Red Flower-Blue Bokeh

This Canna Lily flower is similar to a bright orange variety I have growing in my front year but this one was at the Hawaii Botanical Tropical Gardens on the Big Island. To post-process, the flower and plant were selected from the background which had lots of shadows and highlights from other leaves nearby that was very distracting. Topaz (for website link see sidebar) Detail 3 Overall Medium Detail II was applied to this layer. Jill Wellington’s Bokeh free 94 textures – texture 24 was added behind the flowers. Once placed above the light blue texture, several rough edges appeared – the flower and plant were selected (CTRL+click on the thumbnail), then Select -> Refine Mask was chosen where Feather was set to .5 and the Shift Edge set to -40. A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer was clipped to the flower layer (ALT+click between the layers so only flower layer is affected) and the bottom leaves’ color was adjusted from bright green to darker tones – the layer was mask was turned to black by clicking CTRL+I in the mask. The last step involved using a Levels Adjustment Layer to increase the contrast just a little and to soften the whole look (Output was set to 60 and flower painted back gently in layer mask to bring out color a little)…..Digital Lady Syd

Digital Lady Syd Related Blogs:
Soft Bokeh Texture for a Flower Image
Happy New Years!