Maple Leaves

[Julie Kenward]

My apologies for being MIA for so long...life got really busy there for awhile! But with autumn closing in here in the Midwest I've been cranking out the images again and trying some new stuff. The idea for this image actually came to me in my sleep the other night. I had been playing around with the Flaming Pear "Twist" software and had created the scrambled looking image that lies below the top image from a branch full of maple leaves. I then used some of those same leaves to make a whole other image where they were nicely arranged. I masked the BG to black and called it good. But...something happened when I went to bed that night and the idea came to me to put the twisted image beneath the arranged image and that's how I got to this final image. One of my friends said it would make a beautiful placemat for Thanksgiving. (I decided to take that as a compliment!)

I should also note that I used the "color contrast" setting on Nik's new Color Efex software to pop the colors on both images.

[Maureen Allen]

I like the processing and particularly the frame, Jules. I wonder how this would look if you tried a very thin border around the black using one of the yellows or oranges of the frame. This might soften the transition from the black background to the lovely frame you have. Just a thought :S3:

[Christopher Miller]

Beautiful fall image, Jules! I love how the leaves are arranged with the two big leaves almost mirroring each other and the smaller leaf perfectly placed on top. Great idea to add the abstract image as the border, and I love the colors. I might make the border the same width all the way around.

[denise ippolito]

Jules, I think that Maureen and Christopher both make great suggestions. Very creative and I can see this as a place mat! I like that you used the flaming pear layer as a border.:S3:

[Dave Mills]

Hi Julie, nicely handled! Usually large frames with designs I might find distracting but in this case I feel it compliments the leaves. The leaf composition also works...

[Julie Kenward]

Thanks for the great ideas Maureen and Christopher. I'll go back and see what I can come up with! Dave & Denise, thanks for the comments...much appreciated!

[Indranil Sircar]

Julie, you have certainly captured the essence of autumn with this wonderful composition! I can only echo what has already been said... it is the creative border that sets it apart!

[Brendan Dozier]

Beautiful fall colors, Julie, and nicely designed image. I also like the frame, very creative, with wonderful patterns and color. Good suggestions above. Nice work!

[Julie Kenward]

Here's the repost with Cheryl and Christopher's suggestions (along with an extra border of black around the outside). Maybe I went too far? :2eyes2:

[Christopher Miller]

Great job with the repost, Jules. I might make the black outside border smaller, but other than that it looks excellent. :S3:

[Maureen Allen]

Looks great, Jules. :S3:

[Stuart Frohm]

Beautiful. Thanks vey much for posting.
I like the original presentation and the tweaked version. However, I think I'd like the tweaked version even more if you remove the solid yellow border. Perhaps narrowing the outer black border would also make the tweaked version even more successful.
I hadn't heard of the Flaming Pear Twist software and will look into that.
I'd welcome your comments on what you see as the greatest advantages of upgrading to the new version of Nik Software's Color Efex Pro.
All best.

[Julie Kenward]

Thanks for your thoughts, Stuart...I am still playing with this one so I'll take a look at those options.

For me, I use Color Efex so much that upgrading was a no brainer. They tweaked several of their old filters that I rarely used before, giving them way more creative freedom and they added a few new ones that I like very much.

For the autumn images that I've been working on lately I've been using either "tonal contrast" and "color contrast" on almost all of them and getting some excellent results. They added new vignette filters that work very well - I'm very pleased with these additions as they don't leave the "banding" that you often get on many vignette filters and they are highly customizable.


They also added four new filters: Faded, Modern, Nostalgic, and Vintage and those are also very flexible and give good results.


Finally, they added levels and curves and the ability to apply multiple filters to one image so you don't have to apply and reopen as often.


Hope that helps!

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Jules,

Greetings. I like the second version framing but I think the reds are blown (though it could be a color management artifact) and the green color contrast is greatly reduced. I played with the reds a bit with LAB curves and fairly matched the bright yellows and reds while not blowing the reds... er, however, I worked in ProPhoto and on coversion to sRGB all the reds were blown... sigh. In any event what this points out is this image is close to the red problem (different handling in different color profiles) and warrants some caution on output rendering...

That said, I very much like the color contrast in the first version and the framing in the second :w3, and the idea in general. Thanks for posting these...

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Julie Kenward]

Michael, the reds probably are blown in the second post as I through it all together really quickly to see if I would like it better. I'll definitely fine tune it before I print it!

[Hazel Grant]

May all our "dreams" be so lovely! Reminds me of one of my favorite words, learned in the UK----autumnal.