The Mighty Bat Flower

This unusual Bat Flower taken at the Harry P. Leu Gardens in Orlando, Florida, is an image I have wanted to post-process for a long time. I keep expecting a little Batman to come flying out of its center! It was a little tricky since it has such unusual antennae-like strands coming out of it, and there was a lot of light issues on the original image. The actual flower has a more brownish tone. I originally post-processed it set to the actual color, but it looked pretty boring. Therefore, I took a little artistic license and changed it to some of the purple shades already in the original image to give it a little pop.

There was mainly just a lot of clean up on this flower. A Selective Color Adjustment Layer and a Color Balance Adjustment Layer were used to adjust that color discussed above. Nik Viveza 2 was used to get the highlights on the flower just right and to darken the edges. A Green Channel Luminosity Curves Adjustment Layer was set to Luminosity blend mode at 73% layer opacity to mainly adjust the contrast on the actual flower. A Matt Kloskowsky Vignette (see my How to Create a Subtle Vignette blog) was applied as a last step. Not that much – just a lot of clean up! I think this is one of the most interesting flowers I have ever seen!…..Digital Lady Syd