a rose

[imagia]

I was playing around with my bigger lens the other night and I had forgotten my tripod so the pictures all came out a little blurry. But when I started trying to salvage one of a fabric rose I sort of liked what I was seein. What do you all think?

Before


And after


I upped the contrast, replaced some colors, sharpened the image...i think there was some other stuff in there too but I forget.

[Japaslavian]

Well, to me it doesn't really feel like a photograph anymore.

How far away were you from this rose to get it to blur like that. You should be able to get a non-blurry image even at 1/15th of a second from a decent distance. I don't imagine you were using a telephoto to take a picture of a flower.

I personally would probably go back and try to get the photo right before I started messing around with something that is blurry in Photoshop.

[wulf]

I like the texture on the rose but am not so keen on how the processing brings out a sharp yellow border round flower and stem. I did a quick take of an alternative approach:



That has three layers:

Top: Lightened using the curves tool, blurred by 20px and set to multiply mode

Middle: Lightened using the curves tool, blurred by 10px and set to screen mode

Bottom: Original image

It still has a yellow border but the whole result is softer and perhaps a touch more romantic.

Ideally though it is best to get sharper pictures to begin with - if you don't have a tripod handy, look for something else (like a stack of books) you can brace the camera on. Also, don't forget overall composition - here, it would be better if the whole flower was visible rather than being cropped at the top.

Wulf