Alien Daffodil

[Ken Childs]

Canon EOS REBEL T1i
Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro
Av mode
1/250"
F16
ISO: 400
LR & CS3

Found this little creature emerging from a long winter sleep. :)

Applied a heavy dose of NR to smooth out everything except for the "creature".

[Markus Jais]

Very good composition. Great close-up view. The tip of the gynoecium (I hope this is the correct English word) looks a little soft at the tip.

Markus

[Allen Sparks]

I agree with what Markus said. very nice composition.

[Mike Moats]

Hey Ken, good position, and the tip could use a tad more sharpening.

[Julie Kenward]

I agree with the others but wanted to add something else. I've noticed on a few images you've used NR to "smooth" out the image. Have you ever tried filter/surface blur? It also does a really nice job on smoothing out images - everything from floral petals to water images (where NR can often leave you with no texture at all.) Just thought I'd mention it!

[Ken Childs]

I've noticed on a few images you've used NR to "smooth" out the image. Have you ever tried filter/surface blur? It also does a really nice job on smoothing out images - everything from floral petals to water images (where NR can often leave you with no texture at all.) Just thought I'd mention it!
Thanks for the tip, Jules. I'll give it a look.

Please mention things like this whenever possible. There are many options in Photoshop that I'll basically ignore until someone I trust says, "you should try this".

[Julie Kenward]

Ken, on surface blur, you have two sliders, radius and threshold. I usually start with radius around 2-3 pixels and threshold at about the same. Radius is how far the motion will blur and threshold is how "deep" (that probably won't make sense until you try it, but the more you up the number the more deeply the image blurs.)

Another one I just found this weekend was noise/dust and scratches. It fills in all the cracks and smooths out the image - works great if you mask off the main subject or do a selection and then inverse it.

Give them a try!

[Vida van der Walt]

Nice shot Ken. Great comp and placement of focal point. I can see what Jules meant with the loss of texture and I'm glad she gave the surface blur tip as it is something I haven't tried yet.