Some Vintage Zinnias

Just playing with my Zinnias. I was trying to a vintage, wallpaper feel behind them. I actually opened Topaz (see sidebar for website link) photoFXlab from Lightroom. Here are the steps completed: Applied Topaz Clarity – SJ Illustrative Look – with a few adjustments, duplicated layer, set Dynamics slider to 9 and Saturation -17, duplicated layer, enter Topaz Adjust and apply my Rick Sammon Spicify Soft Artsy, back in photoFXlab the Adjustments settings stayed on this layer, duplicated layer, duplicate layer, in B&W Effects applied SJ_Quad_DkB_GR_Yel_Wh preset, an exited the plug-in to Photoshop. Just a few steps here. Guess what I am trying to show is that there is a lot of versatility here with photoFXlab. Once in Photoshop some clean up was done and French Kiss Studio Selections 3 White Wash texture was applied (I use this texture a lot and it is in a very reasonably priced set). On the white was I used Brush Lovers Art Flowers 2000 (liked the brush best when applied directly to the French Kiss WhiteWash texture – just looked better). This brush was set up as a preset – had to select the dark red color 4e322e and dark green color 3c3e38. In the Brush Panel I turned on Shape Dynamics, Scattering and Smoothing, Size  394 px, Spacing 434% and then Color Dynamics was added and size changed to 201 px. A layer mask was added to the layer to lightly brush out texture from the flower, but leaving a little to keep the grain intact. A Curves Adjustment Layer was clipped to the texture to bring out the cool texture a little bit more. 2 Lil’ Owls Studio Color Bokeh Grunge Set 4 (see sidebar for website link) was applied at 50% opacity and in the layer style, the Blend If This Layer’s white tab was set to 164. The last step involved adding two New Layers where just a couple strokes were applied, one layer using green and one the dark red color to add a little grunge feel to the image. The brush used was Nakatoni Custom Brushes texture brush (does not appear to be available anymore but any soft grunge brush would do). The preset settings are listed below. ….Digital Lady Syd

Here are the plug-in preset settings used if you are interested:

Topaz Clarity SJ Illustrative Look settings: If you would like the illustrative look, here are settings: in Clarity Section – Dynamics: Micro Contrast 1.00, Low Contrast 0.28, Medium Contrast -0.50, and High Contrast 0.06; Tone Level: Black Level 0.61, Midtones 0.14, and White Level 0.72; and in Hue/Sat/Lum Section – Hue: Only Red 0.16, Yellow -0.05, and Green -0.17 were adjusted; Sat: only Green -0.22 and Overall -0.45 were adjusted; and Lum: Only Orange 0.36, Yellow 0.89, Green -0.91, Aqua 0.30, and Blue -0.09 were adjusted.

Topaz Adjust Rick Sammon Spicify Soft Artsy settings: Adaptive Exposure section: Adaptive Exposure 0.50, Regions 25, Contrast -0.56, Brightness -0.13, Protect Highlights 0.03, and Protect Shadows 0.03; Details section: Strength 0.87, Detail Boost 1.15, Threshold 0.12, Radius 25.00, and Sharpen 1.01; Color section: Adaptive Saturation 0.33, Color Regions 10, Saturation 1.00, Saturation Boost 1.00, and Hue 0.00; and Noise section: Suppression 3.24, Amount 0.51, and check Use Topaz DeNoise.

Topaz B&W Effects SJ Quad DkB_Gr_Yel_Wh settings: Quad Tone: Color 1 Region: Color (R1/G1/B12) and set to 15.08, Color Region 2: Color (R63/G78/B85) and set to 143.9, Color Region 3: Color (R216/G211/B129) and set to 227.5, and Color Region 4: Color (R255/G254/B237) and set to 255.0: and Transparency: Overall Transparency 1.00.