A Photo a Week: A splash of colour

Good morning from a cloudy Hastings morning.  It is the last day of the third term of the year for my son.  He is in his final year of school and the end is in sight but is coming too slowly for his liking.  One more term to go, with his final exams.   Next year he is off to our local community college as you would call it in America or our local technical institute.  He wants to study computer systems which should be really handy should my computer crash.

This week the prompt from Nancy at:

http://nadiamerrillphotography.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/a-photo-a-week-challenge-splash-of-color/

is a splash of colour.

So last night I played around with this image on both Snapseed and Photoshop Express on my iPad.  With Snapseed I just added a hint of drama with the drama filter.  This really emphasized the centre of the flower.  Then I headed over to the Photoshop app and used the Carmine filter which gave the black and white affect while retaining some colour in the petals.  This is a great filter to use for this affect but it does need a good contrasting colour which would be picked up.

Here is another photo of a camellia.

Initially the colour was a bright orange but I edited it further to get it back to the original pink colour.

http://nowathome.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/a-photo-a-week-challenge-splash-of-color/

Thanks for visiting.

Discovering the gradient map on Photoshop

 

Good morning from a chilly but sunny Hastings day.  The tail end of yesterday’s spring storm.  At least the rain and strong winds didn’t last long, but boy it was a doozy.  Not as bad as down south.  I feel for family and friends caught up in this latest storm.

Soooo, last night I spent some time just exploring Photoshop and discovered the gradient map.  Wow.  Another way to manipulate my images.  This bench at Frimley park was just the image to start with,  The starburst design on the side stands out more than in the original.  I moved onto floral photos.

 

 

The thing with the gradient map is that the colours are limited to what there is so I turned to the colour enhancement to adjust the highlights, shadows and midtones to change the colours.  Basically I went for the affect that I liked for the image and then adjusted the colours.  So it was a matter of trial and error with the different gradient colours as well.

 

It didn’t have much affect on this photo of the moon, other than increasing the contrasts of the contour of the moon.

 

This photo was taken after the storm had abated and while I was talking to my husband outside I noticed the strong light and these reflections.  It took a bit to keep the colours in the reflection but the editing has given the puddle a three dimensional feel to it.

 

I got caught in the rain at Cornwall park but used the opportunity to take some photos of the ripples created by the rain drops on the water.

 

 

With these two photos I really wanted to show up the lines of the water.  That was quite hard to do and I need to work on them more.

 

Finally this is my favourite of the night. By adding the gradient map the background is less intrusive and makes the ferns really stand out.

I find that just by playing around with photoshop and trying out the different functions I am learning a lot.  Plus it is soooo much fun  to change photos into something completely different.  In the camera club I was the only one to manipulate my images with toning, the others were purists.  The photo had to be perfect.  I love going out and taking photos, but the fun really starts for me on the computer.  My next step is to learn how to do word art.

So have fun moving around Photoshop.

Cheers and have a nice day.

Raewyn