Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum)

[Anita Bower]

Another photo taken at Ferncliff Wildflower Preserve, Lancaster County, PA.

I was mindful of the comments from my Bloodroot post, and tried something a little different with the bg. I thought the bg for the Bloodroot was a bit too dark. This, may be too bright! I processed in CEP and Viveza, Topaz Detail, blurred BG a bit. Added three textures: "Jewel Chalks" by 2 Lil Owls; "Molten Gold" by pareerica (Flickr); and a bokeh texture by me.

I'm not crazy about the spots as they look like blemishes, but aren't.

[Dennis Bishop]

I'm not sure what spots you mean, but I don't read anything as a blemish. The colors are wonderful -- very fitting for the image. Your bokeh texture works nicely with the lily, probably for a couple reasons, but I think the shape difference helps to draw attention to the lily. This is very nice.

[Diane Miller]

I love the lily, but wish the top petal were viewed just a little from one side or the other, so it isn't centered. But maybe you tired that and centered gave the most interesting look. Flowers can be as difficult to pose as birds, some times.

You got a new camera recently and I don't remember what it is. The effect of the specular highlights in the BG showing the shape of the aperture blades isn't a great feature for a soft flower and is basically a feature of the lens. It may be modified somewhat by focus and DOF. Here's an article about bokeh, which is a complex set of characteristics of a lens. http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/bokeh.htm

When I get a minute I'll dig into it for a refresher on specular highlights -- they are something I always want to avoid.

[Anita Bower]

Thanks, Diane.
One of the many challenges in photographing wildflowers is staying on the trail as much as possible and not crushing other wildflowers and plants.
My camera is an Olympus 4/3, and I'm using a 60mm macro. I think I should try a close up filter or extension tubes.
Are you seeing specular highlights in this image? If so, I should use a polarizer and/or a diffuser.

[Anita Bower]

I'm not sure what spots you mean, but I don't read anything as a blemish. The colors are wonderful -- very fitting for the image. Your bokeh texture works nicely with the lily, probably for a couple reasons, but I think the shape difference helps to draw attention to the lily. This is very nice.

I've sensitive to blemishes or little spots on flowers--I want them to be perfect. The spots on this flower is part of the flower itself.
Thank you, Dennis, for always commenting on my images, no matter how good or not good they are!

[Diane Miller]

The flower is perfect! I was referring to the octagon-shaped highlights in the BG, which come from the lens' aperture blades. The number of your blades is good, as is the evenness of the illumination inside these octagonal areas. The Rockwell article points out some major trade offs in lens design, and it may be that the only way to avoid these shapes is to carry a long stick and knock dewdrops off the BG plants.

I suspect their size is related to how OOF they are but haven't found that explained yet.

OR WAIT -- maybe those shapes came from one of your textures???

[Diane Miller]

Looking again and thinking of your comment in the egret thread (I think) about often wishing for more tools to tame a distracting BG, I did a quick try here with Field Blur -- after selecting the flower with a Quick Mask and inversing the selection to cover the BG. Field Blur is nice because the blurring doesn't bleed across selection edges, the way Gaussian Blur does, and you can choose several points for different degrees of blur in different areas. If you do that with masks, you get a sometimes-unpleasing result in the areas of partial transparency.

But do the Field Blur on a copy of the BG layer and then you can use some masking if needed in small areas, where it will scarcely show any issues.

This is just a quick thought, and I'm still not sure if the octagon shapes were intentional. And of course, you would do this before the textures. Just an idle thought.

[Diane Miller]

I meant to add a link to a tutorial. More to be easily found.

http://planetphotoshop.com/using-fie...photoshop.html

[Anita Bower]

Diane: I apologize for not writing sooner. As you guessed, the shapes did come from one of my textures. I know it was a busy bg, so I'm glad to get feedback on it. I am going to watch the video you linked us to right now, and practice on one of my images. I'll let you know how it goes.

[Anita Bower]

Diane: I followed the instructions for field blur and they worked well. Thanks for introducing me to a new filter. I've shied away from these types of editing because I'm not good at masking, but, I did a fairly good job this time around.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Anita, I was wondering how you and the Oly were getting along I liked the original image and didn't mind what looked like bokeh - I thought it gave it a kind of fanciful look. However, Diane's input (and link) is great - I've never used Field Blur but you've used it nicely and I like the repost as well.

