Sweet Peas

Sweet peas, I love them!  When I was coming home from a walk yesterday afternoon, I ran into a neighbour who was cutting back her sweet peas which grow on a  fence by the footpath and asked if I could have some seeds as hers are particularly nice ones and have looked wonderful for the past month.  Can't wait to have a display like hers!

I gave this photo the soft effect, I find it suits flowers especially selectively focused ones like these. When we were putting together the Autumn pack, I made sure we included some soft easy to use textures especially for my flowers :-)
To start with I improved the tones by using Nik Efex White Neutralizer
then...
L'oxygene @ soft light 100% masked from the focus flowers
Aotea mist @ soft light 100% softly masked from the flowers
Aotoea mist @ soft light 100% masked as above
I find that doubling the texture layer often makes all the difference even if the blending mode and opacity is identical.
All textures are from the Autumn Painterly pack
See it slightly larger on Flickr

Autumn Painterly Pack

40 rectangular (4000 by 5000 px) Textures 

$40

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

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

See all our packs and deals on one Page

jug and fresh soap

One of my greatest little luxuries is a really hot deep bath!
And then from that bath my favorite view would have to be of freshly scrubbed, bleached pine tops, scented with French hand made lavender soap. So I'm lucky, here in my little French house to have such a bathroom!

The thick pastel coloured oil painting on rough stretched linen behind the Habitat sourced bowl has only just dried after several months and was added for height. The water jug is antique English.
Normally I'd have an antique shaving mirror, but that's for a future picture! :-)
The French white painted antique washstand was purchased from Ebay France, I liked the two little underside drawers, where little things can be hidden.

Shot this morning in reflected sunlight, no tripod needed.

Recently we've been crazy about Lensbaby pictures, however, they can be a bit hit and miss, so I've come across another way of softening images before texturing to get a nice dreamy, hazy effect. Its simple, just use the old Orton effect free action at our friends Coffeeshop before the use of textures!

The before image above has already been desaturated, than a gentle Orton effect applied. The finished image has just two textures from Tex Pack 2.

Lime Plaster - Soft Light @ 47% - Flipped vertically
Copy of base image Soft Light @ 30%
Lost Void - Screen @ 47% - Flipped vertically.

See it larger on Flickr

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

Tex Box 1, Tex box 2, Fly Edges, Summer Painterly & Spring Painterly

$180

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

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Grunge Hydrangea

I reprocessed this image for Mary's article over at the Digital Photography School,  to help illustrate how using different textures on the same image can  completely change the feel of a photo, it's one of the things textures are so useful for. The earlier version is much more soft, dreamy and subtle.
Anyway, here's what I did.....

Catacomb Frieze @ Overlay 100% masked from the jug
Lyme Fossil @ Overlay 100% masked carefully from the focus areas as desired
It looked okay like this but to give it more of a grunge feel I added a Fly Edge
Fly Edge 13 @ Overlay 100% this layer was inverted using the invert adjustment layer and masked from the central portion so the grunge didn't overwhelm the subject.
Catacomb Frieze and Lyme Fossil are from the Spring Painterly pack.
See it on Flickr 

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

Tex Box 1, Tex box 2, Fly Edges, Summer Painterly & Spring Painterly

$180

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

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Powder Blue Hydrangea

I am enjoying playing with the new Spring Flypapers, although we trialled them extensively prior to release it's always fun coming up with new combinations and finding out what works with a certain style of photo.  Over in our Flypaper flickr group there's a thread where you can tell us which your favourites are from the new pack so far,  we'd love to hear from you.

In this first fairly simple recipe I used 3 Spring Textures
Peacock @Soft Light 100% masked from the jug
Paysage Linge @ hard light 43%
Apple Moss @Overlay 75 % toned blue using a hue saturation adjustment and gently  masked off jug and flowers.

See it on Flickr

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

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

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Blue and White

You know that spring is well and truly here when the grape hyacinths or muscari are in flower.  I photographed this bunch in my newly purchased "little white jug" bought especially (and cheaply too I must add) for photographic purposes, I was imagining a bunch of roses in it when I spied it on the shelf.

Quick processing once again, and this is quite a nice combination recipe if your background is fairly plain and pale.
Apple Blush @ Soft light 100% gently brushed from the focus flowers and jug using a layer mask 
Iridescent Blush @ overlay 72% with a little of the texture removed from the jug as above.
Apple Blush is from Tex pack 1, Iridescent Blush from Summer Painterly.

See the photo 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

See all our packs and deals on one Page