Cosmos Petroglyph

[Diane Miller]

Basically two straight shots, combined (probably in Overlay mode but I'm on the road for a couple of weeks and forgot to bring notes). Some masking. The texture is just a closeup of an interesting rock. I added a light vignette to the edges, masked to balance it for areas where it needed to be stronger.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Diane, I like the idea and the way you've positioned the rock so that it cradles the blossom on the right side. I'm thinking I might like a little more contrast on the buds.:S3:

[Diane Miller]

That could be good, especially the one near the center -- it gets a little lost. It could be good to darken the lighter area of it also. Thanks for the comment!

[Jackie Schuknecht]

I think this is very well done. The tones and carving are exactly something like you might find in a petroglyph. The tones and textures are very pleasing.

[LinzRiverBalmer]

very interesting Diane and I do like this.

would love to know how you go about, well anyone, goes about saving certain things to use as textures as I know you mentioned it on my foliage post.

The only thing I can say on this one is that I see a slight green cast on the RHS of the rock texture.

For me, to keep this very petroglyphy (new word) I would take the cast out and make it match the rest of the orange brown red tones in a darker shade.

Probably because I live in the land of petroglyphs and am used to seeing them this way, the drawing always lightened by time but all the shades the same because of the structure of rock it's etched into.

Hope I'm making some sense.

[Diane Miller]

There are some subtle color variations on the rock -- would be easy to alter. I hadn't paid any attention to them -- thanks for the heads up. Not really meant to look that much like a petroglyph though. Just needed a title to post and that crawled into my head.

I'm always shooting textures -- I always check out dumpsters -- they are great sources. When I want to texturize an image I open the texture layer and drag it on top of the base image, so it is a second layer. Then I change the blend mode -- Overlay is often good but it all depends on the two images. Then I'll clip a curves (see Twinkle Toes) to the top layer and tweak its contrast and color, and put a curves above the BG to do the same. Will usually mask both. Then usually other adjustment layers above all. An additional touch can be various filters on either layer, too.

Bottomless pit.

[Christopher Miller]

Very cool image, Diane! I love how you framed the flower with the texture, and great details in the flower. I agree with the others above on increasing the contrast of the flower and removing the greenish cast.

Linz, making textures is very easy. You just take photos of any textures that you find, like grass or wood or brick or stones, and then overlay them on your image like Diane describes above. You can also overlay multiple texture photos on top of each other to create a new, different texture.

[Anita Bower]

A most interesting and creative approach and result. The rock-as-texture works well to frame the flower. I would like to see the flower be a bit sharper. You might consider darkening in Levels instead of using a Contrast Adjustment. I am bothered by the white leaves. I took the liberty of making some of these changes, just to give another interpretation. I like the imagination shown in this image.

[LinzRiverBalmer]

thanks for the response on texture creating to Diane and Christopher.

you all make it sound so easy..... off I go to find the overlay button, I need more hours in the day, I keep getting tired. Since joining here now I'm dreaming about post processing photos.... LOL

[Diane Miller]

Anita, I like your interpretation! Will revisit it when I get home. It's so easy to be happy with what I come up with, having seen where it came from, and then other eyes see that as a starting point! That's such a great thing about a forum like this.

Linz, the Overlay button in PS is in the Mode dropdown, at the UL of the Layers palette, but I don't know about Elements.