I had the pleasure of going to the Orchid Festival at Kew Gardens yesterday, here is just one of the 200+ photos we took.

Christine

Never thought "still life" could be such fun, :) :)
thanks Christine a beautiful photo.

Rô

Lovely result ByRo!

What a joy, Kew Gardens and all those glorious orchids to photograph. I can see a lot of Painter fine art orchids soon hanging on your walls :nod:

Painter 8.1
Cloning - finally settled on Tinting/Bristle Brush 10 for the orchids.
Used various colours on the background with an acrylic brush???

Opened in Paint Shop Pro
Added a multiply layer - lowered opacity.
Merged layers and duped bottom layer.
L2 - Impressionist Plugin/Conte: Old Faithful
with lowered opacity.
A little USM.
Added a mask and frame.

Thank you for such a lovely photo.

Very pretty Neve!

This is my simple take on the flowers. First I took out any background foliage. Then I selected each of the colors one at a time (using the eyedropper tool and Select -> Color Range) and refilled them with a more vibrant shade of the same color.

Oh, Liz, you are hot, you are really HOT.. I want to boogy with ya aaalll night looonng!

Cheers
Dave

I want some of what you're on Duv...:lmao: :lmao:

On second thought.....

Welcome to RetouchPRO Keepemcomin.....lovely result.

Seen this done with a filter which I think is called "shoutin" so thought I'd try without it by making selections and adding a drop shadow.

Funky Duv. Really funky. And very well manipulated. Great job.

As for everyone else, you are making the beautiful better. What a great shot!

Janet

Here's my first effort.

Removed background in Photoshop and added a new pinkish one.

into Painter - increase canvas size added some other shades and colours to the background and used VP Pastel. Blended this with blender - soft blender stump 30.

Flowers - ran KPT Pyramid paint then blended with soft blender stump but reduced size to 5.

Dropped all layers and ran VP Pastel again.

Lightened overall with Painter Equalizer.

Christine

Beautiful photo, Christine. Thanks.
Marvellous job, everyone. Here's mine.

Neve, What ever do they put in the water down there in Australia to cause such creativity? Glorious Orchids was stunning. Great soft touch look. Panel Orchids was a master piece. This photo really leant itself to the "shoutin" filter. Go to the head of the class. :grin:

Black Orchid Tapestry
My submission is an attempt to render a tapestry look. I first extracted the flowers and created the background and shadow. I prefer to do my own shadows most of the time because it gives you much more control like allowing you to run a Transform->Distort for more depth and lots of Gausisan blur for the edges as well as adjust the transparency and blending mode. I duplicated the flower layer and added texture (lambswool) and a sligt bevel to add a little more depth and set this layer to liniar burn.

Thanks for the great picture, Xaran! It was another fun project!

Very pretty Neve!

This is my simple take on the flowers. First I took out any background foliage. Then I selected each of the colors one at a time (using the eyedropper tool and Select -> Color Range) and refilled them with a more vibrant shade of the same color.Welcome aboard.

I'm glad you jumped into the Photo-art forum with your interpretation. We always enjoy having new folks join in the fun.

Dare I say: "Keep 'em comin', keepemcomin"? (sorry... couldn't resist :) )

OK, seriously: "Keep 'em comin'."

~Danny~

Christine, that's just super. The texture is amazingly delicate and I'm wondering when that came into play...VP perhaps.

Jaykita - Simply stunning effect.

Swampy - maybe it's not water :lmao: That's a rare result, the bg
looks like brushed velvet.

I didn't use the shoutin' filter but here's a link to it...

http://catarific.com/tutorials/easyslats.html

Duv/Dave -- Great use of the image -- I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw people/props in those lovely orchids -- but I did NOT see the fancy get up for a queen that you saw/created! Very creative and very well executed! :pleased:


Neve, another creative use of the image, and a very lovely NEW image! :pleased:

Thanks CJ - have a great day! :wavey:

This one time i didnt bother to take down notes :bawling:
i just remember there was some conte crayon filter in it. Also art history brush layer, something or other blend with original. So Sorry. :cry:

Nice "J".

There's something about color imposed against black and white that I always find striking.

Everyone those are gorgeous renditions!

Another day, another orchid....

PSP8.1

Dupe original layer
L2 - Photo Wizz/Luma Neg.
Dupe Bottom Layer and place as L3
L3 - Mode - Hard Light
Merge all Flatten
Auto Hue Sat
Buzz Simplifier
Impressionist/Oils/Old Brush Stamp
2 masks and bg fill
Aim/USM

Truly OUTSTANDING Neve!

Janet

Photoshop 7

Lighten with Image-Adjustments-Curves
Filter-Pixelate-Facet
Image-Adjustments-Curves
Paint black over some of the picture
Add a background
Merge
Watermark

Nice, Grafix! I like the wood theme background's rough texture against the smooth flowers.

hey, Duv/Dave, buddy!, hand me over some of those pills... i sure need some inspiration also ;) :( ...
awesome renditions everyone!




---
some more AHB mess...

