a glass half full of rain

[Dennis Bishop]

Getting rained on in July was good for the plants. And good for photo opps. Who needs flowers on the columbines when this happens?






Nikon D3s, ISO 200, f/8, 1/50 sec, 105mm macro lens

processing highlights

• A single photo was shot, but the exposure slider was used in Adobe Camera Raw to give a 2 EV bracket on each side. processed in Nik HDR Efex
• flipped horizontally for composition
• Topaz Simplify -- saved watercolor preset masked off raindrops
• Alien Skin Snap Art -- saved watercolor wash preset, Hard Light blend mode
• Topaz Star Effects -- Luminosity
• Fractalius -- three layers of black & white saved presets; Multiply, Divide, Multiply
• Simplify -- saved B&W edges preset, Multiply
• Snap Art -- saved line art B&W preset, Divide
• A layer filled with the complement of yellow-green was applied with a mask mostly to the left side with Color blend mode.
• Alien Skin Exposure -- applied at the edges and masked off the foreground

[Diane Miller]

Dennis, this is wonderful!! The subtle sparkles are such a nice touch! Soft light and the bit of detail from the processing work together so well.

[Anita Bower]

Beautiful. I can almost feel the wet raindrops. Lush spring green. Love those little star bursts--it is the best use of them I've seen. Great composition. As always, great processing.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Dennis,

Greetings. I like the droplete and particularly the star effect (fractalius?). When you say:

• A layer filled with the complement of yellow-green was applied with a mask mostly to the left side with Color blend mode.

Do you mean you used a fill layer a little on the red side of violet and masked the Color blended effect on what appears to be the duller, less saturated leaves (which is why they aren't the same color as the central leaves)? Probably with a lowered opacity on the layer? I would be inclined to also apply this effect (if I'm correct) on the deeper darker bg leaves in the middle section. I'm guessing that it would add to the three dimensional appearance.

Thanks for posting.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Dennis Bishop]

Thanks, everyone, for your comments.


Michael, the light bursts on the raindrops are from Topaz Star Effects.

Your understanding of what I did with the complement is right. (The opacity was 40%.) I don't remember how I did the mask; Select>Color Range is likely. There's evidence that I modified it a bit with a brush afterwards. It's a light gray on much of the left and a darker gray in the background in those areas you're talking about. I used the complement to obscure the leaves on the far left. They're out of focus, and I thought the composition was better balanced left-to-right if they were toned down. It might be worth changing the mask to add the effect in the central part of the background, but I like the contrast of the dark background, there, with the leaves. How things looked before I added the layer with the complement is shown below. (The Alien Skin Exposure effect was masked only off the foreground leaves. It's not as light as the effect from the complement layer, but it's not all that much different, and I usually try to have the left side of the image be a bit lighter, anyway, to help keep the viewer's eyes in the image.)

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Dennis,

I played with the complement technique a bit. It occurred to me that it is nearly desaturation but since not exactly a complement (since just one fill color is chosen) some color shifts would occur. I guess I would be more inclined to just use a desaturated layer adjusted for saturation as desired... Below just uses a desaturated layer with a quick mask brush.



If additional violet-red color contrast was desired a fill layer could be used at low opacity in hue blend mode with mask brushing to shift the colors where desired.

Just some ideas.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Dennis Bishop]

Thanks, Michael. I'll pursue that and see what happens. Sounds like a good idea.

[gary ellwein]

Dennis, I like the basic simplicity of the image. Thanks to you and Michael for the discussion concerning the desaturation of the bg leaves.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Dennis, I love the image! And I appreciate the dialog with Michael that followed.