattern and noise as the dither modes.

Lens Correction – Free Photoshop Plug-in

This plugin corrects barrel and pincushion distortions that many zoom camera lenses.produce.Just move the sliders to the left to correct barrel distortion, and to the right to correct pincushion .

Virtual Photographer – Photoshop Plugin

Save hours of time by instantly applying photographic effects to
digital images with just one click. It has more than 200 onclick preset effects. Easily applies layered effects with “Blend” mode

AAA BLENDER Photoshop plugin

This filter allows you to open a mask, texture, grunge, or paint layer and blend it with your image in any of 30 blend modes. You can even use it to simulate layers by blending it with the original or a modified version of the image you are editing. It’s quick and easy!

AAA Gaussian Blur – Photoshop Plugin

This filter offers some Gaussian blur filter options. Color Blur will blur the colors without changing luminosity (lightness) values. You may also invert and blur the colors without inverting the luminosity.

Filter Forge Freepack 1 – Metals

A set of seven photorealistic metal textures and effects. Metallizing effects, alien-looking or industrial metallic surfaces, rust or aluminum foil, and more – all filters are fully adjustable and support seamless tiling.

Photo Effects Photoshop Plugin

A set of seven photo enhancing effects. Give your photos a sunny style, apply grunge look or color tints, age the image, and more – all filters are fully adjustable and resolution-independent.

Frame Maker – Free photoshop Plugin

A set of seven filters that create frames for your photos. Apply a realistic painted wooden frame or a vignette, give your photos a classic elegant feel or a ragged harsh look, and more.

Distortions – photoshop plug-in

A set of seven filters that can reshape, distort and deform the source image in various creative ways. The filters can break the image into abstract fragments, generate bubbly effects, apply waves or ripples, and more.

Camouflage photoshop plugin

Use the Camouflage plug-in to make army, fashion and animal camo. You can even make patterns not found anywhere else.You can control up to eight color layers. We’ve included a big set of examples, which you can select from within the plug-in. Amongst them are real army colors, both old and new. Many common fashion colors are also included as well as a few animal colors.

Night-Vision photoshop Plugin

The NightVision plug-in can make any image like the ones from night vision goggles. By using the effects in this plug-in, you can make images look like they are from a black & white security camera or CCTV system. It’s also possible to make them look like infra-red photos. Or you can just use the interlace to make an image look like a TV picture. You can even use it to enhance real night images!

Snowflakes photoshop plugin

With the Snowflakesâ„¢ plug-in, you can make it snow any time of the year, any place you want.You can control all aspects of a snow; both the minimal and maximal size of the snowflakes, whether it’ll be soft snowflakes or hail, the amount of snowflakes falling down and even the color of the snowflakes.

Snowscape – cover any landscape with snow

With the SnowScapeâ„¢ plug-in you can add layers of snow to images simply by letting the snow fall down. You decide which areas the snow should fall down on by making the rest of the image transparent, you then start the plug-in, configure how much and where the snow should fall, and SnowScape does the rest.You can also use SnowScape to do similar effects; make the snow less sticky, and you can create hills of sand. Apply it up-side down with high stickiness, and the ooze will be dripping down from your image.

Harmonix – Make waves!

With the Harmonix Photoshop plug-in, you can mix harmonic frequencies into complex waves. Harmonix renders a single, horizontal line on the image, but this is no ordinary line. It is the result of superimposing up to ten separate harmonic frequencies, scaled to the screen. You can change the up to ten harmonic frequencies in both amplitude (volume/height) and phase (offset/shift) and have precise control over the base frequency.

UnPlugged-X – Over 100 effects in one plug-in

UnPlugged X is a collection of over 100 different filter effects wrapped into a single plug-in. Combining all those effects into a single plug-in allows you to use them in ways not possible with separate effects. With UnPlugged-X, the whole is larger than the sum of the parts.

