Flower Fun!

[wyndhydra]

Hey all,
I thought this might be an interesting one for some of you to play around with.

Before


After

I kind of like the less is more approach and thought my original shot was way to cluttered. Retouching was done in photoshop and will be described using those tools.

1. Selection was initially done by duplicating the blue color channel. I then copied the channel and used the fade command with a multiply mode and adjusted opacity until it was mostly dark except the flowers.
2. From there I burned and dodged around the flowers to make a black and white alpha channel which was later used for masking.
3. With the alpha channel complete I duplicated the original layer and masked out the background.
4. I then added a color layer for the background, with a radial gradient layer to reduce it out from the center.
5. The last touch was to tack on a black layer and use the add film grain filter to apply a more realistic printed photo look. This helped to reduce those sharp edges a bit from the initial selection. The opacity and fill of the layer were both reduced to about 5%.

Feel free to ask questions as I'm not sure whether these directions are good enough .

[Digidave]

I have no clue what all that stuff means. But, I gotta say I love it!! Nice Job!!!

[wulf]

The only thing missing now is the tip of that top petal (the crop is more obvious now that all the background distractions have been removed. However, otherwise it is great, especially the quality of the masking. Working from one of the channels is a useful tip.

Wulf

[wyndhydra]

Originally Posted by wulf

The only thing missing now is the tip of that top petal (the crop is more obvious now that all the background distractions have been removed. However, otherwise it is great, especially the quality of the masking. Working from one of the channels is a useful tip.

Wulf

Yeah, I could kick myself for not getting the top of flower into frame. Oh well... maybe next time. The channels/burn/dodge masking is pretty easy and quite nice for the irregular shapes.

[jiminyClickit]

wyndhydra,

Not too late if you want to save it. Simply copy/paste lower right tip of flower, rotate, add to original onto larger canvas, fill in colors, all the usual blend routine. Thought it looked better offset, too.

[Saralonde]

Good job, Jim! I bow to your skills. 998-Two more to go.

[Englishteacher]

It is better to err on the side of too much than too little ... saves PS time! You can always crop out the extras.

[Afox]

Originally Posted by wyndhydra

Hey all,
1. Selection was initially done by duplicating the blue color channel. I then copied the channel and used the fade command with a multiply mode and adjusted opacity until it was mostly dark except the flowers.
2. From there I burned and dodged around the flowers to make a black and white alpha channel which was later used for masking.
3. With the alpha channel complete I duplicated the original layer and masked out the background.
4. I then added a color layer for the background, with a radial gradient layer to reduce it out from the center.
5. The last touch was to tack on a black layer and use the add film grain filter to apply a more realistic printed photo look. This helped to reduce those sharp edges a bit from the initial selection. The opacity and fill of the layer were both reduced to about 5%.

Feel free to ask questions as I'm not sure whether these directions are good enough .

Thanks for posting how you did this!

[beckywithasmile]

Great shot! I'm glad you posted and shared how to do it. Now I'll just have to play with photoshop more to figure out what it all means.

[kseg]

Originally Posted by wyndhydra

Hey all,
I thought this might be an interesting one for some of you to play around with.

Before


After

I kind of like the less is more approach and thought my original shot was way to cluttered. Retouching was done in photoshop and will be described using those tools.

1. Selection was initially done by duplicating the blue color channel. I then copied the channel and used the fade command with a multiply mode and adjusted opacity until it was mostly dark except the flowers.
2. From there I burned and dodged around the flowers to make a black and white alpha channel which was later used for masking.
3. With the alpha channel complete I duplicated the original layer and masked out the background.
4. I then added a color layer for the background, with a radial gradient layer to reduce it out from the center.
5. The last touch was to tack on a black layer and use the add film grain filter to apply a more realistic printed photo look. This helped to reduce those sharp edges a bit from the initial selection. The opacity and fill of the layer were both reduced to about 5%.

Feel free to ask questions as I'm not sure whether these directions are good enough .

I know this post was written quite some time ago, but could anyone give a little more information on how to do the first step? Channels are still new to me. Thanks.