What Would You Do (#7)

[Teewinot]

OK, so this one was sort of fun for me and as Nicole pointed out, challenging, due to the small size of the photo. That said, here's what I did:

Goal: Make the mushroom look like it might look after consuming it (assuming it's psychedelic). Not trying to copy jiminy...had the idea last night and then was inspired by his success.



What I did:
-Lighted the image (curves)
-Desaturated (made b&w)
-Adjusted histogram midtones (-25)
-Square crop
-Duplicated layer
-Gaussian blur (radius 50)
-Overlay blend (100%)
-Merged layers
-Freehand selected the mushroom
-Created a mask layer, showing the selected mushroom
-Added raster layer and moved it to the background
-Found a shot of mine of fall leaves reflected in a lake..thought it looked sorta psychedelic..
-Added a portion of this shot to the new raster background layer
-Applied a gaussian blur to the mask to blend the mushroom into the new background
-Adjusted the color balance the mushroom (before this point still b&w) to give it an orange hue to match the background
-Increased saturation of the mushroom
-Merged all layers
-Increased brightness and contrast of the image (curves)
-Added borders

[pkd14u]

Teewinot, I LOVE it! Now I want to go play with some of my own photos to attempt what you have done. Super cool!

pkd14u

[jiminyClickit]

Teewinot,

Totally your own view; I could believe mushroom is growing out of the water!

[Teewinot]

pkd14u...thanks for your comments! Please share any results you come up with!

jiminyClickit, I didn't think of seeing the mushroom coming up out of the water...thanks for articulating your perspective!

[NaturesPixel]

Originally Posted by Teewinot

jiminyClickit, I didn't think of seeing the mushroom coming up out of the water...thanks for articulating your perspective!

JC is not only one .. its what came to my mind too when i first seen it well done mate

[Nicole]

See, I knew you'd come up with something impressive Teewinot Like everyone else, I totally thought that it looked like it was coming out of the water

[pkd14u]

Teewinot, my results are on the first page, 2nd response. My husband thinks it's overdone. What do you think?

pkd14u

[Nicole]

Maggie I just noticed yours today. What a creative way to use the photo Fantastic what people come up with.

Pkd14u I don't know if you only want Teewinot's opinion on it, but I definitely would not say that it's overdone at all. It seems like that would be the sort of result you would want when keeping the picture as close to the original as possible (there's nothing wrong with that either since this thread is all about what you would do ). So if another opinion is ok, I say it doesn't look at all overdone. Thanks for sharing.

[Teewinot]

Originally Posted by pkd14u

Teewinot, my results are on the first page, 2nd response. My husband thinks it's overdone. What do you think?

pkd14u

In my statement about sharing your results, I was actually referring to your comment about potential results from playing around with your other photos to try the technique I used...but I do like your results on page 1! I like the vividness of the mushroom cap contrasted with the darker background. I don't personally think it's overdone.

[Teewinot]

Nicole and NaturesPixel....thanks so much for your kind words...you are both very encouraging and helpful on this forum!!!