Nearly all photographs taken with a digital camera need some degree of sharpening applied to them due to the inherent 'softness' of a digital file.

If you shoot with JPEG's then this is probably already been done in-camera but for those of us who want more control over our images we shoot in RAW (which has no sharpening applied), post-process the image and then, right at the end, we sharpen it.

The most common way of sharpening an image is to use the Unsharp Mask (USM) in Photoshop. However, this method is destructive (it is applied directly to the image and cannot be adjusted afterwards) and can also lead to an increase in noise.

What we are going to use here is a lesser known method call the High Pass Filter which is applied to a layer and so can be adjusted afterwards. Also we are going to apply it selectively - because not all images need sharpening all over - when the sky has fluffy clouds or the water has gentle ripples you may not want to sharpen those areas at all.

The Grange on Rhyl's eastern seafront comprises of two 1850's Grade II listed villas that were subsequently linked together to create one hotel. It closed in 2007 and the owner applied for it to be converted into flats. The planning application was refused but only weeks later, on 18th March 2008, fire swept through one of the buildings. It is currently up for sale and locals hope that it is not demolished to make way for a modern design.

 I stood on a grassy knoll on the opposite site of the main road from Prestatyn to Rhyl in early evening to take this shot. The starkness of the black & white buildings naturally led me to remove all the colour from the shot and the stormy sky creates an appropriate mood.

 Three shots +/-2 EV. HDR treatment with Dynamic Photo HDR then converted to B&W with an adjustment layer in Photoshop.

A groyne is a wooden or concrete barrier built at right angles to a beach in order to prevent the movement of material along the beach by longshore drift. Groynes are usually successful in protecting individual beaches but because they prevent beach material from passing along the coast it can mean that other beaches down-drift of them can be put in danger of being eroded away because they are starved of replenishing sand and shingle.

This particular groyne is one of a series at the eastern end of Rhyl beach in North Wales. Over a period of about half-an-hour in early evening I took a series of shots from the identical spot until I had a cloud formation that complemented the composition - in particular, an opening in the clouds that eventually moved into position towards the end of the groyne leaving a pleasant target for the eye as it follows the leading line of the groyne itself.

Two shots +/- 2 EV (dark for sky, light for sea) blended together with a gradient layer mask and converted to B&W with an adjustment layer.

It was a day experimenting with the 1:1 aspect ratio on my Lumix LX3. I converted it to B&W with a Photoshop adjustment layer and then post-processed with Antique Plate II using Silver Efex Pro.

Actually the title is not true. It was really the long, narrow, single-track road that eventually led us to a planned shoot at Llyn Idwal in North Wales. The road had gone uphill and downhill, past farms and through woodland. Here it opened out and the view of it trailing off into the distance seemed humourous for us to stop the car and record the scene.

Grasmere is a small village in the heart of the Lake District National Park in Cumbria, England. Grasmere lake lies to the south of the village. It's a fair walk but well worth it.

Taken during a weekend away in 2009, as opposed to a dedicated photoshoot, this was one of many that I took as we walked the dogs around the lake.

Dolbadarn Castle, built by Llywelyn the Great in the 13th Century, rests on a rocky hillock above Llanberis, in Gwynedd, north Wales. Llanberis is thronging with tourists but most want to catch the narrow-gauge railway up Mount Snowdon and so ignore this impressive little castle.

 We had attempted to photograph it a year before but were thwarted by inclement weather. This time we were luckier and so parked the car in a little wood close by and made our way up. A couple of other visitors came and went but for the most part we had the site to ourselves. This was the third and last location for the first day of our photoshoot and so made a nice quiet end to a busy photographic day.

The entire gallery has been re-vamped to make navigation easier and to make it much easier to order prints of selected photographs via Redbubble, my third-party print partner. You just have to press the 'buy at >> redbubble' button below the chosen image and it wall take you straight to the ordering page so that you can make your choices.

Remember, a greeting card can be yours for as little as £1.60 (+P&P) or you can invest a little more for a stunning canvas print. For the complete package you can also purchase framed and mounted prints with the option of three sizes and five frame finishes.

Prints of selected photographs by john-hallett photography can now be purchased via Redbubble, my third-party print partner . A greeting card can be yours for as little as £1.60 (+P&P) or you can invest a little more for a stunning canvas print. For the complete package you can also purchase framed and mounted prints with the option of three sizes and five frame finishes.

The photographs used for the prints are of a much higher resolution than shown on this website and there is no border or signature added..

Various new images including The Duke of Lancaster, St. Asaph Cathedral and a panorama from the top of Moel Famau.

A series of images from a recent photoshoot in North Wales.

After weeks of dry, sunny weather the clouds covered the sky and the rain finally fell.

