Cone Flower

These cone flowers or echinacea are such beautiful photographic subjects with their bold spiky centres and pretty colours. This is a white form that grows at  my local Botanic Garden. I do have a plant of my own which I notice is just coming into flower for the first time, it's been slightly overshadowed by some taller growing plants next to it so I think I'll have to move it if I want it to thrive.

I could have easily left this one without textures but I wanted to show a slightly different processing using a Fly Edge.

Brushed Rose @ Soft light 100% Toned slightly orange using a hue saturation adjustment
Fly Edge 16 @ Subtract 59% This layer was inverted. Subtract is one of the new blending modes in CS5, if you don't have it and want the same effect you will  have to experiment, using colour burn without the inverting seems to give a similar effect.

See it slightly larger on Flickr

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$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

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Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

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my own private little vineyard

Sunday morning was misty with freezing fog.
Thus not to miss a perfect texturing opportunity, I drove out of town to get some bleak countryside pics. This cute little scene was glimpsed from the car, and so I did a fast 'u' turn to get back to it!
The other pictures had the Cabana or Mazet with the vines leading up to it, this was the wild card, as is often the case, spotted as I left the scene. The recipe is correct, I always save the layers in their own job files. Thus I could, if I wished, just open up an old picture, and just click and drag the old textures across onto new pictures, it can save loads of time! Both Jill and I sometimes do this! :-)
Finishing touches were cloning out litter on the left and softening the top of the tree before adding the final Mulberry Silk texture, this pulled it all together. Some colour softening was also done with the colour sliders, to warm the tones.
I wonder if anyone else see's the similar cracked face in this image as seen in - 'My Own Private Idaho' Movie?:-)

Leadenhall - Linear Burn @ 20% - over sky only, rest brushed away. Flipped vertically and skirt pulled above image and cropped off.
Necropolis - Soft Light @ 100% slightly desaturated.
Pompiii Stucco - Soft Light @ 100%
Apple Blush - Soft Light @ 67%
Leadenhall - Color Burn @ 20% over sky only, rest brushed away.Flipped vertically and skirt pulled above image and cropped off.
Antique Liaisons - Luminosity @ 11%, Flipped vertically.
Mulberry Silk - soft light @ 100%

See it bigger on Flickr

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Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

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Grunge flowers

Just to show that I don't just do pale soft flowers and also to show how textures (and toning) can change the entire feel of an image.  Our fly edges work well on black and white images especially if you want to portray a gritty "early photography" look.

I started by converting the base image to black and white using a black and white adjustment layer, tweaking the colour sliders to get the tone and contrast I wanted.
Fly edges 18 @ multiply 65% desaturated
Curves layer to tweak tone
Then I merged all, ctrl -alt -shift-e on a PC
Converted the layer to a smart filter so I could go back and edit then used the render lighting effects filter to add a bit of drama and light. I used a bluish light hence the blue/grey toning of the finished work.
For a little added grunge I added
Stygian Tin @ Soft light 100% desaturated

Summer Painterly Pack

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Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

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Fly Edges Pack

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cowscape

As its still winter over here and too cold to get out much, I've been revisiting some of my old images from last summer.
I said summer but my visit to England in August was more like our winter in the south of France! This day was freezing, and more so on top of the white chalk cliffs at Birling Gap, near Eastbourne on the south downs.
These young cows were happily munching away, and I guess more so than usual as the strong cold sea winds kept the pesky flies away from them! Speaking of flies, this recipe is also refreshingly simple, I pulled out the original Necropolis from tex pack 1, dragged it over, pulled it down much lower than the actual base image as the corners do get darker and above also, I then cropped the middle out, discarding the rest.
A re-balance was important because the grass was too dark and heavy, the extra use of the same texture bleached to a milky colour sorted this out. I finished with a general brightening of the flattened image.
I could have carried on, cropping square perhaps and using more textures, but not today, today I draw a chalk line at just one texture! :-)

Necropolis soft light @ 20% on grass and cows only
Necropolis soft light @ 100% lightened to a very pale/milky green with colour sliders
Necropolis soft light @ 100% over clouds only

See the photo in glorious Cow 'o' rama on Flickr

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

Gift Coupons

Click Here

See all our packs and deals on one Page