FilterOptix – free photoshop plugin

Filters are an essential part of your photographic equipment. They help you to correct or embellish the colors of a scene, put people or objects in the center of attention, bring out the beautiful contrast in a stormy sky or make that wedding picture extra romantic. In short; no photographer either professional or amateur can do without lens filters.

ImageSkill Outliner photoshop plugin

Outliner is a Photoshop-compatible plug-in for Windows designed by ImageSkill Software that can work as with commercial software like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Corel (Jasc) Paint Shop Pro, Microsoft Digital Image Suite as free like software IrfanView, XnView.

Background Remover – Photoshop Plugin

With this free photoshop plugin you can easily remove the background images from your photos.Background Remover is a Photoshop-compatible plug-in for Windows designed by ImageSkill Software that can work with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Corel Paint Shop Pro, Macromedia Fireworks etc. The main purpose of the Background Remover is to extract some part of an image i.e. ‘the object’ and remove part that which is unwanted.

Auto FX – Dreamy Photo Photoshop Plug-in

Dreamy Photo gives images a soft romantic feel. This is a superb effect for enhancing stock photography, digital camera photos and any image you want to add a warm feel to. After you have downloaded the software, enter in your e-mail address in the download page to receive serial number to activate the plugin.

Turn your images into Mosaic photoshop plug-in

Mosaic makes your photos look as if they were created out of a mosaic tile. Photo-realistic depth and variable tile size and color options give this effect an infinite number of looks.

Iridescent photoshop plug-in

The Digital Artshop’s Iridescent filter will apply a pearl like effect to your image. The effect is fully controlable with sliders for the amount of reflections, colour strength, smoothing and a detail enhancer.

Stereogram Lab Filter photoshop plug-in

Stereogram Lab Filter allows to generate Hidden Image Stereograms right in your Photoshop, which is quite convenient. This filter is free and you can use it both for commercial and non-commercial purposes, however, distributing the filter itself is not allowed.

Mosaic Toolkit & Illumination Fix Toolkit

Mosaic Toolkit applies mosaic effects to photos and other images. It provides several mosaic styles, e.g. Squares, Rings, Balls, Gears, Square Rings, Stars, Daisy and All Styles. You can vary cell size and contrast, color tweak cells, ball glow and brightness and blend the effect with the original photo. There are gradient, radial gradient, color inversion and a row shift brickwork effects.

Kaleidoscope photoshop plugin

Kaleidoscope 2.1 is a plugin which proceeds to multiple symmetries to obtain beautiful patterns.

Sorting Tiles photoshop plugin

Sorting Tiles imitates vaguely painting. Fundamentally, the filter cuts image in several blocks, makes a sorting of colours, and redistributes these ones following more or less complicated patterns.

Chalkaholic photoshop plugin

Chalkaholic renders chalk and charcoal type effects with artistic panache and flair. Providing uniquely effective artistic rendering options, Chalkaholic is the essential addition to any digital artist’s effects collection.

Weaver photoshop plugin

Weaver is an effect which imitates weave.

JuliJulia ’s curves photoshop plugin

JuliJulia ’s curves are a family of mathematical curves (fractals) renowned for their beauties. This plugin is extremely simple : to track down an interesting curve, use the Julia control or press the Random button (that’s all !). Besides, it allows endless zooming, to customize colours, and to save settings.a ’s curves photoshop plug-in

3D Shadow : Adobe Photoshop plug-in

This handy tool easily creates various types of 3D shadows from objects such as letters, numbers, shapes and so on. All settings are present in a single window – transparency level, perspective, shadow color and position, X/Y/Z angles, and some others. Even the seasoned designers are surprised by the simplicity of the plug-in and excellent results it generates. The text, processed with this tool immediately grabs the attention of the viewers.

Sinedots photoshop plugin

With sinedots plugin you can create sine wave patterns in your design works.

