Memories...

I've been offline for the last few days while my computer was upgraded. The upgrade (basically a new computer) was done by my son and it didn't go as smoothly as expected -the two hours he quoted me turned into almost two days. The house has never looked tidier!!
Now that I'm up and running again I've been spending a lot of time reloading my programmes and discovering that some things don't work any more, the main one being Outlook Express which I've used as my email programme forever. It's great having a much faster computer though, processing Raw files which used to take what seemed like forever to save in Camera Raw are now done in moments and now I can open photoshop and Bridge at the same time without the whole system coming to a standstill.
Anyway I processed this quickly last evening when I was looking for something relatively easy to work on. Forget-me-nots from this past spring. It started off as a fairly subtle treatment but then I decided to pile on the grunge :-)


Backdrop @ Soft Light 100%
Peach Blush @ Overlay 62 %
Archival canvas @ multiply 100%
Grosgrain @ Normal 22%
Archival canvas @ hard light 24 % with a little of the texture removed from the focus flowers.
Copy of background @ Soft light 74%
Pompeii Stucco @ Hard light 100% with it's colour cooled a little with a hue saturation layer.
Pompeii Stucco @ multiply 47%
Holmes @ Overlay 81 % with its colour desaturated slightly

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My favourite things....

Just looking at this photo conjurers up the smell of lavender for me.
I have a huge lavender bush growing beside the path up to our gate, another grown from a cutting I filched from somewhere. It's nice to be able to walk past it an rub your hands over it release the scent, watching out for bees of course :-) The problem is it's a little too big for where it's planted and and when it rains, especially when it's in bloom you tend to get wet walking past it, so I've got a "protection order" on it to prevent other family members from giving it a haircut.

Anyway..the processing.
To start with I cloned out a bit of background I didn't like (you don't see that here though).
To start with I tweaked the tone and contrast using a colour curves layer and a hue and saturation layer.

Then it was texture time and I used
Holmes @ Hard light 44 %
Backdrop @ Hard light 27 % (with a tiny amount of texture removed from over the flowers).
I finished with a dark blue colour in fact 0e2333 at Exclusion 21 % but this didn't make a great deal of difference to finished image.

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Both texture Packs!