Week Four. One Four Challenge (March).

It seems as though March has been a big blur. All of my edits have been some hurried flash of whatever I have felt at the moment. There has not been a lot of thinking to them. It has just been, go with the feeling and see what happens.

So for this week, I did a number of steps to get this final result.

Here are the steps that I recall taking in Photoshop CS5:

• Created another layer of the photo.
• Applied a gaussian blur on the a layer, which I placed on top of the original.
• Erased out the center of the flower and parts of the petals that are on the front left of the flower. (This was so they could look more in focus next to the blurred parts.)
• Merged the two layers.
• Applied the HDR toning (details and saturation turned down). (This merges all layers by the way whether you want it to our not.)
• Played with the selective colors to make the flower appear more two-tone red/orange instead of all orange.
• Cropped the image.
• Adjusted the contrast and brightness.

I think those were all the major steps. What do you think?

Now, compared to the other weeks, which do you prefer?

March Original

Week 1 ~ March

Week 2 ~ March

Week 3 ~ March

If you are unfamiliar with the One Four Challenge, make sure you check out Robyn’s post this week. Just click on the blog badge below to see her edit and how the challenge works. Then, join the fun!