Yellow Rose and Buds

It's been awhile since I posted, time to fix that. This is a little yellow rose and buds my wife clipped and put in a bud vase. I placed it in front of a large vase of daffodils for the background. Tech specs: 5D Mark III with Vivitar 135mm f2.8 Close Focusing lens (an old film era lens that I picked up on eBay), ISO 250, 1/15 sec, f2.8.

Processed in Lightroom, then brought into PS CC, where I worked with separate layers and then blended them by adjusting opacity of each layer (Topaz Impression / Cezanne II, Topaz Simplify / BuzSim II, Gaussian Blur with 'hand made' gradient) and then flattening. My goal was for the flower to stand out, unblurred, without a strong contrast with background, and with the blur tapering into what is left of a white vignette from the Cezanne II layer. All comments appreciated.

Barry

Attachment 161621

The colors and diagonals make this a strong image, and your blur treatment was very effective in highlighting the rose in the center. The background colors are in good harmony with the roses, and they echo the colors in the opening bud. The strong oranges compete with that bud for attention, though, so I'd be inclined to reduce their saturation a bit.

Thanks Dennis, I'll give that a try. I appreciate your feedback!

Barry

This is very eye-catching and you accomplished the goals that you stated above very well. Dennis has an excellent observation that the background oranges do compete with the flower bud for attention. If you revisit this I would try a version without the dark orange half circle in the upper left top edge. It captures some attention and causes the eye to drift away from the main blossoms.

Nancy,

Thank you for your comments, they are much appreciated. I will give that a shot as well!

Barry

Beautiful work. Lovely roses and composition. I like the idea of putting cut flowers in front of other flowers to create an interesting bg. I want to try doing this. How far away were the Daffodils?
I agree with the above comments, especially about toning down the bright oranges a bit. Beautiful processing on the flowers--I love how they look.
Hope you continue to participate in this forum.

Anita,

Thank you for your comments. On the setup, it was on our kitchen table, the daffodils were in a large vase and I placed the rose in a bud vase about 6 inches in front of the daffodils. I was using that vintage Vivitar 135mm f2.8 Close Focusing lens at f2.8. I'm still in the 'trying it out mode' as I recently bought it on ebay. I've been looking one of these lenses at a reasonable priced for some time.

Here is my adjusted version where I've tried to take all of the comments into account.

Attachment 161736

Barry: Thanks for the information re. placement of daffodils. I do prefer this second version with the toned down oranges. What do you think?

I also like the second version better. The rose color is actually closer to the real flower, and the background is not as noticeable. Many thanks to all for the comments!

Hi, Barry, sorry I'm so late to the show but I like the repost based on the comments from other viewers. I like your idea of using the daffodils as your background and your use of a vintage lens - I love vintage lenses:S3:

Gorgeous! I do like the colors a bit more on the 2nd version -- or maybe somewhere in between.

Beautiful work with all the filters but -- why flatten?? That burns bridges and no need to do so to export a JPEG or print.

Diane, thanks for your comments. On the flattening question, the process I follow is to save the psd file with all layers before resizing and exporting a jpg. I have always preferred to manually resize and convert the color profile vs a Save For Web approach. I'm sure there is a good technical debate (or lesson!) on that, for me it is just the process I am used to using rather than a belief that there is a great benefit to it. Bottom line is that I do save all layers in a separate psd file so I can go back and try other things without starting over.

Barry

Excellent that you are keeping the master file layered. It wasn't too many years ago that you could hardly read anything about processing that didn't advise flattening the file. Stupid. It seems to be a little less mentioned now.

In LR you can make an export preset that puts out a file of a desired size (such as for here, and even specify the max file size) and it will flatten and resize the most complex file, convert to sRGB and embed the profile -- all according to items you check in the dialog. You can specify an output folder too, which is very handy. Then click Add in the LL to save it.

I use those capabilities in LR (manually, no preset) but not when I've moved to PS CC via the "Edit In PS" menu item in LR. I assume when I start in LR and go to PS, the layered psd file does not update the LR raw file that I began with - or am I wrong here? I thought I had to save the PS work as a jpg or tiff and then import that back into LR. Have I been missing a better approach?

When you save the file in PS it should go right back into the same filmstrip in LR. It won't update the raw file (although of course your Develop settings are saved each time you change one, but the original raw can't be changed). But the saved PS file will be "catalogued" in the same folder/filmstrip. It will sort by default as Added Order. You can change it to Capture Time and it will be next to the raw file.

You make those choices in the Toolbar, just below the picture in the Grid view. It you don't see it, toggle it with the T key.

Check my LR tutorials -- its wonderful dovetailing with PS is (hopefully) explained there.

A light just went on after reading your post, undoubtedly I need to use the Save command instead of the Save As command that I normally do. I appreciate your comment very much, that will improve my workflow nicely. I will also check out your tutorials, thanks for mentioning that as well!

Save As should work the same -- just lets you give it a custom name. (Of course, accept the default location.)

You can also rename in the Metadata Panel -- just highlight the filename and change as desired. Everything LR does will update the information on the HD. (But not the reverse...)