Deep Red Daylily

[Sid Overbey]

Another batch of daylilies have opened. The colors are really picking up.
Nikon D300
Sigma 150-500@290
F/6.3
1/1000s
ISO 400
Av Mode
EC +1/3

Thanks for looking and comments.

[Julie Kenward]

Sid, it's a beautiful daylily but I wonder if you tried to even out the tonal difference in post production at all? There are some very dark areas that might look nicer if they were pulled up a bit using levels in PS. I think you did a very nice job of framing the flower in your composition but would have liked to have seen a different angle to either exclude or totally include the BG flowers that are OOF. A step or two to your right and I think you would have had nice separation between the front flower and the back stems making for a more pleasing composition.

You sure have a wonderful array of daylilies...keep those images coming!

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Sid,
I like the placement of your flower in frame, but agree with Julie about the out of focus buds in the background. I would clone out the one directly on top of your main subject...my eyes keep going to that point...:cool:

[Sid Overbey]

Julie/Gus, I cloned out some of the oof flowers and tried to remove some of the dark shadows. Did it help? I am not sure I adjusted the levels correctly (still learning).

Thanks.

[Julie Kenward]

Sid, that's much better! I'd try doing the lower ones as well (not the main stem or the side bud...just the two OOF stem pieces beneath the main bloom.) Nice job!

One little trick I like to do after I've cloned a big chunk of something out is to go back and blend it a bit to get rid of any telltale signs. I would suggest using a big brush and put it on the right hand side where the BG is nice and smooth. Set your opacity to 50-60% and then sweep across the part where you've cloned away the BG using the smoother sections on the right side. This can sometimes even it out and leave it looking like you never touched it.

Another option is one I did here. I used the color picker (eye dropper) from the main toolbar in Photoshop to pick one of the light chartreuse green colors from that bottom stem. That sets the color in the foreground square in your tool bar. Click that square and choose a shade just a bit lighter or darker then the original one from the color picker dialog box. Click okay when you have a color you like. Once you have that in place, use the paint bucket from that same toolbar to drop in that new foreground color in place of your background color by simply clicking on the BG!

Voila! Instant brightness!