El-Dorado Ladybug

[Cormano Wild]

Before photo:




After photo:






How I did it:

Really, it was more of an instance of my realizing I could do this, than my setting out to do it.

I was realizing the green of the leaf was clashing with the ladybug, being a bit too strong - so, use Adobe Lightroom, I began to slide the hue and saturation sliders for "Green" and "Yellow" around a bit. Much to my surprise, it was indeed possible to get a weaker green - and if I went too far, the plant began to turn yellow!

Lightroom's sliders, I've found - though I'm sure there must be a way to do this in Photoshop, though maybe not as easily - are a friggin' awesome way of controlling color without getting an effect that seems overly artificial.

So, I played with the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance sliders for yellow and green, until I got these final settings:

Hue:
Yellow: -100
Green: -100

Saturation:
Yellow: -50
Orange: 0

Luminance:
Yellow: +19
Orange: +33

I then adjusted the curves of the photo to darken the lower ranges so to cause the background to drop off even more dramatically. I sharpened the image in Lightroom, and applied Noise Ninja in P.S. to clean up the image a bit (though it really didn't need it too much).

Oh, and of course, I cropped the second image - the natural mise-en-scene of the photo became less important than "glamourizing" the golden leaves, so I wanted a tight focus.

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

[windrider86]

I really like what you did here. the ladtbug truly stands out quite a bit more

[Jim Bryant]

Lady bug really grabs ya now........good work, even through, I prefer the first shot.

[Daisie]

Very cool. I prefer the first shot, I think, but you did a great job making the red stand out tastefully.

[Cormano Wild]

Also, I guess I should probably put the very original before-before photo, right?

Before I edited the original photo at all, the out-of-camera raw looked like this:

http://img129.imageshack.us/img129/7...mg46314az0.jpg

I changed it to look the way the first "before" photo I posted looks by darkening the shadows (to cause the background to drop off further), increasing contrast, sharpening, running Noise Ninja for noise reduction, and increasing the black cut-off point and decreasing exposure slightly.

[FullAperture]

Love the colors but can't decide which I prefer. :P

[NeverxxSurrender]

I definitely like the after picture more, however I think you should make the leaves look more green so they don't look unnatural.

[EmOz]

Just thinking out loud, I wonder what this would have looked like if you'd done it as a black and white with the red lady bug

[scansvc]

Great job with the editing love the golden leaves really draws the eyes to the ladybug and good decision on cropping the purple leaves on the right hand side it kept drawing me away from the center in the before shot