:wavey:

The renditions in this thread are so good that I struggled to come up with a worthy addition. I got lucky playing with Painter 8: A hot pink 'Serigraphy' layer (low opacity) over a quick pastel clone layer - basically just colored patches treated with 'GlassDistortion--OriginalLuminence'. Some final touch-up in Elements2.
-Mark

That's different Mark....I like it, I thought "mottled glass" right away. :bigthmb:

1 make a mask of the flower
2 mode: Lab
3 load selection
4 nudge outline as U want (i did it first upper)
5 invert channel a in the selection
6 nudge outline down
7 invert channel b in the selection
8 deselect load mask again as selection
9 invet channel L
10 make a mask of edges
11 load edge mask
12 filter: ink outlines (i prefer)
13 select invers
14 rotate 90
15 filter wind
16 rotate -90



anyway: why can't i feed back a picture what i loaded from here for example this picture:question:

Saby - that is really lovely and such a different technique.

Not sure what you mean by feed back a picture - can you explain.

Christine

Hi Xaran!


I loaded down this very nice picture and it came as a jpeg has own level of quality when i wanted to load it up i got the message the picture is too large so i don't realy know why.

Saby,

there are some instructions for uploading files here http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7933

They do need to be less than 100k which usually means about 50-60% jpeg quality and a size of 800 x 600 ppi.

Christine

Hi, I'm new here, have a lot to learn and I'm just browsing through the forumpages. Thought to have a go on this one, hope you don't mind.
I use Paint Shop Pro up till now, I do have PS7 but haven't found the time yet to explore it. Well, here's my contribution. Don't mind my grammar, English is not my native language, I'm Dutch.

Titia

Forgot to tell you what I did, but you probably know already :wink:
made layer 1: turned it to b&W and used the eraser on one flower.
Then saved all layers and copied the photo again.
Changed the color of the original and
made layer 2: used the eraser on two flowers.
And so on till all was done.
Then used flaslight and adapted the lightening.

Hope that makes sense.

Nice, Tita!

I like the soft colors you chose.

Very nice and welcome to RetouchPRO Titia. I like your methods. They are some I haven't seen explored.

Janet

Hello, Titia:

Welcome and thank you for your lovely interpretation and instructions. Paint Shop Pro is fine to use. Whatever program(s) work for you.

Your English is much better than my Dutch! :)

~Danny~

Painter 9 with mouse...added sandstone texture (only cos i don't have any others lol!

Painter8 oil cloned brush, canvas texture in Photoshop.

Simply copied it 4 times, changed blend mode to screens, and lowered the opacity on each copy. Just an experiment of a sort....

Also at work.... :bandit:

Simply copied it 4 times, changed blend mode to screens, and lowered the opacity on each copy. Just an experiment of a sort....

Also at work.... :bandit:
Experimenting is perfectly fine, Tyler. That's how all of us learn.

Just don't get into trouble doing it at work! :bawling: :grin:

Wow--everyone's images are great! I'm new to the forums & I am getting so inspired seeing so much creativity and variation in the group...not to mention the sharing spirit! :)

Beautiful picture, Christine! I love orchids and they always remind me of my grandmother (Lois), who passed away last year. She loved them as much as I do--and her favorite color was purple, so that's where I got the inspiration to do this...

(and I even remembered to keep track of what I did this time, which is unusual in itself! :lol: )

Photoshop:
1. removed background
2. created layer under flowers - rendered clouds, then difference clouds, then hit ctrl f till I liked the look (a trick I learned just yesterday in the forum)
3. new layer & snapshot
4. dup'd that layer 3 times
5. bottom new layer: filter, sketch, waterpaper - blend mode soft light
6. middle new layer: filter, artistic, neon glow - blend mode color
7. top new layer: filter, artistic, cutout then filter, artistic, watercolor - blend mode darken
8. new layer & snapshot
9. decided I didn't like the background after it'd been through the cutout, so masked that snapshot over a dup of the original cloudy background so it blended better
10. added border & textured with sandstone

This was fun!!! I did it at work too...but on my lunch break! ;)
Donna

Such lovely blossoms -- thanks for the use of the image!

Welcome, Donna! A lovely remembrance of your grandmother, and a lovely addition to the thread!
Everyone is having a good time, and sharing the beauty.

Did a few layers of Polar Distortion of the orchids to create a background for the subject layer of orchids. Did some dry brush/chrystallize etc. to the subject layer, and added a overlayer of textured white (used the notepaper filter) which I erased off in areas using the Fuzzball brush.

These flowers (orchids?) are beautiful. Thanks for letting us use them.
Here are a couple of renditions:
The first is done with ErickN's action (available on action central). I've substituted a canvas overlay instead of the action's texture layer.

The second is done with Trimoon's watercolor method on his Artistic Expressions cd. Again I used a canvas pattern adj. layer here instead of a water color texture. I prefer the look of the canvas to the watercolor texture.

Ron

Beautiful photo Christine, thank you. I used Cybia edgeworks and KPT Pyramid paint.

Bobbie

PhotoBobbie

Wonderful color presentation you came up with there. I like! :)

T