Sugar Maple Swirl

[Julie Kenward]

The maple trees have FINALLY popped with color this past weekend. I took a mass shot of leaves, ran it through both the Swerve and Twist settings of Flaming Pear's software and then added some burning and dodging to tweak the white area in the top ROT's position to give the eye a place to land. Added my Topaz Infocus preset for these type of images and adjusted the settings in CS5. Added a small white border (which I see was a moot point against the light gray BG!) Oh well...

[denise ippolito]

Jules, I like the color tones and the swirls, very pretty. Would love to see the original.

[Julie Kenward]

Denise, glad you asked...it made me go back and take another look and that's when I realized I had ended up using the reflection image of the tree in the water rather than the one of just the mass of leaves! Here's the original...

[denise ippolito]

Jules, The original is spectacular!!!!:S3:

[Julie Kenward]

Thanks Denise...I intend to process the other one in its simpler form as well.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Jules, I like them both but the original is a Killer:S3:

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Julie, love both images. the original is awesome. The colors were nowhere near that nice up here this year. Beautiful work!:S3:

[Dennis Bishop]

I like the original post, but I'm glad you showed us the original, too. That makes two good images from the same shot.

When you mentioned the white border, I copied the original and looked at it in Photoshop with a darker gray background. That really made a difference. The white border makes that white area you were talking about more effective.

[Julie Kenward]

Dennis, I agree - I felt it really pulled attention to the white in the image by adding the border but it does lose a bit of its efficiency here. Thanks for looking, though!

[Mark Fuge]

Nice image and applications, Jules.

Like the face in the first one. Cute! :w3

[John Storjohann]

Julie, I'm late to the party this time...busy week!...but I like both of these images. I have a shot almost identical...so close it's eerie!...of the original image, only with yellow/gold colors....you've inspired me to possibly play with it a bit. The "processed" version is also really nice..I love the one lighter anchor point in the middle third of the RHS; it adds to the composition and the strength of the image, giving your eye something to "rest" on amid the flow of intense reds. Well done!