Shear photoshop plugin

This is a conversion of the AfterFx Shear Effect to my new Photoshop framework. A new feature is that a possible (feathered) Selection is now used to alter the strength Parameter locally. This results in some interesting distortions. Compatibility issues are the same as for SinedotsII.

Retro Dots – free photoshop plugin

It generates dot grids which can be based on selections. It’s will help beginners to create colorful dot patterns easily with one click.

Blots free photoshop plugin

With 3 modes: normal, camouflage & gradient, this plug-in is very ideal to create textures using blots.

Color MegaMix free photoshop plug-ins

Color MegaMix modifies the colors of any image. It is based on two rows of colors: 8 source colors and 8 target colors. According to these data, the plugin reconstructs completely the color space.

Eraser Genuine – erase certain parts of images

Eraser Genuine modifies image transparency according to two criteria: a colour you wish to erase and a colour you wish to protect. So, this plugin is particulary suitable for images where two colours oppose clearly.

Fine Threshold free photoshop plugins

Unlike the traditional threshold command of Photoshop, the plugin Fine Threshold allows to get quickly, anti-aliased and sharp shapes.

Flat Median photoshop plugin

Flat Median is a median-like effect which have some advantages over the “regular” median filter.

Icon Plugin for Photoshop

Icon Plugin for Photoshop enhances Adobe Photoshop with an ability to export and import Windows icons (.ico). Thanks to this ability, users can create compelling icons directly in Adobe Photoshop, using its large arsenal of creative tools and a convenient and familiar design environment.

Photo Freebies – 10 best photoshop plugins

PhotoFreebies is a collection of free plugins for performing useful photo manipulations and effects e.g. sepia effects, saturation gradients, b/w conversion, color space transformations and many more. Some of them have a dialog with adjustable controls whereas others are applied instantly without displaying a dialog.

• B/W
• Sepia
• Luma Negative
• Chroma Negative
• RGB2YCC and YCC2RGB
• RGB2HSL and HSL2RGB
• Desaturation Gradient
• Histo Fix
• Remove Transparency

DeNoise’s Noise Reduction

This plug-in provides 4 noise reduction algorithms, including low-pass, bilateral, adaptive bilateral and low frequency. These methods, used separately or in combination, provide an excellent tool for the serious photographer who runs up against electronic noise.

Greyscaler photoshop plugin

This plugin can be useful in bringing out hidden detail in the picture or isolating individual channels. In additon there are the more usual controls for Contrast, Brightness and a Depth (pseudo gamma) control.

xMeta photoshop plugin

xMeta is a simple set of three plug-ins for exporting metadata from Photoshop in raw binary form. ICC Profiles are of particular interest, as they can be added to the ColorSync profiles folder or opened by applications such as Ãœbercolor.

Melt photoshop plugin

This plugin allows to deform image, by waves. Size, intensity, and aspect ratio of waves are customizable.

Projection photoshop plugin

The plugin Projection provides a collection of interactive perspective effects: ability to tile image in infinite space (copy or mirror mode), or to repeat edges.

Posterizer photoshop plugin

Posterizer is a plugin which offers the possibility to posterize the luminosity and the hue.

Autointerlace Create interlace effects

Autointerlace is a nifty little plugin which automatically creates interlaced effects on an image. Interlacing (sometimes known as scanline graphics) is an effect similar to what you see on a television screen, and is used in modern print media design and graphics to give a “techno” style.

j2k – the future of image compression

j2k is a free Photoshop and After Effects plug-in set for reading and writing the JPEG 2000 file format, the successor to JPEG.Also known as JP2, JPEG 2000 uses wavelet compression as opposed to the DCT compression used in standard JPEG. The end result is better image quality in a smaller file. JP2 also includes mandatory metadata such as information about an image’s color space.

