Friday, April 20, 2012

Just Enough

Awaken

An image of a lilly taken at the local Botanic Gardens here in Adelaide. I thought the image was quite appropriate for the name of Kim's texture and in line with the theme of simpliciity and "just enough". 


Just One Rose





A couple of images from week 1 of Beyond Layers with Kim Klassen. Above are the textures I have used: "Awaken" & "Evolve" from Kim and an old book cover by "playing with brushes" at Flickr.


Image #1 - Awaken.



I cropped and lightened the original in photoshop/lightroom - paying particular attention to the "glow" of the yellows and the delicate shade of mauve/purple in the petals.

Once happy with the original I applied the "Awaken" texture from Kim using an overlay blending mode @ 56% opacity - no need to mask any of this I think.


Image #2 - Just One Rose

This is a little more complicated to get the effect that I was pleased with - keeping in mind that I wanted a different feel than the first image.




This image of a single rose had some nice pinks and yellows and a nice dark background to set the flower off.

I applied the two of Kim's textures using a blending mode of soft light @ 80% opacity to both layers. I masked these layers so the texture was applied only to the background. I choose Kims' texture "Evolve" because of it's nice texture, light centre and good vignette to the outer part of the image. 

I then applied the layer with the "old book" using a multiply blending mode at 85% - no masking.
On yet another layer I duplicated the image and converted it to B&W left it at normal blending mode but at 23% and masked out the rose leaving the muted effect on the background only.
A little long winded but that is what we do when we are in a creative mood. :)
Cheers
Andy

6 comments:

Jean Baardsen said...

This is beautiful! Love your photography. I was looking at a bird of yours yesterday and thought it was stunning! Birds are my favorite creatures.

The Artful Diva said...

Simply perfect. I love water lilies!

just another disruptive blogger said...

Beautiful! I like how you used the dark textured background in the second one.

ju-north said...

Beautifully done!

Charlotte Wilson said...

Hi Andy,
wow! Your work is exquisite! I am keeping my eye on you for inspiration.
Would you consider swapping one of my textures for that "old book" of yours? :o)

♥charlotte

Kathy said...

Beautiful results Andy. I have just finished Kim's other course and wondering if I should follow up with this one. So many things I'd like to do :o) Will keep an eye on your work on this blog. KathyTho