Week Three. One Four Challenge (October).

Welcome to Week Three of the One Four Challenge. This month’s photo has become a fun editing project. This week, I had no specific plan and just kept playing until I said, yep, that is it.

My first step was to play with the selective color option in Photoshop CS5. I wanted to adjust the colors of the from the original.

So I pushed color levers up and down until I came to this.

I didn’t really love the colors so I tried the Auto Color option and then boosted the curves. This was the result.

Next, I added a new layer since I wanted to try something but was not sure how it would look. The new layer makes it easier to scrap the unwanted layer and go back to my last favorable edit instead of hitting the Undo Edit option like 15 times.

So for this layer, I selected these steps: color dodge, CMD/CTL I (for invert), and a Gaussian blur of 60.  Then I made this layer have an opacity of 67 percent over the last previous edited layer. The below shot is the result.

I liked it but wanted to soft the background stems some more. So, I went to the HDR Toning options under Adjustments and decided on the levels that you see in the screen shot below.

I pretty much liked that shot but just added a few more tweaks since I was worried it might start looking a little too over edited. Or maybe it already does depending on your taste.

For the final touches, I cropped the photo some to be slightly more rectangular and then created one more layer where I added the Gaussian blur of 5 to the right side of the photo. This let the flower stand out a bit more and the stems be a little more muted into the background.

And that’s it. What do you think?

To find out what the host of the One Four Challenge did for this week, just click on the badge below. To see other One Four Challenge participants, just search One Four Challenge in the reader.

Happy searching and have a great week.