not what I'd intended

[Dennis Bishop]

This was going to be my first-time-ever theme image. The original shot was brown with some changes in tone because of the texture and lighting, so the Single Color theme choice seemed like the way to go. Things were moving in that direction until something made me play with blend modes, and it was no longer a single color. By the way, the photo was a macro of part of a huge log that had been tossed onto the dock by a wild storm a few days before. How long it had been in the lake or where the tree had been growing is anybody's guess.




163357



iPhone 5s, ISO 32

processing highlights

cropped from the bottom and flipped horizontally for composition
duplicated, flipped vertically, and blurred to within an inch of its life; Difference blend mode (The Difference blend mode math is simple enough, but the results can be surprising.)
These two and an adjustment layer were stamped and became the base layer for the remaining steps.
Topaz Simplify -- saved watercolor preset
Topaz Glow -- three saved black-on-white presets; Multiply, Divide, Multiply
Simplify -- saved black-on-white edges preset, Multiply
Alien Skin Snap Art -- saved edges preset using the complement of the light tan in the image, Multiply

[Wendy Kates]

I really like your unintended, wonderfully abstract image! The diagonal lines carry my eyes through the image, and the combination of browns, tans and greens, along with the interplay between light and dark, is lovely. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the layers were "stamped".

[Dennis Bishop]

Thank you, Wendy. Stamping merges visible layers into a new one but leaves those original layers intact. The Merge Layers and Merge Visible commands in the Layer menu flatten the selected layers and the originals go poof. That's something I don't want because it eliminates the possibility of going back to do something different later on. I always have a base layer that -- depending on whether the plug-in creates a new layer, or not -- serves on its own or is duplicated for further processing. The base layer is usually stamped from a few other layers. In most cases, that base layer is the one on which Topaz Simplify, Alien Skin Snap Art, and now Topaz Glow are applied. Somewhere higher in the layer stack, I'll stamp all the layers below to do something in Nik Color Efex or another plug-in that I want to affect the whole image.

Although I avoid using keyboard shortcuts, I think that's the only way stamping can be done. In Windows, the magic combination is Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E; on a Mac, it's shift+option+command+E.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Dennis, this is a great abstract too. I love the diagonals and the earth tones. It reminds me of looking at a river with its floodplains from high above. It has a nice sense of movement.