Happy New Years!

Happy New Years to everyone. I posted this image earlier today and thought I would give you the info on how to create it. The flowers are two of my red gerberas from my back porch that decided to burst forward on the New Years weekend. They are a little crazy looking as I keep moving them into the house when it gets cold and outside again when it warms up! Anyway, here are the steps in a nutshell! After initial processing and cropping in Lightroom, Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Detail 3’s Medium Detail II preset was applied. Next Isabelle Lafrance free Christmas Lights overlay was applied for the bokeh effect. I just used a soft black brush on a layer mask to bring the red gerberas back into the image. Next I applied my free SJ Snow 2 Slight Blur Overlay and added a Pattern Overlay. In another document I opened up my free Smudge Texture and changed the colors to reds, greens and yellows – saved it down as a new pattern (Edit -> Define as a Pattern). Then on the Snow Overlay layer, I created a layer style using the Pattern Overlay and selected my new pattern set to 33% scale – this gives the colored confetti look. I duplicated the layer and Free Transformed it (CTRL+T) – selected Flip Vertical so the colored snow on this layer lines up differently. The bottle is from Mel’s Happy New Years Brushes with a Bevel & Emboss layer style applied along with the fizz. The font is Orial with a Stroke, Inner Glow and Outer Glow layer style added. The last step was a Curves Adjustment Layer to add some contrast. Lots of fun to play with all these effects! Hope everyone has a chance to play in Photoshop and try out some of these fun techniques!…..Digital Lady Syd