Forgetmenot

I was thrilled to find these still in flower in my garden a couple of weeks back, usually I'd have to wait till spring to see them but our winter here in Dunedin has been relatively mild so far, but as the old saying goes "as the days grow longer, the cold grows stronger" and we often find that this is the case.

Sorry, I don't do long posts  like Paul in his blog posts or rambles as he puts it,  there's only so much you can write about flowers after all, but I was surprised when I did the  mouse-over of this one how dark the original photo was compared to the finished one.
*notes to self to try this recipe again*

Gelato Ice @ hardlight 36%
Orange Blossom@ softlight 100%
Copy of background @ soft light 100%
Peacock @ screen 53 % masked from the focus areas.

See it on Flickr

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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

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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

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

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

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

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Ethereal

Weeds often make the best photos! These are the small flowers from a weedy shamrock leaved oxalis that pops up in my garden every year. I have a garden full of pretty flowers at the moment and then choose a weed to photograph.

Anyway as requested here's the texture recipe.
I started by brightening and softening the image, I used a curves adjustment and soft pink fill at screen blending mode to do this
Mulberry silk @ soft light 28%
Brushed Rose @ Soft light 58%
Copy of background @ Soft Light 82%
Cobalt Cloud @ Linear light 38%
Archival canvas @ Linear Burn 49% masked from the focus flower area using a circular graduated mask, this layer was also desaturated and lightened a little using a hue saturation adjustment
Soft pink Graduated fill @ soft light 31% this was to brighten the top right corner mostly as it looked a little murky.
And it was done!

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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Harmony

Back to one of favourite subjects, dried climbing hydrangea flowers; this one was taken last autumn in my basement "studio". The reality of my studio is quite different to how it appears in my photos but I don't think I'll go into that or it will ruin the mystique, I will say that dirty windows make great light diffusers!

The processing for this one was very quick, it was one of the rare cases where almost all the textures I initially tried worked. Choosing the right textures for a photo is  a mixture  of trial and error, intuition and luck -sometimes I'll try 10 or even more I come up with a combination that works.

Aquarius @ Overlay 100% desaturated a little to tone down the green
Necropolis @ Soft Light 100% desaturated a little also
Peach Blush@ Soft light 35% to add a little warmth 

Aquarius is from Summer Painterly, Necropolis from Tex Box 1 and Peach Blush from Tex Box 2.

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

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Into the Light

I love these climbing hydrangea flowers, although they're dead, they're still delicate and beautiful, they're even better a little later in the season when they look like lacy butterflies. Unfortunately I don't have plant of my own but take photos of the one that grows at our local Botanic Gardens just a short walk from where I live. Last year there were lots of these wonderful dried flowers, but this year I've noticed that the plant has been pruned already so there are only a few of these left for me to photograph, fingers crossed they don't cut it back even more.

See it on  Flickr

Okay, on to the processing, I did toy with using one of the new textures we've been working on, the one I tried looked wonderful on this image too, but changed my mind and used a texture from each of the current packs, including one I haven't used as often as I should namely Basalt, although it's a dark looking texture, this doesn't come out in the photo.

Basalt @ soft light 100%
Dark blue colour layer @ exclusion 37%
Grosgrain @ Screen 10%
Then I decided to add some drama, so using a sun burst brush I enhanced the flare in the corner (this was done on a new layer)
Then it was just a matter of a a curves layer, and a copy of the background @ Soft Light 50% and it was done

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