The Rose (or, An Experiment in Photoshop)

[Man of Steel]

Well, I finally broke down and downloaded the free trial of Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended. I think I'm in love with this program. I just hadn't realized how much better it really was than my old stand-by, the GIMP. I'd been wanting to do a project like this for a while; take a photograph of a rose, desaturate everything but the blossom and immediately surrounding greenery, and go from there. I just figured it would be a royal pain in the butt to painstakingly select out the rose itself. But I figured that it would help me get reacquainted with Photoshop, so I said to myself, "No time like the present, aye?" and found me a base picture* (which, yes, I took myself. Yay, no copyright worries!). Man alive, it was a piece of cake! Couldn't have put more than an hour and a half into it, maybe two at the very most, and I took my time trying different things. I first selected everything but the rose and the few green stems/leaves around it, then black and white'd it. Then I inverted the selection, saved the selection so I could come back to it without having to reselect everything, and deselected the green bits, leaving only the blossom. I then tweaked the hue/saturation and the curves until I got the colors just where I wanted them. Then back to the saved selection, only to deselect the blossom this time, leaving just the green parts. After messing around with the curves again, to bring out a bit more green, I then duplicated the background layer, added a Gaussian blur, then set the layer's mode to darken to get the effect I wanted. From there it was as simple as adding text. Finished product: The reason I told you all of this is so that I can some constructive criticism; if, for instance there was perhaps an easier method, let me know! I mainly did this project to get a better feel for the program again, but I'll be doing a lot more of this sort of thing in the future. If you have any tips or suggestions, pile 'em on! And, of course, I'd like any constructive criticism from an artistic standpoint as well. I'm well aware that this particular effect is overdone, but I'd never tried it myself. Anyway, enough of my chatter. Let me know what you think! * Spoiler for Base photograph:

[Pastro]

I like the pretty colorz, it reminds me of lyk...summer daiz

[grasshoppa]

Done use hue/saturation for colour. Use colour balance, much more effective and does alot more than hue/saturation (You can change the colour of midtones, shadows, etc) The rose reminds me of bad cable or tv...that blurry redness. My free trial of CS3 ran out too >

[Xox]

My God! That's great Mos! One of these days I might break down and get it too.

[Man of Steel]

Done use hue/saturation for colour. Use colour balance, much more effective and does alot more than hue/saturation (You can change the colour of midtones, shadows, etc) The rose reminds me of bad cable or tv...that blurry redness. My free trial of CS3 ran out too > Hmm, okay, thanks. That blur is intentional, though. :p Thanks, Pastro, and Xox: Thankee!

[wasup]

First off, about the "intentional" blur... why would you blur the focal point of your image? It makes for not the most pleasing image. Secondly, much easier and more easily correctable method for desaturating background... Duplicate rose layer, desaturate entire layer, then mask it so only rose shows through. You can easily unmask or remask parts if it is a messy job.

[Man of Steel]

First off, about the "intentional" blur... why would you blur the focal point of your image? It makes for not the most pleasing image. Secondly, much easier and more easily correctable method for desaturating background... Duplicate rose layer, desaturate entire layer, then mask it so only rose shows through. You can easily unmask or remask parts if it is a messy job. I wanted an almost dreamy feel to it. Here's an un-blurred copy, for comparison: Honestly, it doesn't seem to make all that much difference. Also, thanks for the tip, that probably would have indeed been easier. Like I said, though, I'm learning.

[wasup]

another easier way to desaturate is create a new transparent layer, set it as mode "saturation" and paint black where you want it to be black and white.