THEME: Purple Water Lily

[Chris Starbuck]

An oldie, but I haven't previously posted it, and it fits the theme. Critique away!

The short version: Scanned a "ho-hum" slide of a water lily with ugly dead gray water from an overcast sky, did lots of stuff to it in PS.

The details: 17 layers in PS, in order from bottom to top. (Yeah, it could have been done in half the number of layers, but this was quite a while ago:D.)
1. Cloned out a bunch of distracting stems in the water, and replace the flat gray with a pale blue.
2. Completely desaturated.
3. Merged visible, applied moderately strong sharpening, then applied bas-relief filter.
4. Applied a medium blue tone with a hue/sat layer.
5. Copied just the background from the base layer (1) and blended in hard light.
6. Copied just the lily pad from the base layer (1), at 50% opacity.
7. Copied the lily and reflection from the base layer, blended in hard light.
8. Merged visible, applied stained glass filter.
9. Copied layer 8, applied a spotlight effect on the flower, blended in lighten.
10. Hue/sat layer: +85 sat, -20 lightness.
11. Copied lily reflection from layer 7.
12. Lightened reflection with levels white point at 139.
13. Copied flower petals from layer 7, increased contrast with USM 25/50/0.
14. Copied just the flower center from layer 7.
15. Applied a strong contrast boost to just the petals with curves.
16. Hue/sat layer masked to flower center, +100 sat, +10 lightness in yellow channel.
17. Darkened UL & LL corners.

[Dave Woeller]

I like the bold colors on this, but I'm not so sure about the green in the upper left hand corner (Just my opinion). The backround kinda looks like a huge beehive that's exploded with color. Really neat affect.

[Michael Zajac]

Chris, Very nice colors for the lily and the background. I like the tiny tiled look to the BG. Very nice embossed look w/ an almost foiled look to it. I might crop just below the dark spot in the URC. Looks like alot of steps-but well worth the effort. Fantastic!

[Dave Phillips]

nice color, for my taste would have liked the mosaic tile effect include the flora also.
Thanks for detailed pp

[denise ippolito]

Chris, Nice to have you back! I love the effects and the lighting. The "foil" look is awesome! Great use of the stained glass. A small crop off the top if you wanted. The reflection is such a nice element within the image. Beautiful color combo! Very nicely done.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Chris, hi! I love the mosaic look to the bg and the foil effect on the flowers. And thanks so much for your
workflow - I'm impressed.:)

[Christopher Miller]

Hi Chris, Beautiful image! Love the effects you used and great colors.

[nzmacro]

Excellent the way this jumps out. The colours and lighting are bang on. Nice texture o in this.

Danny.

[Charles Wesley]

Chris,

You really worked hard on this photo. Like the effect.
Thanks for sharing...
______________________
Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL

[Indranil Sircar]

Nice effect and colors. Very good composition.

[Chris Starbuck]

Thanks to everyone for your comments and compliments! Here's a slight rework with the lily pad at UL (and the dark area at UR) removed. I think I do like it better.

[Chris Starbuck]

Dave Phillips,
Here's why I didn't just stop with the mosaic/stained glass flower; not to argue, but just to share my thought process.

You can see on the left (before applying the spotlight) that there's just not much variation of color & tone in either the petals or center, and none at all in the dark reflection; it looked too flat to me, and I wanted some strong dimensionality.

On the right the spotlight effect has been added, and it further degrades the definition in the flower, but I liked the glow on the BG, so in my final version I recreated the flower above the spotlight layer.

[Christopher Miller]

Repost looks great, Chris! I might have left a little more room at the top, but no biggie. Thanks for sharing your thought process.