20 free photoshop plugins from Flaming Pear

This is a collection of 20 free photoshop plugins developed by Flaming pears. It includes :

• SuperBladePro
• Melancholytron
• Flood
• Flexify 2
• Designer Sextet
• Mr. Contrast
• Polymerge
• LunarCell
• India Ink
• Hue and Cry
• Glitterato
• SolarCell
• Photography Pack
• Patterns
• Free Plugins

24 Free Photoshop Plug-ins By Richard Rosenman

Free photoshop plugins developed by Richard Rosenman.

• 3D Sphere Generator
• 3D Sphere Generator
• Channel Modifier
• Color Bar Generator
• Diffuse
• Evaluate
• Grain Generator
• Grid Generator
• Lens Distortion Corrector

42 photoshop plugins by Xero Graphics

These are all freeware, and were built using Filtermeister, with Paint Shop Pro 8.10 as the host program – they should work without problems with any Windows graphics program that supports the Adobe Photoshop plugin architecture.

• Abstractor
• Alien Mist
• Artgrain
• Artifax
• Artworx
• Bad Dream
• Caravaggio
• Clarity
• Cubism
• Duochrome
• Emphasis
• Fritillary
• Fuzzifier
• Greyscaler
• Greytinter
• Illustrator
• Improver
• Iridium
• LineArt
• Lithograph
• Make-a-Flake
• Mistifier
• MoodLight
• Moonlight

Hope This collection of free photoshop plugins will definitely help all beginners out there to create their desired effects in images easily. If you have came across any plugin collections then do let me know. I will add that link to this list with a link to your blog.

One way of visualizing the size of a four gigapixel image is to consider a photograph of a regulation football pitch (soccer in USA) which is 90m x 45m. A four gigapixel top-down photograph of the entire field at 1mm per pixel would cover an area of 89.4m x 44.7m, which is 99.38% of the indicated size. This mm-per-pixel scale represents perhaps as many as 100 pixels per blade of grass across an entire pitch captured in a single exposure.

how it works?

These systems (and those like them) work quite simply in concept, but are actually quite complex. What happens is you need to mount the compact (point and shoot) camera inside the camera system. Then, simply put the camera in the position you want (mounted or sitting on the ground, etc) and you set up your shot. Remember that when you do this it is going to be a huge image, so make sure you place the camera to capture a great surrounding that adds to your image and doesn’t detract.
Once you have the camera set up you let the machine go to work, It will take photos as it rotates through a system and course and actually moves the camera into different positions and takes the photographs. Finally after the image is saved and captured you move to the computer to start editing the huge file together. Make sure you have some processing power, as this will produce 200+ images, and my MacBook Pro with 512mb video/4gb RAM gets killed with a 10 image photoshop file.

Gigapixel images allow you to capture amazing details inside an image. This allows you to zoom in and out using software online to view the picture as a whole, or the intimate details of the work. This creates a level of interaction with your images, something that is often lost online. The user can manipulate the image and create a larger or smaller image cropped to their liking to enjoy.

Why not use a digital camera?

Modern frame-exposure professional digital cameras have spatial resolutions ranging of 4-16 megapixels in “35mm D-SLR” formats and up to 22 megapixels for medium format backs. Using such cameras to create gigapixel images requires mosaicing hundreds of individual exposures. Alternatively, strip-sensors can be used to scan the image plane over a few seconds time. Even so, however, large format scanning backs have final image resolutions 1-2 decades below our gigapixel regime and require relatively static scenes, as does the mosaic approach, and are thus generally inappropriate for photos of traffic, people, water, and events. The single-exposure advantage is pronounced in images with crowds of people. The facial expressions of an half a stadium of fans can be captured at passport resolution in a single instant as they react to events on the field.
Using proven techniques allows artists to recreate this effect in many amazing places, from President Obama’s inauguration to the Rocky Mountains, allows for some amazing work to wow you and captivate your imagination.

President Obama’s Inaugural Address

This enormous picture, taken by David Bergman, was stitched together from 220 images taken on a Canon G10 mounted on a Gigapan panoramic imager system.

