Japanese Anemone

Lovely painterly feel, I'd have that on the wall. Would you mind sharing some details of how you get that effect?
 
sirch said:
Lovely painterly feel, I'd have that on the wall. Would you mind sharing some details of how you get that effect?
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Thanks Chris
I can't show the original image because I'm not at my computer today, but I'll try to explain my process.
I start with just the flower shot against a plain-ish white background (there are some brush stores of pink on the white).
In Lightroom I'll take the contrast, the saturation, texture and clarity down a bit, not much, just enough to soften the the overall image.
I then take that image into Photoshop and start adding texture layers. All of my textures are made by me, I like to make the whole image mine, so everything in it was made by me.
The textures are quite simple really, they're just photos of paving slabs, rusty sheet metal, out of focus flowers, Icm flowers, tree bark, anything with an interesting texture.
To get the soft painting look I start with a fine grit paving slab texture, in the blend mode option, I'll use soft light or overlay. I'll adjust the opacity to suit, but It'll be around 75%. I'll then add another texture, probably one I've got if an old beaten up book. Again blend mode soft light, but opacity will be more like 35%, maybe less. Now I'll use a masking layer to remove the texture from the flower and stem. This can take some time, because you need to be quite accurate. I'll have the brush set to 0-5% hardness, a flow rate of 6-9% and just brush away. Sometimes it works better to leave some texture on the subject (flower). This is why I always leave the first textured layer. From then on I just keep adding different textures, maybe 8,9,10 layers. Adjust the opacity to suit, but it's usually quite low 10-20%. I'll copy the mask from the earlier, each time I add a new texture. Sometimes you don't need to add a mask to the texture, you just need to see how it looks.
I sometimes as a solid color adjustment layer of white, use blend mode soft light and an opacity of 5-10%. This can (depending on the feel you're after) give a dreamy, soft look.
I flatten the layers and use gaussian blur of a couple or so pixels, although this isn't always necessary.
I then take the image back into Lightroom and make any adjustments I need to for the final image.
When I'm at the computer next I'll add some images of the different textures I use.
I hope this makes some kind of sense.
 
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