Hydra was an ancient water beast that carried nine heads around; when a head was cut off, two more grew in its place. I’m not sure whether the name is exactly appropriate for an application that works magic with High Dynamic Range (HDR) image processing… but let’s take a look at it. And maybe rename it HyDRa!

You can use Hydra as a plug-in for Aperture 3, Lightroom 2.x or as a stand-alone app. So, in typical fashion I jumped in feet first, with hardly a glance at the Help PDF to write this review.

Earlier, I had prepared a pair of images using a miniature setup. Kinda cute, they were models of a Kodak truck and a Brazilian townscape, the latter rendered …

Ever wondered why you should be using the snapshots and history panels in the develop module of Lightroom? Here’s a video from the Greg at Fro Knows Photo to explain.

In previous posts I’ve introduced the Pixel Bender add-in for Photoshop CS4 and CS5 and the Droste filter created by Tom Beddard. This post I’ll show you how to create the classic frame in a frame image effect using these tools.

The critical part of this effect is getting the image right before you start. You need a framed image so start by opening an image to use. Add some white canvas around the flattened image by first setting the background color to White. Select the Crop tool and drag over the image. Let go the mouse button and then hold the Shift + Alt (Option) key as you drag outwards on a corner handle to add an extra canvas around the image.

Convert the background …

I an earlier blog post I introduced Pixel Bender a new extension for Photoshop CS4 and CS5 from Adobe Labs. In this post I’ll show you a filter which lets you create a Droste effect with an image. The filter is free to download and once it is installed you can apply it from inside Pixel Bender. It was created by Tom Beddard who is author of a lot of really wonderful filters – you can see more of them here.

The Droste effect is an image effect named after a Dutch cocoa company called Droste. In 1904 it produced packaging for its cocoa product showing a woman carrying a tray with a box of cocoa and a cup on it. A small version of the package appeared on the cocoa box on …

One of the cool new tools from Adobe Labs is Pixel Bender. This free extension lets you apply any one of a series of filters that comes with the extension to your images in Photoshop CS5. But that’s not all – Adobe also provides a simple interface for Pixel Bender that lets you create your own filters. As a result a community is building around Pixel Bender with users sharing custom created filters with others. In this post I’ll show you how to get started with Pixel Bender.

You will find the Pixel Bender extension here for download: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/pixelbenderplugin.html. Make sure to download the version that matches your operating system and your version of Photoshop CS5 (32 or 64 bit). The extension is an .mxp file and …