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

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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Ode

Another photo of one of my favourite photographic subjects, I never get sick of the climbing hydrangea! The photo was taken with my wonderful new Pentax 50-135 f2.8 lens, it produces some lovely bokeh. I textured this on the laptop while I was at our country hut this past weekend  and since our hut isn't connected to the electricity grid, it was done by the light of a gas lantern with me hoping the laptop battery wouldn't run out before I got it finished. It was a quick one to process though, I think I used the first textures I tried which were....

Ovid Banished @ Soft Light 100%
Giverny @ Overlay 100 % (this was responsible for much of the green tone)
The  focus flower was using a curves layer masked from the rest of the image.

See it a little 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

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

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

Butterflies

Last week when the sun finally came out after several days of rain I paid a visit to my favourite plant at the local botanic gardens, as I've mentioned before the plant has been pruned more heavily this year so I have to stretch to find any of these dried beauties to photograph.
It took me ages to process this one, I kept adding textures and taking them away trying to get the balance of texture and tone just right. 
In the end I settled on this combination.
Tarte tatin @ soft light 33%
Fly edge 18 @ screen 3% you'd think that such a low opacity wouldn't make much difference but even at 3% it adds a certain subtle softness.
Basalt @ Overlay 59%
Peach blush @ hard light 30% with some of the texture removed from the focus flower using a layer mask.
The result was a little too green so I used a curves layer to tweak the tone.

Our single packs are all still available (click on the sidebar links) but due to popular request we have introduced a triple deal, all three packs for $100!

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

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, perhaps a coffee break would be a good idea between downloads!

Pastel Blues

The teapot in this photo is my newest acquisition, bought from a local charity shop especially for photographic purposes -always a good excuse :-) I'd been taking photos of it by itself but then I spied my hydrangeas and voila!

Processing for a change was relatively simple. Only two textures.
Ming @ Overlay 38% this gave most of the bluish tone
Fly edge 18 @ screen 33% toned slightly bluer with a hue saturation adjustment. This layer added the softness.
Copy of background @ Soft light 33%
Curves layer for a final tweak of tone and contrast.

Our single packs are all still available (click on the sidebar links) but due to popular request we have introduced a triple deal, all three packs for $100!

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

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, perhaps a coffee break would be a good idea between downloads!

Blue Monday

It's been wet here today with a lot more predicted so it seemed a perfect opportunity to take some photos of this fading hydrangea bloom.
Unusually for me I've only used a couple of textures on this one so the processing is fairly simple.
Ming @ overlay 55%
Fly edge 18 @ screen 33 %
Copy of background @ soft light 25 %
And finally a curves layer to tweak the tone.

Don't forget our earlier packs...click on the sidebar links, the combo offer for packs One and Two is still running too :-)

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and Two!

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

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.