The first in a series of images from a recent photoshoot in North Wales.

Close to the ferry terminal at Goodwick, near Fishguard, South Wales. Taken during an all-too-short day trip to the coast.

Content-Aware Scaling is a new feature in version CS4 which uses computer wizardry to allow you to alter the scale of an image without affecting the main part of it. You may wonder why this is important - surely there is no need to alter the scale?

What is the main use of photographic images ? No - not to bore your friends and family with but in publications; magazines, books, newspapers, newsletters, leaflets. We are constantly looking at photographs in the media - but how do they get there?.

A photographer takes them and an editor shoe-horns them in to the publication. That's how.

"So", I hear you ask, "you still haven't answered the question. Why do I want to alter the scale of a photograph?"

As someone who has previously edited a newsletter I know the answer. It is a surprisingly tricky job to get all of the text, pictures, titles, etc. to flow on a page. There is always a default 'look' for each page , font sizes have to be correct, text needs to flow in a readable manner and photographs have to fit in with the layout. At its extreme, sometimes a photograph in 'landscape' would be better in 'portrait', or vice-versa. And don't forget those magazine cover shots - most magazines are produced in 'portrait' mode and so the cover shot needs to match those proportions.

A blast furnace was known to be in use at Coalbrookdale as early as 1638. The location was ideal - local ironstone, nearby coal for fuel and a brook, which could be harnessed to provide power. It was the Abraham Darby family who first developed the works and in the mid-1800's it employed over 3000 men (and boys).

The name Coalbrookdale Company has remained unchanged to the present, though the company became a Limited Company in 1881, entered the Light Castings Ltd group in 1922 , became a member of Allied Ironfounders in the 1940's and, subsequently, part of Glynwed International Plc. Part of the works is now leased to a museum whilst the rest is still a working factory producing castings for Aga-Rayburn, manufacturers of the world-famous cookers.

Most people associate the Industrial Revolution with Ironbridge but it is really Coalbrookdale, and its famous works, that was its true birthplace.

In 1858 the Great Western Railway opened a line between Lightmoor Junction and Wellington and 6 years later the line was extended, through Coalbrookdale, to join with the Ironbridge to Much Wenlock line.

Passenger traffic stopped in 1963 after Dr Beeching's well-known review of the country's railways (although it has subsequently been found that the line was earmarked for closure beforehand) but the line is still used by the coal trains supplying Ironbridge power station.

The period 1750-1755 were years of revolution and change at Coalbrookdale. Furnace methods were revised and improved; a steam engine, water wheels and improved wooden bellows were added to increase capacity. To assist these improvements the brook running through the dale was dammed to form the Upper Furnace Pool.

Coalbrookdale High School at Dale End was opened in 1911 as a way of amalgamating the numerous church-run and private schools dotted around the Ironbridge Gorge. In 1965 the high school merged with the new Madeley Secondary Modern School at Hill Top in Madeley (later to become the Abraham Darby Comprehensive School). The high school premises were initially used for teaching the first- and second-year pupils but, in 1968, these too moved to the Madeley site.

The building is now home to Coalbrookdale and Ironbridge (C of E) Primary School with a capacity of 222 students.

Hmm.. you may have missed it.

This update can be found via a small cloud icon at the bottom-left of the main 'index' page.

Basically, it links to a page that shows the 5-day weather forecast for the Ironbridge Gorge - just in case you were thinking of visiting soon.

This is another tutorial that has been requested and for usual the reason: to replace a boring, flat sky with something a bit more interesting.

As an example, I use an image of Rhuddlan Castle, North Wales which I took in September 2009. Unfortunately it was a dull, drab day with a covering of solid white cloud that occasionally allowed a slight rain shower to fall.

 This tutorial shows you how to replace the boring white sky with a blue sky and fluffy clouds.

Dodging and burning are the terms used for a technique of manipulating the exposure of selected areas on a photograph. Dodging adjusts areas of the photograph that need to be lighter, whilst burning adjusts areas that need to be darker.

The problem with the Dodge and Burn tools in image-editing programs such as Photoshop is that because you are using a digital brush at very low opacity it is easy to create 'bands' of light as you double-brush some areas and also to overdo it and create areas under, or over, exposed. Also, both tools are destructive in that, once done, you can't go back and adjust the result.

The clever way of dodging and burning is to ignore the Dodge and Burn tools entirely and, instead, use blending modes and layer masks. This tutorial shows you how.

The Wrekin is a hill in Shropshire that rises 1,335 ft above the Shropshire Plain. The mast on top is a transmitting station.

In an earlier tutorial we showed how layers are stacked on top of each other. Blending modes give us various ways of making those layers blend together and can give very exciting results.

