Red Sunflower Saying Hello

This gorgeous red sunflower image was taken at the Harry P. Leu Gardens in Orlando, Florida (a wonderful place to take flower pix!). I had never seen a red sunflower growing before – grew up around yellow ones! Did a tight crop around the flower first. Next tried out the new Photoshop feature called Select and Mask to remove the flower, buds and stems from the busy background. Works pretty nicely but takes a little practice to get a good result – the  computer runs pretty hard while using it. The selection was applied on a new layer with a mask. Placed one of my Corel Painter textures behind the flower and buds. Next created a stamped layer (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) on top and opened up the now free Nik Color Efex Pro 4 – used 3 of my favorite filters: Film Efex Vintage Film Type 6 and placed several control points around the outside removing the filter effect from these areas – this preserved the texture effect; Darken/Lighten Center; and Monday Morning with 4 control points on outside and 48% opacity. Back in Photoshop the Nik layer was set to 77% layer opacity. That was it! Pretty easy and I like the results – it feels summery to me!…..Digital Lady Syd