Early morning in Zadar

But of course I also took few photos. Not that many, as the hot, a bit hazy, weather is not really that great for it. And of course the town was full of other people enjoying their vacation, so the center of the town was just crazy full most of the time.

So one day I somehow managed to get up before the sunset to take few shots. And here is a vertorama taken around 5 in the morning. During the day, this area was just full of people and even at 5am I was there not alone. This is the Zadar Catherdral right in the city center, and yes, you can go up the tower. I did so and will share a photo from there soon :)

This is a two shot vertorama, with a third shot used to brighten few areas. Combined in Lightroom, finished in Photoshop.

Flying over the Dubai Marina

While I was in Dubai earlier this year, one of the things I did was to take a tandem flight over the Dubai Marina. It’s only around half an hour, but the the experience is wonderful. The new view you get is just spectacular.

So I took this photo while sitting in a second paramotor and being very high up. For me this was the first time I had an experience like this. For a moment I though it will be scary, to just go up in a thing like this. But luckily, I don’t fear heights and I could enjoy the flight fully. If you can and are not scared I would suggest trying it. When I go back to Dubai again, I will go again for sure :)

I have a lot of photo from this flight, and I don’t like them that much. I used the 16-35 lens, and I’m not sure what happened, but most photo are out of focus. will have to redo it.

This is a single photo, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop

Using content aware

Content aware tool is great for areas of single color or areas with smaller repeating details. So for a sky, wall, water, forest in the distance and similar, it creates some great results. It’s really not great for very detailed objects, where the details change.

Here it works best on the sky, water, and the mountain in the distance. Just choose any selection tool, select the are a little bigger than you need and then choose Edit/Fill (Shift + Backspace) and choose Content Aware from the drop-down selection and confirm.

You usually get god results, but sometime one need to select the transition area again and repeat.

Using clone stamp tool

The clone stamp tool is the best on repeating patterns. You can also use it on single color areas and similar, but that’s usually simpler to do with content aware. Again, it’s not really that great for detailed object like bushes for instance, where you will never match the objects exactly.

To use it, just choose the clone stamp tool from the toolbar on the left, hold down alt and click on the source location that you want to copy, and then paint in the missing ares. I personally prefer to do this on a separate layer, as that makes it easier to go back or blend only parts of the correction.

Be careful when using it not to create visible repetition (if there should not be one).

Warping parts of the image

If nothing works, you can try warping the image. By this I mean selecting a part of the photo, next to the missing area, and stretching it around to fill the missing spot.

You have to be careful not to stretch any straight lines or objects, as that is very noticeable. This works best on organic things, like bushes, water, clouds and similar.

What you do, is to create a rectangular selection around the area. You go a bit wider than you need. Than you choose Edit/Transform/Warp (or hit Ctrl+T, then right click on the selection and choose Warp). Now choose the corner or the middle point (base on where the selection is) and drag it outside the photo.

Don’t over do it. Once a hole start’s appearing between the selection and the rest of the image, it’s too much. In this case, undo what you did, and do it again but in parts. Drag the point a bit. Confirm. Create new selection and repeat. Piece by piece you will fill in the spot.

Once you are done, sometimes you get a very noticeable distortion inside. In that case, reselects it, go into warp, choose a spot inside and drag it towards the distortion. What you want to do, is to get the distortion over a bigger area, so it’s not so visible.

How this photo ended

And that’s it for this guide. Hope it’s understandable and if not, feel free to ask :) I wanted to show you this photo finished with all the edits, but I never did this one, I did one taken right after it, so I will share that one here :)

Sunny day in Salamanca

I would love to take this shot in the evening with the light on. Maybe next time I’m in Spain. But it will not be in Summer. Not again :)

This is a two shot panorama, merged in Lightroom, finished in Photoshop.

Very old photos

These photos are all from 2010, taken with my first DSLR, the 450D. It was a great camera, but one really has to know at least something about photography to use it. I still remember the day I switched to manual focusing, how all my photos got better right away :)

One interesting fact here is, that almost all of these were taken handheld. Now I almost never take landscape photos anymore from hand. Tripod all the time.