This was my second attempt at a volcano, and the one I entered in the contest. The mountain is less steep than the first one and so does not need such a sharp downward angle of view. This has made the background on this image render much better than in the previous volcano picture. Even so, there was a lot of surrounding black because the steep viewpoint made it impossible for the render to fill the screen window. Most of this black was trimmed away, but in order to get a decent overall proportion on the picture, a small area of black had to be included in the top right corner of the image. This was removed by cloning the nearby landscape, using the Paint Shop Pro cloning tool.

The magma, smoke in the crater, and steam rising from the sea where the lava flow enters it, were added using PhotoImpact particles. The crater area itself was selected as a separate object, so that a small cutout shadow could be added on the lower near side of the magma, to give an impression of depth to the crater rim. After the objects were merged, the lava flow was added in Photoimpact, and the area where it joined the magma from the crater retouched with cloning and smoothing to hide the join.