Paint me a rainbow...

... with your pretty leaves.

[finished image on my [url=http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/1358743]Kinda Horrigans[/url] journal]

Am so cross with myself for this image. The dark area to the top right was something I didn't really register until I'd taken the shots off the camera - note to self - check images as you take them... properly!

Anyway, details as follows. This is another Lensbaby Composer shot - this time with a heart-shaped aperture and a +4 macro - the heart shaped aperture is around about f/5.6 and was a mistake - I forgot to change it!

There were a few things I did with this in processing. First, with the RAW file I boosted the clarity and then reduced the blacks. Then, opened in Photoshop and then using a 50% grey layer set to soft light blend mode, dodged the right hand side a bit. After that, I cropped it because I just couldn't sort out that rubbish dark area properly! To bring out the colours and warm up the tones I then used a few layers - a levels adjustment layer to boost the midtones - you just bring in the pointers to the edges of your histogram and shift the middle one leftwards a little. Then, a saturation layer, with saturation at +15. Then, a warmish brown radial gradient fill set to overlay blend mode to warm the tones more and soften the edges. After that, a couple of levels adjustment layers (set to soft light blend mode) to pop the colours just a little more. Then, flatten.

To finish - just sharpened the edges. And that was it.

That dark area still bugs me though!

Tip of the Day:
Normally, I don't like to crop my images - I'd rather get the composition right in-camera than mess about with that afterwards. Which is why the above irritates me something rotten because I 'fixed' it by not fixing it at all - well, this article shares my picky perspective on cropping!