Floral Dream

[bigdave]

I've been playing around a lot lately with good ol' Photoshop, and it seems I finally discovered a ton of cool features that'll REALLY spruce up my pics. The flower below uses a sort of contrast mask that gives the bloom a soft glowing look. It looks like diffuse glow, but it's not. I also darkened the outside of the photo to make the opened pedals stand out even more.

There are so many talented folks that browse this forum I had to offer up my newfound skill to be scrutinized and hopefully improved upon. I've got a lot of refining to do, but nothing good comes effortlessly right? Any comments are welcome as always. Thanks in advance.

http://photoscenery.dynu.com/posted/flower1.jpg

[slejhamer]

Dave,

I've tried a number of soft-focus and diffusion effects, mainly on family portraits but also on some flower shots. I don't know how you did yours, but there are many techniques that seem to get to the same place, more or less.

My first suggestion is to mask off the main focal point of the image before you diffuse it. This gives the eye something to grab. In this case a radial gradient mask applied to the center of the flower would allow increasing diffusion as you move away from the center. I copied your image into PS and reversed your effect by applying the same gradient mask but I sharpened the center and opened up the shadows a bit with curves. (A bit too much, but you'd have better success with the original hi-res image.)

Then I thought, if you're going to miss Heaven, why do it by inches? If you want to emphasize effect, some times it pays to not be subtle. So I diffused it further: made a duplicate layer set to screen, opacity 40%, gaussian blur 15. This diffuses the light portions of the image. Then I copied the blurred screen layer and set the blending mode to luminosity which acts as a reverse contrast mask. Then I played with the opacity sliders until it was slightly overdone; I ended up at 75% for the screen and 45% for the luminosity.

Finally, I cropped it so that the center focal point was no longer in the center... rule of thirds, here. There wasn't much going on in the sides anyway. ;-)

The same technique can be used as an effective soft-focus filter for portraits, but using lighten and darken modes instead of screen and luminosity. (Or use a combination of diffusion and soft-focus.)

There are also issues of viewer preference involved; some people only like crisp shots, others like intensely manipulated shots, etc. My POV is that a shot like this should be dreamy, and thus overdone. (Just look at all of the slick, over-diffused Hallmark flower cards out there. They must sell well or Hallmark wouldn't keep using them! :) )

http://members.cox.net/mschlesinger/diffused%20flower.jpg

Have fun,

[Leighow]

You guys are stars .. they all look great ... maybe I should gather all of these ideas into a "book" and raise funds for PeKka's site!

Lovely flowers.

I have been playing around with the "stained glass" filter. By mistake I selected via the magic wand before setting the glass effect to alter on a field of wild flowers. I was delighted to see that the sequence gave a beautiful random look to the glass pieces. I may ost this as a work in progress.

HOWIE

[bigdave]

Well, I'm really considering this photo to submit to the World of Canon Digital Photography. Here's a new take on my previous photo. I tried to use everyone's tips to create a nice shot with good composition. Let me know what you think.

http://photoscenery.dynu.com/posted/wocdp_2.jpg

[Dem_z]

Great shot...
but me, being a pentax owner... You might be think I'm the enemy... jk jk

but what I found quite useful in Photoshop, is a feather + varation combo... to give it that "artistic" look...

btw, use the least amount of filters as possible... because the more filters you use in photoshop, the more the quality seems to degenerate...

Also, in your edited photo, I recommend that you keep the edges soft, and the center sharp, kinda like Lieghow's.

Also, if you have the time to take another picture, stray away from the formal photography (frontal 90 degree shot), unless if thats what you want, because I find that if I tilt my camera just a bit, it'll give it a fresh new look.

If your not going to use "varations"... then use feathering and the magic wand (or a marque tool) + filter... rather than applying the filter to the entire picture.

and how do I get a pic onto this, to show you what I mean?

Ps: Other than that, everything looks great... Well, atleast to me.