The problem is that in the latest version of Photoshop there are 25 different blending modes which can be a little daunting, so this tutorial goes a little way to explaining what each one does and therefore identifying those that will be of greatest use to a photographer.

Why? Because most of the blending modes are designed specifically for artists and graphic designers rather than just for relatively minor tweaking of an image file. If we know which ones they are we can concentrate on the very few that can help us in our quest to master landscape image editing.

I was just walking down to our local postbox when I noticed that the Youth Hostel Association's logo coincidently mimics the bell tower above it (on the John Rose building in Coalport).

It was only a couple of years ago that millions of pounds were spent stabilising the constantly moving riverbank at The Lloyds, near Ironbridge, Shropshire. Worrying, therefore, to see large cracks appearing already. Hopefully just ground settlement combined with a bit of river erosion - but we will have to see.

A monochrome image can sometimes convey more emotion and be more thought-provoking that one in glorious technicolour. It seems that sometimes the colour 'gets in the way' and destroys the original intention of the photograph.

However, not all photographs work with the colour removed and it is not a foolproof method of rescuing a failed colour image. In fact, it is far better if you go out and take the image specifically for a monochrome conversion rather than just trawling through your files in the hope of finding one that works.

So what makes a good image for conversion? Tonal range. You need an image showing a vast range between the darkest parts and the lightest.

Once you have your image then there are various ways of converting it into monochrome. Many digital cameras have a 'black & white' setting which will convert an image in-camera but the drawback is that you have little control on how the final image looks. Similarly many RAW editors e.g. Lightroom, have a check-box which will convert to monochrome but the same problem applies.

Until recently the most common controllable conversion method with Photoshop was to use a Channel Mixer Adjustment Layer which provides a check-box to convert to monochrome and three sliders to control the output. However, since version CS3, there is now a Black & White Adjustment Layer that includes 6 sliders to give much more precise control over the result.

This tutorial uses an image of a victorian merry-go-round. The age of the subject matter means that it is ripe for a monochrome conversion and there is a good tonal range throughout, particularly in the sky.

The evening of 29th January 2010 presented a large, bright full Moon - an image of which just had to be captured.

I have also added some personal reviews of some of the various photography books that grace my bookshelves.

This horse was named when it was a foal and a little lad was told to go and ride the 'grey one' and thought they said 'Graham'.

What we will do in this tutorial is to keep the subject in focus but create a slight blur to the rest of the image (an effect known as differential focus). To achieve this we are going to use a Photoshop tool called 'Quick Mask' - a very useful selection tool which is, by definition, quick.

As I took the wintery scene I remembered taking a similar shot from the same viewpoint some months previously and so, from memory, tried to obtain the same viewpoint. Back in the digital darkroom a little cropping was carried out and I joined the two images into a diptych (two images linked together) that shows how much colour is sucked out of the landscape under a Winters sky.

Between Jackfield and Broseley lies Corbett's Dingle, named after a past owner of nearby coal and limestone mines. Towards the top of the dingle a brook has been diverted through a pipe to allow access to a grazing field above. As the brook exits the pipe it cascades over a small pile of rocks.

Three images from my photoshoot in North Wales in September 2009:

Llyn Mymbyr Bridge - a footbridge which lies over the outflow of Llyn Mymbyr, close to Capel Curig in Snowdonia.

Llyn Gwynant - nestled between the Snowdonian mountains this image also shows the Cym Dyli hydro-electric power station, Britain's oldest on the National Grid.

Llyn Crafnant - lying where the northern edge of the Gwydir Forest meets the lower slopes of the Carneddau mountains.

Cast-iron windows in the John Rose building in Coalport, Ironbridge Gorge.

It seems that many photographers struggle to understand Layers, what they are and why they are used, but they are probably the most powerful tool available in image editing. Part of the problem is that in image editing there are many different ways of achieving the same thing and so when you read one book or tutorial it differs from another - even though they reach the same goal in the end.

This tutorial is designed to show a few basic examples of using Layers in Photoshop so that you hopefully will understand the principle of how they work and will then be able to build on that knowledge to carry out more complex editing.

You can now also try the 5-minute challenge - a small photographic quiz.

There are specialised (and expensive) lenses that can eliminate this effect but this tutorial is based on Photoshop (CS and above) and uses the 'perspective crop' function to set an independent crop angle on each side of the image.

Illuminations - As part of an annual heritage weekend, the Iron Bridge was again illuminated - but this year LED's were used which, allegedly, only use 50 watts of power.

Race Car - A 1923 Newton race car powers its way around Museum corner at the Vintage Sports Car Clubs 75th anniversary hill climb at Loton Park.