Winter Violets
Just liked the way my purple-blue violets turned out so I decided to post them. When I took this image, I held an old Cokin Gradual Blue Filter 122 B1 in front of my macro lens. In Lightroom David duChemin’s Iceland Split Greens preset (from his newest book The Print and the Process: Taking Compelling Photographs from Vision to Expression) was applied and then the Basic Panel sliders were tweaked. Topaz Detail 3’s (for website link see sidebar) Overall Detail Light I preset was applied. Next a Levels Adjustment Layer was applied and the mid point was moved to the left (2.57) to really lighten the image. The layer mask was filled with black (CTRL+I) and just some of the purple edges were painted back so the purple was not so bright. Next 2 Lil Owls (see sidebar for website link) Scripted Brush 34 at 2500 pixels was painted in upper right area – a layer mask was applied and any brush color was painted off the flowers. The layer was set to 68% opacity. A green Color Fill Adjustment Layer was clipped (ALT+click between layers) to change brush strokes to green. Kim Klassen’s Unleashed (a beautiful texture that was free by signing up for her newsletter) that I converted to a PNG texture was applied and a light purple Color Fill Adjustment Layer was clipped to the layer. The texture was set to 62% opacity. Another Levels Adjustment Layer was placed on top and the black Output Levels tab was set to 38 to soften and lighten the whole image. In the layer mask, the two main flowers were lightly painted out to sharpen just a bit. That was it. I really enjoyed just doing a fun image…..Digital Lady Syd
