Lily and Pad

[John Storjohann]

A very simple treatment of another water lily from Saturday. Shot at 400mm, f/22@1/25. RAW image processed in LR, and then Topaz Simplify/BuzSim applied. The effect is very subtle, and most noticeable on the pad...looking to do something a little more aggressive yet, but I'm not quite sure of the direction I want to take.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi John, this is quite lovely and I like your composition with the leaf as a nice leading line. Nice placement of the flower. I might tone down the highlights just a bit. I think this would be a good candidate for Fractalius if you have it.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey John,
I agree with Kerry on pulling back some of the highlights and I agree the comp is excellent. You do need to rotate CW.....I know it's OOTB but the bloom and reflection not ligning up are throwing me off. Minor tweaks to make this shine!

[denise ippolito]

John, I love the Topaz on this, it's subtle yet effective. Feels a little tight to me but it is well framed. The curled leaf is a very nice touch. Nicely done.:S3:

[Bob Miller]

John...Nice effect from Topaz!....loving the curled leaf on the side....agree with comments above regarding tightness, and highlights!

[John Storjohann]

A lot of good food for thought...thank you to each of you! OK...I toned down the highlights...and I gave it some breathing space on the top, left and bottom...Kerry, I don't have Fractalius yet...I'm waiting for the 64 bit version to come out (their web site states it is something they are working on), but I can't wait to try it at some point. Thanks again!

[John Storjohann]

Roman, I wasn't ignoring your suggestion..I just have no idea HOW to rotate it CW without cutting off a good bit of the image! If I rotate...I have to crop back to a rectangle...and then I end up lopping off a good bit of the composition. Is there something I'm missing that would help with this?

[Brendan Dozier]

Beautiful composition and treatment, John. Good suggestions, and as far as doing rotation, something I discovered not too long ago is to select the entire image with crop tool, then expand the edges to give you more room all the way around with some added white space. Then do your rotation which will leave you with some remaining white space along the edges. Select those white spaces with magic wand, and then go to Edit/Fill/ and set "Contents" to "Content Aware" at "100%". Then after you've filled in the white space you can re-crop as desired. You may have to do some cloning and touch up on areas that are not completely uniform. Hope this makes sense, and it takes a little experimenting.

[Paul Lagasi]

Another beautifully composed image, repost is lovely....very well done

[Jay Sheinfield]

Great one John. Love the comp, the lines of the lily leaf to WL are great. Another one I missed!:S3: The RP is even better.

[Hilary Hann]

I like the delicate touch you've used to process this image. I think it takes a while to find a process which suits your way of photographing subjects, well it has me, so experimenting slowly with different effects seems to be the wise choice. Such a beautiful flower.

[John Storjohann]

Brendan, Paul, Jay and Hilary...thank you for your comments. Brendan, thank you for the tip...I'm going to try that! Jay, you didn't miss it per se..this is one of the ones that closes up after the early morning hours!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Roman, I wasn't ignoring your suggestion..I just have no idea HOW to rotate it CW without cutting off a good bit of the image! If I rotate...I have to crop back to a rectangle...and then I end up lopping off a good bit of the composition. Is there something I'm missing that would help with this?

Sorry for the late reply John....but here goes. Expanded the canvas quite a bit on all sides. I just used the marquee tool and selected a rectangle closest to the expanded canvas and duplicated the layer.....using the move tool, stretched it out (you can also use content aware fill) ......this kepy the water color and tones a match to the original....and did it on all sides......toughest was leaf. Rotated 3.6 degrees CW......cropped. You may have to smooth out some of the areas......but I did this quickly to give you the basic idea. Hope this helps you!

[John Storjohann]

Brendan and Roman...I actually used a combination of the two techniques you suggested and I'm pretty happy with the result. I expanded the canvas of the image one side at a time using the crop tool...and then did Edit->Fill->Content Aware Fill before expanding the next canvas along the next edge. Expanding all of the edges at once and then trying Content Aware Fill left me with a lot cloning to do...doing Content Aware Fill one side at a time seemed pretty accurate. I then did the 3.6 degree CW rotation...and, by eye, cropped it to an approximation of my original composition and size. Amazing (and I'm not talking about my work..but the technique the two of you shared with me!)...thank you for the tips!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Brendan and Roman...I actually used a combination of the two techniques you suggested and I'm pretty happy with the result. I expanded the canvas of the image one side at a time using the crop tool...and then did Edit->Fill->Content Aware Fill before expanding the next canvas along the next edge. Expanding all of the edges at once and then trying Content Aware Fill left me with a lot cloning to do...doing Content Aware Fill one side at a time seemed pretty accurate. I then did the 3.6 degree CW rotation...and, by eye, cropped it to an approximation of my original composition and size. Amazing (and I'm not talking about my work..but the technique the two of you shared with me!)...thank you for the tips!

Nice job John! Many times Content Aware works pretty well.....sometimes......not.....so just another tool for the toolbox!