[barrymoir]

Hi

Was playing around with a shot today, i added a blur to the black area as i was too focused on the fabric and u could see the pattern, i boosted the colours slightly and somehow got a slight halo effect that i like.

Just wondering if it looks ok, i spot the highlight on the leaft but havent been able to deal with it, still not quite sure about the composition of it though.

[Steve]

The rose itself is fine but the problems that remain with the picture and that you already know about are too distracting to leave as they are.

As you have mentioned, the pattern on the cloth is still visible especially on the lower right hand side of the shot, also as that is an area of open space your eyes notice it in the blank. The lighting conditions have also served to highlight specs or tiny reflections from the cloth too. This area needs more blurring applied and if that doesn’t cure both problems then you should use the clone tool to remove the highlights.

The second issue is the white reflection on the leaves witch again is distracting when compared to the lovely deep smooth tones of the rose. If you shot in RAW and have access to suitable software you can back off just the highlights and reprocess the file, if not you are looking at the dodge and burn tools in PS or maybe even a soft brush set on very low opacity to paint it out slightly.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a strong picture as is, but there are faults which give you room for improvements and with it being in this section of the forums ,that’s were I am directing my attentions.

[barrymoir]

Thanks very much Steve, much appreciated.

[Steve]

Your welcome

As a side thought, you could always isolate the rose head, apply a large radius feather and then darken the rest of the frame to help blend everything else, if you do it right it might even add to the dreamy effect that you have already created.

HTH

[Fangman]

I see you have the problem I get with bleed from the main subject when you blur. Sometimes this adds to the effect, but can also be a pain. If I have done a selection and then added blur to the "inverse" I increase the size of my "selected" image and re-paste it. This keeps the background but hides the halo.

It is a lovely image ready for next year's Feb 14th if you remember!

[SammyC]

Try adding vignetting to it, that should tone down the edges somewhat.

[Ally]

I love the way the photo has a almost "dream" effect about it. But theres something about it that i can't put my finger on that just dosen't put a smile to my face.

[Gandhi]

I think steve has offered pretty much all the PS advice, I would just like to add though that it 'may' be possible to use the magic wand to select the background and then using the the 'select blackpoint' eyedropper tool, select the lightest tone. It should then ull the whole background back to black. It's aved my bacon a couple of times when my so called black backdrop has been somewhat grey.

One way to avoid this in future is to deliberately underexpose the shot, your cameras meter is set to aim everything to 18% grey and as such it can fool meteres sometimes.

Compositionaly (and remember this is all subjective now) I would probably have rotated the rose so the stem leads your eye into the icture from the bottom left, with the centre of the rose then sitting on an intersection between two lines of thirds.

HTH?

P.S. you don't have the 'edit' option ticked in your profile otherwise I'd have a fiddle and show you what I mean!

[barrymoir]

Hi thanks for advice and help, feel free to edit away, i keep meaning to check that box.

[barrymoir]

I had a further play today using psp, not sure if its overkill or not.