[Diane Miller]

Diane: I followed the instructions for field blur and they worked well. Thanks for introducing me to a new filter. I've shied away from these types of editing because I'm not good at masking, but, I did a fairly good job this time around.

Drawing masks is so much easier with a Wacom tablet, but there are many ways to create a mask with selections -- often the humble Quick Selection tool is enough, with maybe a slight retouch of the mask by zooming in and using the brush tool.

[Anita Bower]

Drawing masks is so much easier with a Wacom tablet, but there are many ways to create a mask with selections -- often the humble Quick Selection tool is enough, with maybe a slight retouch of the mask by zooming in and using the brush tool.

Thanks. I suspect that practice is the answer.

[Anita Bower]

Anita, I was wondering how you and the Oly were getting along I liked the original image and didn't mind what looked like bokeh - I thought it gave it a kind of fanciful look. However, Diane's input (and link) is great - I've never used Field Blur but you've used it nicely and I like the repost as well.

Thanks.
I'm learning my way around the Oly. So far I'm happy with it. The only surprise is that I have to use DeNoise on most of my images. Did you ever find a book on how to use it?

[Dennis Bishop]

Anita, the Quick Selection tool is where I go first for almost all selections, and it's sufficient most of the time (although I sometimes feather or expand it). There are times when something more powerful is needed. I use Topaz ReMask but only after selecting with the Quick Selection tool and adding a mask with the icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Then -- with the image thumbnail (not the mask thumbnail) for the masked layer selected -- I go to ReMask. The advantage of doing that is that much of the selection work needed in ReMask or whatever you'd use is already done. It's a great time-saver.

[Anita Bower]

Anita, the Quick Selection tool is where I go first for almost all selections, and it's sufficient most of the time (although I sometimes feather or expand it). There are times when something more powerful is needed. I use Topaz ReMask but only after selecting with the Quick Selection tool and adding a mask with the icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Then -- with the image thumbnail (not the mask thumbnail) for the masked layer selected -- I go to ReMask. The advantage of doing that is that much of the selection work needed in ReMask or whatever you'd use is already done. It's a great time-saver.

Thank you for this tip. I'm experimenting with Quick Selection now.

[Nancy Bell]

I never thought I would get good internet connection from Svalbard, an island hundreds of miles NORTH of Norway! Anyway, I totally love the visual immersion into yellow! Because the flower is so delicate I prefer the 2nd version without clear background details or texture. I didn't know about Field Blur, and thank you Diane for the info!

[Diane Miller]

It is usual for a smaller sensor body to have more noise than a full frame or even an APS-C . If I remember right, your sensor is a micro 4/3, which is 1/4 the area of a full frame, which makes the individual photosites smaller, or else you have a lot fewer of them -- or both. Smaller sites collect less light and therefore have a lower threshold for signal compared to noise.

But these days that is much less of a penalty than it used to be. The best way to minimize noise is to overexpose as much as you can without blowing out whites, and then reduce exposure in the raw converter. That will give cleaner darks and mid-tones. And using Adobe Camera Raw you have a lot of leeway for adjusting tonalities -- if you balance power and ease of use, it is the best converter. (Although I find the interface in Lightroom easier to use, they are the same engine.)

And noise reduction in PS is now powerful and sophisticated. The best tool I have found for noise (and the easiest to use) is Google/Nik's Dfine. And it's FREE now! You can download the whole suite and it will install in PS and be available in the Filter menu. (Do a re-start after installation, though.) It will de-noise a BG and leave fine feathers on a bird almost untouched. Amazing. It makes a new layer so if you need to mask it over some areas, it's so easy to paint on a mask.

A tip for Quick Select: Zoom in and use a smaller "brush" to get edge areas it may have missed. Holding the Alt key will let you un-select BG areas that may have crept in. Then after making the selection, hit the "Q" key to see the selection in red (or you can change the color if needed, such as for a red rose where it's hard to see). Zoom in and go to the Brush tool and choose a size that is appropriate and paint as needed to refine the selection. A black brush paints red, a whit brush erases it. The "X" key changes between black and white. When done hit Q again to go back to the selection. (A mask and a selection are different manifestations of the same thing.)

Now you're ready to smooth out the mask as Dennis suggested. I usually take the easy way out and just go to Select > Modify > Feather but you have a more sophisticated set of choices if you do Select > Refine Edge.


Great idea Dennis had for refining with ReMask. I've always done it from scratch.