Monarch Butterfly’s Magical Dust

This was one of many lovely Monarch and other types of butterflies that were very busy spreading the magic dust to the beautiful flowers that were in bloom at the Harry P. Leu Gardens in Orlando, Florida. This image took me forever to decide what to do with it! It had a really distracting background with all the crazy leaves going all over the place – it was a hard image to capture as the butterflies were going crazy on the hot day I visited. In Photoshop Luminar’s (see sidebar for website link) Flex was used to calm it down some and add some structure to the butterfly, then Viveza 2 twice to try and soften the background, before using Topaz (see sidebar for website link) ReStyle to get the final color palette. That’s along with some painting, spotlight effect, and Red Channel Curves Adjustment Layer. I think I finally got the mystical magical effect I was trying to create……Digital Lady Syd