I love to take pictures of flowers. I suppose that is because I'm an absolutely awful gardener. :)

Here is one I took last summer while I was snapping pictures of posing Prairie Dogs. (All of the farmers who passed me taking pictures along the side of the road thought I was NUTS for taking pictures of the little critters.)

Have fun with this. If you can identify it as well, I'm sure I'm not the only one who would appreciate the education.

Janet

Thanks for the image Janet.
Basic here is
Tadies>Picasso's lastword
some layer masks
Manju

Wonderful Manju. Nice to see you back. I like how you rotated the flower, which added weight to the bottom and reconfigured the composition.

Janet

Very pretty flower, Janet. Thank you.
Manju, Superb as usual.
Started out as a watercolor using layer masks, final touch Impr filter -fluffbutt's "brush on color wash" (modified).

I love the transluscent look of the flower! Nice picture!

1. Created a duplicate file and rand a pencil sketch filter on it then moved this sketch back into my working file. Blend mode normal
2. Did an Artistic -> Sponge filter on the sketch layer and painted a mask to block out the flower so that the sponge effect only applied to the background.
3. Ran an Artistic -> Dry brush on the original layer with very low settings.

Sooie, if the flower was on a shrub, maybe some kind of wild azalea???

H/s, burn/dodge. smudge, diffuse glow.

Nice Kiska. In fact, I like what everyone has done with this pic.

I guess what I should do about identifying it is look in some book on desert wildflowers. There isn't anything like it in my "Sooie" books on Ozarks wildflowers. GRIN.

Janet

Janet, it takes an artistic eye to find such beauty growing alongside the road. AWESOME FLOWER!! Kiska & Swampy, delicate and beautiful.
Manju, I knew that was yours before I read the name! Gorgeous work as usual, and Jaykita, I'm always in love with your colors.
I played w/ it in PS7 using the Art History brush.

Rainyday, I've never used the art history brush. Yet another feature of PhotoShop to be investigated! PhotoShop is just so deep and so broad that you could spend years and never really master it. As I browse through other's techniques, it just amazes me the different approaches used to accomplish wonderful things.

When I was in third grade, my art teacher (back when school budgets allowed for art teachers) had us make "fairy flowers." Anything that wasn't a real flower but looked very very fancy. She hung mine up on the wall. Fifty years later, I still like to make fairy flowers, but I use PSP8 and photos now.

Amy

NICE, Amy. love the mirror image!

I got a little funky with this...

Drop dead gorgeous Amy. You succeeded in making this fairy flower.

Janet

Ended up looking like something you might see on an old school surf shirt. Putting it up for nostalgia. At least, of course, to me anyways.....

T

I had to have another try at this roadside flower.

Yes, yes, yes, I have spring fever. :)

Janet

It's about time my RetouchPRO friends from the Northern Hemisphere started to feel a little warmth and a spring in the step whilst I'm digging for sweaters and slippers!!! Thanks for the wee flower Janet. Wonderful posts on this everyone!!!

Nice renditions all. Thanks janet for such an interesting flower.

This version wasn't exactly what I meant to do, got sort of detoured(*).
Well, that's why this is so much fun. :wink:

Rô
(*) Luminosity, equalize, blend-if, render clouds, masking and a couple of layers of edges!

Whatever you did Ro, it worked well. The hardest part for me was the background. You handled it well and managed to keep the contrast of the background and the luminosity of the flower to a maximum.

Kudos.

Janet

Very beautiful, Neve & ByRo. This little flower is one of my favorite threads in the whole forum. I'm not totally happy with this one. I was trying for a chalk effect, but I left the texture too strong in the brushes. Oh well. Live and (hopefully) learn.

You can see you were certainly trying for it Raniday. I've not done much chalk effects to any great satisfaction myself. Keep up the good work though, practice makes perfection.

My turn to play with the flower. Inspired by Fluffbutt's "Try this" layer composite idea.

BG. Resized to 150%.
A: Copy BG. Impressionist-Crayon:Short/Choppy mod. DryBrush. (A nice 1-2 combination.) Normal 100%. Added a layer mask to restore most of the stamens.
B: Copy BG. Texturize (canvas). Softlight. 100%
C: Copy BG. AddNoise. ColorPencil. Overlay. 60%. Layermask to protect the lighter areas on the right side of the image.
D: Cloning layer to clean up a few distraction bright & dark areas.
E: Level Adj.

Fun stuff. Thanks Janet & Fluff!

-Mark

3 Cheers for Fluffbutt and kudos to you Mark - very nice result! :nod:

Ok, just one more. I used Steve's oil painting tute as well as his brush & texture.
http://www.pbase.com/catbounds/image/42037893