Hydrangea Blues

Paul always manages to write such interesting posts when he blogs, but with my flowers I struggle to think of anything to write, I'm just getting over a nasty bout of the flu at the moment which probably won't help my blog writing.
I especially like blue hydrangeas and have been trying without luck to find a nice pastel blue bush for my garden, the problem is you really have to see them in flower to know exactly what you're getting as they're very variable. The other thing to think of when you're growing hydrangeas is the soil, acid soils help gives a blue coloured flower, while more base soils will give pink, a side dressing of Aluminium sulphate will help keep the flowers blue.
In the meantime I'll have to keep appropriating flowers on my travels :-) 
Enough gardening and onto the processing...
Aquaflore @multiply 53% gently masked from the flower and bottle
Vieux Gris @ soft Light 100% masked as above
Aotea Mist @ colour burn 26%
Aotea Mist @ Soft light 33%
Scotch Mist @ Overlay 100%
Scotch Mist is from the Spring Painterly pack, the other textures are from the Autumn Painterly set.

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

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

Albion on Sea

From Jill and I, 'Paul' hope you all had Happy Holidays! :-)
As its now midwinter, I thought it might be nice to revisit the summer,
last August on a balmy evening on England's Eastborne beach at sunset.
One good thing about post-processing is its always possible to go back and redo images with your new skills and textures, and I must admit I don't do it enough!

So armed with our new Flypaper Autumn Painterly and last Summer's Painterly Set,
I happily came across this unprocessed image.
Firstly to zap up the colours a little I used the new Nik 4
From now on I'll also try to include my NiK colour settings, and here's the first!

To get a nice green tone in the blue sky, I used Nik 4
Bi color filters no.1 (yellow brown) @18% Opacity, 100% Blend.
At this stage I also removed text on the red signs and blurred the guys face,
with an eye to selling the image without a release, this saves loads of later re-processing!

Textures
Orris - Soft Light @ 100% blue at top cleaned up with noise and dust
Stonehenge - Vivid Light @ 20% over sky area only
Pans Sky - Soft Light @ 65% over sky area mostly
Ambergris - Hard Light @ 17%

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

Sheep on the Hill

First of all, we'd like to thank you all for your support over the past year and to wish you a peaceful and happy Christmas.
I've just finished wrapping the presents, the baking is done and it's Christmas eve as I write this. I'm looking forward to a family BBQ followed by a relaxing holiday.
Now back to the photo, my woolly friends were in a paddock just up the river from our country hut/cottage and were watching me closely as I walked up the hill towards them.  I think these ones are used to being handled as they aren't as flighty as sheep usually are.

I processed the photo when were were still trialling the new autumn Flypapers, and at that stage they had names like "November 10 gold" and "messy" and as we've said before, it's when we finally come to give them their proper names that they take on personalities, so to speak.

Processing was fairly simple in this case, I only used two textures both from the new Autumn Painterly Pack.
Demi Jour @ soft light 100% blurred and masked from the sky using a graduated mask (this layer was more for the tone than the texture. )
Capability Brown @ Soft Light 100%
I then merged visible and to increase contrast used
Nik Efex Contrast colour range filter.
and it was done!
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