Blueberry

First of all I thought  I'd tell you about the Photoshop texture blending scripts created by our friends over at Digital Outback Photo,  they're pretty easy to use and great for the photographer in a hurry!

I do have a blueberry bush in my garden but this year for some reason they didn't crop very well,  so I bought these ones for photographic purposes and had to hide them in the fridge so I actually had some left to photograph.

This image went through various incarnations before I came to the finished image you see here, it was the addition of the Basalt texture (from the tex box 2) that made all the difference.
So the processing...
Fly Edge 16 @ Screen 20 % to brighten masked from the focal points of the image.
Ming @ soft light 100% this added much of the bluish tone masked as above.
Basalt @ Subtract 67%(new blending mode in CS5, if you have an earlier version of photoshop you'll have to experiment) The brightness of this texture was brightened using a levels adjustment.
Curves layer to tweak tone.

See it a little larger on Flickr

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Passion

I bought these lovely wrinkly black New Zealand passionfruit today especially for photographic purposes, always a good excuse! Likewise the tamarillos, which must be amongst my favourite fruit. Unfortunately neither of these delicious fruit grow outdoors down here in southern New Zealand, but the tamarillo's at least grow almost like weeds further north. I'm jealous!
I suspect this still life composition is going to be a work in progress or at least it will be as long as the fruit lasts....we had tamarillos for desert tonight!

Anyway the processing.
I only used one texture in this so it was fairly simple.
After duplicating the background I added
Sahara Saddle (Summer Painterly) @ Soft Light 72% this was de-saturated a little using a Hue saturation adjustment and with a little texture softly brushed from the focus passionfruit using a layer mask.
To tone down the larger lemon a little I added
Sahara Saddle @ soft light 25% de-saturated as before. The texture was just applied to the lemon.

See it 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

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Fresh

These are the berries of the European Spindle or Euonymus europaeus more commonly called the Spindleberry, or at least that's what I've always called it. The name comes from the fact that its dense pale wood is easily worked and was once used for making spindles and knitting needles. For most of the year it's just another green shrub, but in autumn it transforms -the leaves turn a russet shade and it's covered with these pink "fruit" which contain bright orange seeds. I remember the bush my mother had just down the path, it was where the tea pot was always emptied (real tea not the tea bag variety) as apparently spindles loved tea leaves, it always rewarded us with a brilliant display of autumn colour, and rewarded the birds with lots of berries.

I processed this as follows:
Brushed Rose (Summer Painterly) @ Overlay 100%
Pistachio (Summer Painterly) @ Overlay 100%
Copy of background @ Soft Light 12%
Ming (Tex Box 2) @ Soft Light 100 %
It looked okay like this but was a bit bright.
So I then merged all these layers, on PC press Ctrl -Alt -Shift -E
Duplicated the merged layer and set it at Screen 10%
Then tweaked the toning with Selective colour and Hue saturation blending modes, the settings are a matter of taste and involves a bit of "playing" with the various sliders.

See the photo a bit bigger 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

Pommes

Today I went to our city's huge 24 hour second hand book sale held in the theatre it raises funds for. There are thousands of books on sale with more put out all the time so it's a great way to stock the shelves. Book dealers are there in force and you can spot them a mile off both from the huge stacks of books they carry and the avid look in their eyes as they search for a high priced rarity amongst the mundane. I came home with a copy of Micahel Ondaatje's The English Patient; I've seen and loved the film but haven't read the book, inside the front cover of the book I bought is a lovely inscription, it reads:

To Anna, Thanks for looking after me this week....I've been your English patient,. love Johnny xxx

I'd love to know the story behind it :-)

Now the photo, I decided to give this the a soft slightly desaturated treatment, this works better if your photo isn't too bright to begin with.
Fly edges #8 @ soft light 33 %
Sail Cloth @ hard light 22%
Apple Blush @ Overlay 55 %
I removed a little of the texture from the fruit in the edges and Apple blush layers.

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Please note that this is big, almost 400 mb file so the download may take a while. Average reported download time for this pack varies from 15 to 20 mins.

Plums

We have a self sown plum tree in our garden it produces fairly tangy, yellow fleshed plums with dark purple skins, in fact they look a bit like the Grand Duke plums that grew in the orchard on the farm where I grew up. Unfortunately our tree doesn't crop very well so I try not to let the plums go to waste, after I'd taken these photos I turned the fruit into plum sauce. The recipe I use is one my grandmother used to make; don't you love old family recipes like this?.With these plums it makes a wonderful dark red, tangy sauce.

Grandma's Plum Sauce
6 lb plums (I remove the stones to make the sieving easier at the end)
2 lb onions
3 lb sugar
3 pints vinegar (I use malt vinegar)
1 tbsp ground ginger
2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cloves
pinch of cayenne

Boil all together till soft, then put through a sieve or mouli/food mill. Bottle in clean hot jars.
Use as a condiment and also in cooking, it's great in marinades, casseroles etc.

Now the texture recipe!

Peach blush @ screen 35%
Backdrop @ multiply 72% desaturated to taste
Hue saturation layer remove most of the colour.
Dark blue colour layer @ screen 26%

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Blueberries

I have one blueberry bush in my garden. It dates back to the days when I was studying horticulture by correspondence at one of our NZ universities. As part of our studies we had to attend a week long block course which for me meant travelling to the North Island. It was great few days of practical lessons and field trips and meeting my co-students and the lecturers.
At the end of the week I came home with this blueberry bush, it sat at my feet in the plane on the flight home (not sure if that would happen now!) Anyway it's thrived in the garden and if we protect it from the birds usually get a small crop of berries...mmmm!!

Processing...well after an initial tweak of the tone and suchlike with curves.
I used:
Archival Canvas@ hard light 40% (this gave most of the softness you see in the finished photo)
Voyageur Map @ multiply 100% (de-saturated to remove the yellowish tone)
Another curves layer to soften and lighten
Bluish colour layer @ screen 25%
Copy of background @ screen 39%
Copy of background @ normal 23 %

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Both texture Packs!