Stacked Tiger Lily

[Steve Adkins]

6 images stacked with Zerene. Detail action applied before and after PB-Oil. Masked and blended with original. Noticed colors are more saturated here vs Lightroom view. YMMV :S3:
All C&C welcome. :S3:

[denise ippolito]

Steve, Nice painterly BG and the details on the lily are great! I love the transparency of the front petals.:S3:

[Andrew McLachlan]

Steve, I love the PB-oil look to this and the lily is outstanding.

[Brendan Dozier]

Great looking Tiger Lily, Steve, like soft light and the PB oil stylizes the detail on the petals very nicely. Also like the petal transparency, and nice opposing dark green BG to bring out the rich reds. I have no idea what stacking is, but looks like you did a fantastic job! :S3:

[Steve Adkins]

Thanks denise, Andrew and Brendan!

Great looking Tiger Lily, Steve, like soft light and the PB oil stylizes the detail on the petals very nicely. Also like the petal transparency, and nice opposing dark green BG to bring out the rich reds. I have no idea what stacking is, but looks like you did a fantastic job! :S3:
Brendan, Here is a quote from wiki:
Focus stacking is a digital image processing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_image_processing) technique which combines multiple images taken at different focus distances to give a resulting image with a greater depth of field (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field) (DOF) than any of the individual source images.
I use a program called Zerene Stacker to combine the images, but you can do it "by hand" in Photoshop (with masks) or use a free program called CombineZM.
This technique allows you to use a smaller F stop (larger aperture) for natural lighting conditions and still get the entire subject in focus.

[Kerry Perkins]

Steve, really like the deep focus you got by stacking. The red really stands out against the green and makes the lily pop nicely.

[Brendan Dozier]

Thanks for the info on focus stacking, Steve. Just read up on it a little more, and wow, I can see how handy this is for dof issues, and especially macro shots. Great stuff.

[Mark Fuge]

Nice image and application, Steve.

Like the colors and depth.

Only comment, while it is very nice as is, I might have added a slightly wider area on the left. But as they say ... Y I ... Y V! :S3:

[Christopher Miller]

Lovely image, Steve! The contrast between the sharp, bright red flower and the soft, green BG is very striking. Well done! :S3:

[Steve Adkins]

Thanks everyone! Appreciate your comments. :S3: