Red Flowers in the Snow

Once again here is an image I never thought I would process, but thanks to all the beautiful textures out there, the flowers end up looking like I remember them – well sort of – minus the snow. These Celosia flowers were taken in the courtyard at Flagler College (the old Ponce de Leon Hotel) in St. Augustine, Florida. This image was first processed in Lightroom where cropping and Basic Panel sliders were adjusted. An Adjustment Brush was applied to sharpen some of the foreground flower tips. In Photoshop Melissa Gallo of Painted Textures in her tutorial video Turn Your Photo into a Pastel Painting, Pencil Drawing or Pen and Ink, the second example, was followed. First the background was duplicated and the top row was set to Screen Blend Mode. A black layer mask was applied and with a white brush, the dark areas of the flower was painted in white to lighten the color on the mask. A Levels Adjustment Layer was applied the Midtones set to .78 to increase contrast just a little. A composite was created on top (CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+E). Next 2 Lil’ Owls Mosaic Set’s Claude texture (see sidebar for website link) was added and a layer mask added where the flower was painted back into the image using a soft 30% opacity black brush. A text layer was added showing the name of the flower using Flakes font at 131 pt size and a brown color. Another line of text was created using a quotation from Emily Dickinson using Chopin Script font and set to a grayish brown color. My free SJ Snow Overlay-slight blur was duplicated several times, merged, and set to 75% opacity. A Curves Adjustment Layer was the last step to add a little contrast. I loved the final result, and for some reason the snow just added a special effect to a red flower look…..Digital Lady Syd