Death Valley

Gasworks Park, Seatle Washington

Cloud Gate “The Bean “, Chicago

The Magical Water Tour,Peru

Parque de la Reserva, Peru’s capital city with an attraction that other countries around the world also have.
This is the biggest fountain park in the world, there are 13 fountains that are lit with more than 500colourful lights!

“Haus der Presse”,Dresden

The picture was made with the Canon 5D mark II and a 400mm-lens. It consists of 1.665 full format pictures with 21.4 megapixel, which was recorded by a photo-robot in 172 minutes. The converting of 102 GB raw data by a computer with a main memory cache of 48 GB and 16 processors took 94 hours. With a resolution of 297.500 x 87.500 pixel (26 gigapixel) the picture is the largest in the world. (stand December 2009)

Prague from the TV Tower

This is a super high resolution photo. Use your mouse to zoom in and see a startling level of detail. This image is currently (as of 12/2009) the largest spherical panoramic photo in the world. It is 192,000 pixels wide and 96,000 pixels tall. That’s 18.4 billion pixels, or 18.4 gigapixels! When it’s printed, it will be 16 meters (53 feet) long at regular photographic quality (300dpi). It was shot in early October 2009 from the top of the Zizkov TV Tower in Prague, Czech Republic in collaboration with Prague 3 town hall. A digital SLR camera and a 200mm lens were used. Hundreds of shots were shot over a few hours; these shots were then stitched together on a computer over the following few weeks.

Eastern Sierra, Alabama Hills

Huiji Temple Deva-raja in Taipei

This is a super high resolution photo. Use your mouse to zoom in and see a startling level of detail. This image is currently (as of 12/2009) the largest spherical panoramic photo in the world. It is 192,000 pixels wide and 96,000 pixels tall. That’s 18.4 billion pixels, or 18.4 gigapixels! When it’s printed, it will be 16 meters (53 feet) long at regular photographic quality (300dpi). It was shot in early October 2009 from the top of the Zizkov TV Tower in Prague, Czech Republic in collaboration with Prague 3 town hall. A digital SLR camera and a 200mm lens were used. Hundreds of shots were shot over a few hours; these shots were then stitched together on a computer over the following few weeks.

Chaco Canyon, Pueblo Bonito

university park Lima

Named for the house of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, the first university in America.

In this park are several monuments and watch a monumental gift to the city by the German Cologne on the occasion of the centennial of the Independence of Peru in 1921. Also the Panteon de los Proceres.

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES

New York City skyline from downtown Brooklyn

The view from the Brooklyn Marriott Downtown hotel.

5 best Gigapixel Photography by Gerard maynard

Gerard has got five Giga pixel Photography in his website. Those are really stunning and one of them is the biggest giga pixel image ever taken.

Dubai Creek Giga Pixel Photography

Chicago Gigapixel Photography

200+ Giga Pixel Images from 360 Cities

360 Cities has got more than 200+ excellent Giga Pixel photography. You can check the photographs based on country name.

Many times throughout the day you look up to the sky and just see a blue or grey sky without much thought. But on some days, you look out into the distance and see something beautiful, something that captivates the beauty of the sky not seen on a daily basis.

This collection of photography that features stunning skies, dynamic clouds, and bright colors showcases the beauty that is the sky. The photographers were able to capture something magnificent, a scene that will never occur again, not identically anyway, and is a gem to hold on to and save a piece of time.

Capturing a stunning photo of the sky is actually quite harder than it seems. The sun must be in the right place and patience is a virtue, waiting for the perfect light or clouds can be tiresome but can be well worth it. Learning to master sky photography takes practice, but for now, check out some amazing shots done by some very talented photographers.

I hope that you will definitely love this collection. I have spent much time in collecting some of the best sky photography taken by professional photographers. If you know any other good Natural sky photography , then please let me know in comments. I will add them to this list.