Experimenting with Photoshop and flowers
Recently I have started listening to the photo critiques at RadiantVista. For those of you not familiar with this site, it is an excellent source of information and composition and Photoshop and on top of that it is free. Currently my use of Photoshop is limited to changing contrast/shadows and converting from RAW to JPG. Recently I took one of my flower shots and tried to see what I could do with it. Here’s the original shot – unmodified from the camera.
![](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3192/2589616428_e093dc2a11_o.jpg" width="800" height="533" alt="IMG_2203" /></a>)
This is clearly only an average shot, but the main purpose was to play around with Photoshop and see how I could improve it.
I made the following changes.
1) Changed the contrast a bit to bring out the flower.
2) Darkened shadows to reduce the distraction of the leaves around it.
3) Created a mask around the flower and then used levels on the leaves to further weaken them.
4) Using the layer mask, I then used levels to bring out the purple in the flower a bit more.
5) Deleted the leaf in the upper right corner.
6) One of the major problems with this shot is the flower is old and faded. I attempted to ‘fix it up’ a bit in Photoshop.
Here’s the resulting image.
![](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3183/2589616476_9c753084c7_o.jpg" width="800" height="533" alt="IMG_2203_2" /></a>)
This shot still isn’t an award winner. I should have chosen a flower that was more fresh instead. Still, I think I did improve over the original shot.
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Tags: edit, flower, macro, photography, photoshop
I definately agree with all aspects of your last sentence.
I like the non-freshness of the flower. So many times people just try to get close to perfection. The fact that it’s got some age to it gives it character.
I really like this shot, and indeed you did improve it over the original!