Midnight Frack

[Kerry Perkins]

Digging a little deeper into Fractalius... :cool: (Love the new smileys.)

Blended the original image with a fracted version, did some color tweaking, then used Topaz Detail to get the sharpness. If you haven't tried Detail for sharpening, I highly recommend it. Instead of using a preset to start with, use the default settings (everything nulled out) that you get when you open the plugin. Add a bit of small detail and maybe some small boost and you'll be amazed. :) Also used selective color to add black to the background, which was already very low key.

[Roy Priest]

Kerry, that is an excellent use of that filter and the Topaz detail takes it over the top. One of the nicest I've seen. Thanks for the tips on using Topaz detai.

[denise ippolito]

Kerry, I like the pose and the colors in the water are lovelt. Nice work w/ the fract and Detail.:)

[Indranil Sircar]

Nice pose and light, Kerry. Love the fract work.

[Dave Woeller]

An amazing image. Well balanced, and for my taste, a perfect crop. If you don't mind my asking, did you also mask back in the eye area, or was that not affected as much in the fract filter?

[Kerry Perkins]

Dave, I forgot to mention that I did mask the face and bill area. I also used a fairly large brush at very low opacity (5%) to lightly brush in some detail in the water. I really like using a digitizing tablet and pen for this kind of work.

Thanks for comments all!

[Paul Lagasi]

Not sure what the opposite of high key is but this is a good chiaroscuro. The subtle frac effect works very well. Love the scene..TFS

[Christopher Miller]

Very nice, Kerry! Excellent low-key image. Love the lighting and frac effect. Very well done! :)

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Kerry,

This one is very nice. I love the light use of fractalius and the water turned out really cool also. Well done!

[Johan Kruger]

Kerry! This is soo kewl. The color / reflection in the water and the black background with this almost surreal creature posing for the shot. Love your work

[Cheryl Slechta]

Kerry, I like it a lot. I love the reflections on the egret's body and the pose. I kind of don't like the egret's reflection in the water because it's so linear but I love the image anyway.:)