Tiny Red Berries

These little red berries were found growing on a shrub in my yard – they appear after some tiny white flowers fall off of it. This strand was only about 1 inch long and the image was taken with my Lensbaby Composer at F/4 using a Macro +4 Lens. In Lightroom a Scott Kelby Trendy High Contrast Look preset was applied and a lot of time was spent to sharpen the berries using the Adjustment Brush. This image had a lot of noise in the image so the Detail Sharpening Amount and Noise Reduction Luminance sliders were set to 0 so it could be removed more effectively in Photoshop. Once in Photoshop Topaz (see sidebar for website link) DeNoise 6 using the Raw Moderate preset was applied and did a much better job of removing the noise.  This layer was duplicated and Topaz Texture Effects 2 was opened where the Fantasy Land II preset was added. A bokeh texture was inserted into the preset for the 2nd Texture section. In the Masking Enabled part of the Texture section, a black brush set to a Strength of 0.43 was used to lightly remove any bokeh effect from the berries. The Texture Effects layer opacity was set to 91%. On another duplicated layer, Topaz ReStyle was opened and the Swam and Sherpa Blue preset was applied and set to 50% opacity and Screen blend mode in the plug-in and once applied, the overall layer opacity was set to 85%. Just finished up with the Black & White Adjustment Layer set to 56% layer opacity pop the colors and set to Luminosity blend mode, a Red Channel Luminosity Curve Adjustment Layer to tone down highlights, and Nik Viveza 2 to adjust the focus and add a little vignetting. Pretty much my regular workflow. …..Digital Lady Syd

Save