Dead flowers shoved through Photoshop

[alfredo]

[blueraven95]

1. I really like this

I'd love to see the original to compare

and even, although it probably falls into the graphic design forum, what you did. I am relearning Photoshop, so hints are useful right now.

[alfredo]

3. I used film grain and levels. I messed with the contrast

and such. I can't remember what all I did. I did use the unsharp mask after resizing.
I think I used water color, then faded the effect.

It's hard to decide where it goes. Every picture I post here either goes through Photoshop or GIMP, and I bet many others posted here have had some type of enhancement. It's not much different in spirit to what we did in the darkroom.

[blueraven95]

6. yeah, I know

and I love photoshop for it. Particularly because I don't have access to a dark room.

[alfredo]

8. Digital and Photoshop is cheaper in the long run, but I do miss

messing with film.

[blueraven95]

12. Don't get me wrong....

I still work almost exclusively in film....I just digitize it later. Nothing compares to being able to work the image with your hands.

[alfredo]

13. I no longer have the money or space for a darkroom,

so digital is how I have to go. As long as I don't have to blow up the image too much, everything is fine.

[alfredo]

5. Here's the original

[F.Gordon]

2. How did you do that?

:shrug:

I'm looking at the flowers in the background as a point of reference.... Confused. I. Am. Incredible effect.. very nice. Maybe I'm better off not knowing how you did it. :crazy:

[alfredo]

4. I played with a few filters, messed with the levels, and just

played with it until I was happy with the results.

[F.Gordon]

7. But the green leaves......

Whatever you did really worked nicely. I try to do everything in-camera unless I'm adding an effect of some type, like my BW Mt. Pisgah snapshots and "The Gardener" in my smugmug gallery.

I use a stitching program for panos which I enjoy doing and I have this one software gizmo thing that I'd like to master.... but I'm having difficulties. Basically you take a few shots of the same thing at different exposure levels and it combines the photos to create something spectacular (so "they" say)... but everything I try turns out looking like a bad acid trip. :( If I ever get it to work I'll post something.

[alfredo]

9. I don't mess with the raw image in the camera. The image is

too small in the LCD. I am a firm believer in "you take snapshots with a camera, but you make photographs in the darkroom."

[Ms. Toad]

10. A man after my own heart

I'm going to mess with the local paper's mind in a week and a half - I'm on the reader's advisory panel and we had the start of a philosophical discussion with the editors on this topic last spring. They have an editorial policy never to alter a photograph in any way once it is outside the camera (even if it is their own photographer's work) because that is editorializing.

Next meeting they bring in the photographers. My intent is to bring in two identical photos - one taken using a zoom and the other cropped from a photo taken without zoom to see if they can tell the difference - then make them explain why the cropping is editorial comment, but the zooming is not.

[alfredo]

11. Great!

A trained eye might detect a bit of foreshortening, but most people lose higher brain functions when they start wearing ties. (cuts off blood flow to the brain)