Dogwood

[Julie Kenward]

Hey, everyone...I've been off playing around with Nik's Silver Efex software and really getting into black and white photography again. Today I tried something I'd never done before - converting a color image to black and white and then adding a colored texture layer over the top. (I know this is nothing new for many of you but it was new to me and I loved the final result!)

This photo originally had great "bones" to it but the BG was very splotchy and nothing I did made the image quality salvagable. Now I think it's one of my favorite dogwood images of the year. I really like how the black and white seems to peek through the colored texture layer.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Jules,
Has a great old time look to it. I might add a bit of vignette to the top to even it out.....like a printing plate. Have fun with the program and looking forward to the results!

[Catherine Costolo]

Jules, I love it. Did you consider cropping the two bare branches on the right?

[Julie Kenward]

Roman, I'll go back and add that...it must have been partially cropped out. Catherine, I did...I left them after I cropped out two other partial ones. I thought it added more weight to that end. I could really go either way, though.

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Jules, Good to see you here. Though I am not a big fan of texture I like this one. I would have liked a bit more clear air around the flower to our far left....

[Christopher Miller]

Great job, Jules! A nice old timey feel. I love the flow of the branches and the hint of color from the texture. I agree with Roman on the top vignette. What I usually do if I crop an image after adding textures is to scale the texture layers to fit the new crop. Very nice work!

[Indranil Sircar]

Hi Julie, love the old feel to it... excellent use of texture. My only wish is a larger version

[Jay Sheinfield]

Hi Jules,

Nice vintage look to this. I like the play of the flowers. Interesting application of color and B/W...works very nicely.

[Julie Kenward]

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Christopher, great idea on the transforming the vignette layer. I think I read to do that a long time ago and totally forgot about it!

Indranil, if you want a larger version we'll have to talk James into a larger file size...I had to cut it way down to get it to fit. It looks pretty good in the 10" x 16" size though!

[Indranil Sircar]

Indranil, if you want a larger version we'll have to talk James into a larger file size...I had to cut it way down to get it to fit. It looks pretty good in the 10" x 16" size though!

Hi Julie, you can set the size to 800 for length and width and file size to 200 in 'save for web' option which is the maximum allowed on BPN.

[Indranil Sircar]

The max supported is 1024 and not 800. Here is the instruction and a repost with the resized version...

[Brendan Dozier]

Very nice image and processing on this Jules! Nicely framed and the B&W works well! Indranil's larger repost really helps to appreciate it more. Well done!