Dusty Rose

[Diane Miller]

There is a bouquet of dried rose buds in our younger daughter's old room (now a guest room). They were from her boyfriend (now her husband) from high school or college days which would have been 15-20 years ago. I've been doing the photograph-a-day thing and yesterday decided to see what I might do with one of the buds, as a focus stack. It has a nice patina of dust, but I didn't think it showed. Then I did a B/W layer with Silver Efex Pro but didn't like that either. So I added a line effect from Topaz Simplify. I like to do just the lines, on their own layer, so I can blend them to taste with Linear Burn mode and a clipped Curves to tweak their strength. I reduced the opacity of the B/W layer to let some of the color show and felt that was good enough to justify my ownership of a camera for today.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Diane, I like the textures that you created and the subtle colors of pink. I'd like to see less of a transition in the stem - would probably prefer the sharper top part or at least not quite so abrupt a transition to oof bottom part. Brave girl - photo of the day thing.

[Jackie Schuknecht]

I like it. If it were mine I would be throwing textures all over it, but that's just me. I am amazed it has any colour left in it. Always good to challenge yourself!

[Christopher Miller]

Nice! I like the fine texture and subtle color in the rose. I agree with Cheryl on the stem.

Jackie, I had to smile at your comment about throwing textures all over it because that's exactly what I would do with it too!

[Diane Miller]

The bottom part of the stem is easily altered with the opacity of a coupe of layers. (I don't burn bridges with flattening.) But it bothered me that the stem led my eye out the bottom of the image.

That might be mitigated with textures that have edge effects, but I've always had a thing about textures, that I only use ones I have photographed or constructed myself. I have hudreds of them, but rarely use them. I'll see if I can get inspired to look at some -- thanks!

I don't have enough time to do creative stuff!

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Diane,

Greetings. Yep, everything but the bottom part of the stem... very cool. That Stones tune popped into my mind. Thanks for posting. Good luck with the 365 thing.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Diane Miller]

OK -- tried a texture thing. But not over the flower --don't want to spoil the delicate texture that ts already there.

Also brought back a little more color and minimized the lines.

[Jackie Schuknecht]

I like the repost a lot better

[Wendy Kates]

Hmmm, I like the original better: I think the background texture detracts from the beauty and texture of the rose. In the OP, the rose really popped.

[Christopher Miller]

Looks nice, Diane!

[Diane Miller]

Thanks, everyone! I love it that the paint never dries, but I just hate the decisions. I don't know which one I like best.