From the Australian section of the University of California at Santa Cruz Arboretum.
Painting with filters: Glowing edges, posterization, gaussian blur... Needed to blur out some of the posterization to fit into 200K size (posterization puts a stipple pattern that adds a lot of size).
Love this, Michael! Amazing detail and color in the flower. Love the filter effects you used, they give kind of a glowing look to the flower. I might just take off a little bit off the top. Very nice work. :)
It does have similarities to Orton inasmuch as it combines a sharper-contrasty layer with a blurred layer. Glowing edges and the posterizing bump up the contrasted edges quite a bit (the glowing edges merge darkens the bg here because all the edges are in the flower, I think overlay blending mode, but I'm not sure). That in itself gives a glowing appearance. The combined blur with the perimeter straight petals probably is more or less Orton in that area.
I actually kinda like the un-postable full res tif version better (no blur, contains a stipple pattern over some of the background, problem going to jpeg, would need a lot of work to fix for low resolution web display), but the blurred version works for me too in a different way.
I like the effect you achieved! The details in the center are excellent and fascinating. It would be nice for the BG to be a bit more blurred or subdued. Great job--it looks like a glowing jewel.
Australian Flower
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