Spring - the Crocus Edition

I've been so lazy with my photography lately but I made myself do a couple things this week. 

First I ventured out to the Garden and Art Center because I knew the spring flowers should be blooming. (Although with our higher than normal temps, spring is 3 weeks early this year.)

Second, this morning I watch a video on how to use Topaz Texture Effects which I've owned since it came out and have never used it.

This is my first trial run. One thing fabulous about this software is that you can scroll over the textures and see what it will look like on your photo. You can also scroll over the blend modes for previews which makes it so much faster. (You can even access your own textures through it.) Tons of presets and oodles of tweaks to your hearts content.)

Products used, My Watercolor Brushes, Anna's Script Tease Nature, and my Sketchy Loops which will be in the store real soon.

I used Pretty Presets Lightroom Luminous on this shot. (Rose petals)

Another with that preset.

And another that I decide to mirror for my new header.

Dark and mysterious, edited with Kim Klassen's Chocolate.

All shots were taken with my Canon 100m Macro. I experimented with some focus stacking to see if I could get four flowers with four different focal lengths combined in one image to all be in focus.

Quite fun. Maybe not perfect, but it was a great exercise. 

If you want to try this out. Go shoot some images with focus variations. In Photoshop...

File> Scripts> Load Files Into Stacks

 Browse to find and select your files. Choose Open.

 Before selecting OK, check the box 'Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images'. It does a good job, but because of the blur from the macro lens I had to do a bit of my own adjusting. A tripod would  be advantage in most cases.

Now the masking begins on each layer. It's easiest to start at the bottom and work your way forward.

 Start with a black mask and 'paint in' the sharp areas. If you're not familiar with masking... ask Google.

Crop your image to clean up all the edges. Viola! Now if I want to I can load this back into Lightroom for further editing. I did do a touch of editing before I exported them to a folder on my desktop. (before the stacking)

I'm so glad spring is here. It's even raining a bit today. Ah... that fresh smell!

Eroded Borders

My latest favorite way to edit my photos with an eroded border look. This is the texture I had posted about yesterday transformed to a square.

 To make this work for this technique I needed to invert it (Command/Control I in Photoshop) to make the center black and the edges white.

My photo is placed on top of my 'textured' layer and the blend mode is changed to screen.

 What makes this work is that the light areas of the lower layer will cause the top layer to disappear. The areas of your bottom layer that are totally black will cause that area of your photo to show 100%. Areas that are totally white will be 100% white. Areas that are shades of grey will be different percentages according to their darkness.

But if you want to go for an even different look how about using the colored version instead of black and white? My original was very orange colored and I need the darkness at the center so I inverted it and ended up with this.

If I replaced the black and white with it the result is very different. I could have done this on my iPad too and just for grins, I think I will and post it to Instagram. I think it's begging for text or other goodies too.

Texture Tuesday May 27

It's the free and easy edition today, over at Kim's Texture Tuesday. Something I've been waiting for! So guess what? You are getting more peonies and a text tip.
This first one is textured with kk_0405 and kk_simple2. Layers shot below.

Here's a tip….After you've finished your quote…

1. Merge the text layers together.
2. Make a selection by Command(Control) clicking the thumbnail of that layer.
3. Click on the eyeball to turn off the visibility of the text layer.
4. In the Adjustment panel (or Menu) add a Levels adjustment layer. Your selection will disappear and look like nothing has happened. 
5. Now adjust the levels slider by pulling the left slider to the right to darken and reveal your text.

I posted this yesterday but just had to show it again. I'm trying to work through the Start2Finish class a second time around and make improvements. A collage from the above shoot with my peonies starting to dry up.

Come on over and check out what everyone's been texturing.