Another wildflower blur

[Cheryl Slechta]

Here's another wildflower blur that I finally got time to work on. I tried to incorporate suggestions from the one I posted earlier this week. I actually copied part of the earlier post and pasted in onto a horizontal crop and masked back in the original so that it all fit together. I tried doing several layers of H&S as Dennis had suggested and finally a slight Topaz Adjust BuzSim.
Thanks for looking. Comments and suggestions appreciated:S3:

[Bob Miller]

Cheryl....I think you got it just right! A lovely image! What was your shutter speed? I am going to have try some of these blurs.TFS

[Cheryl Slechta]

Bob, thank you! I believe I was it was f/22, .5sec., ISO 100. I love doing blurs - it's kind of like painting:S3:

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Cheryl, lovely blur and great color too! I find shooting blurs is kinda like opening Christmas presents...you never know what you'll get till you see it on the LCD screen.:S3:

[denise ippolito]

Cheryl, Beautiful soft color palette and with the right amount of blur. It does look like a painting.:S3:

[Dennis Bishop]

I like it, too, Cheryl. Great combination of soft blur and colors. I also like Andrew's Christmas present simile.

[Ken Childs]

Cheryl, really nice pastel colors captured here! The blurs looks just right. :S3:

If this were mine, I would consider cloning over the 3 strong yellow stalks at the bottom middle left....my eye goes right to them so they seem to compete too much with the rest of the image.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Thanks everyone for your comments. Ken, I agree with the 3 yellow flowers - I'll tone them down a bit.:S3:

[Indranil Sircar]

Wonderful pan-blur composition, Cheryl. Beautiful colors. TFS.

[Arthur Morris]

I love the soft colors and the degree of blur. Mr. Ken Childs is too smart; the three stalks with the well-defined yellow flowers have got to go.

[Dennis Bishop]

Cheryl, I'm doing this repost only because you'd said you'd never used Snap Art, and I thought you might like to see one of the things it can do besides make an image look like an oil painting. Stylize is one of the many Snap Art presets. It can be used to add black lines and shadows to a posterized version of an image or it can just be used to put the black lines and shadows on a white background. I ran two layers of it the second way -- one with many more black lines than the other and neither with shadows. Adding black lines to your image didn't seem like the way to go, so I cranked down the opacity on both Snap Art layers and changed the blend mode to Divide, which does nothing where the upper layer (the divide blend mode one) is white and lightens the lower layer where the upper layer is black. This is how it came out.

[Maureen Allen]

What a pretty image this is, Cheryl. I love the soft colors. Agree about toning down the yellow flowers, but I wouldn't eliminate them :S3:

[Cheryl Slechta]

Indranil, Artie, Dennis and Maureen, thanks for your comments, I appreciate them. Dennis, I like what you achieved with Snap Art. I had kind of the same look with Topaz Simplify but had backed off of the settings so that it looked more like a photograph. If I only had the time, I'd love to try doing one of these flower blurs with pastels:S3:

[Dennis Bishop]

Indranil, Artie, Dennis and Maureen, thanks for your comments, I appreciate them. Dennis, I like what you achieved with Snap Art. I had kind of the same look with Topaz Simplify but had backed off of the settings so that it looked more like a photograph. If I only had the time, I'd love to try doing one of these flower blurs with pastels:S3:

Pastels seemed like such a great idea I just had to try it. Here it is ... Your original post with the Snap Art default Soft Pastels preset.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Dennis, I like it! It has a much more abstract look to it. If I can get the time, I'm going to try it with real pastels and see what happens:S3:

[Dennis Bishop]

Dennis, I like it! It has a much more abstract look to it. If I can get the time, I'm going to try it with real pastels and see what happens:S3:

Oh, you did mean real pastels. I wondered. Hopefully you'll be successful in finding the time.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Dennis, I'm sure your Snap Art pastel looks better than whatever I do - pastels are difficult:S3: