Friday, 18 November 2011

Day 308

Today's photo is inspired by Lisa Gordon's gorgeous flower shots at Lisa Gordon Photography. In her latest post, she explains how she uses Gaussian blur to achieve a beautifully soft focus effect, so I thought I'd give it a go.


The roses I bought the other day have opened up a lot and are looking beautifully blowsy, although a little wilted around the edges. I set up near a window and used my reflector to bounce light onto the far side of the rose. After cropping the image and adjusting colour balance, brightness and contrast in Lightroom, I opened up the image in Photoshop. I selected the central area of the rose, and inverted the selection. I then used the 'refine edge' tool to feather the selection heavily. Next I applied a Gaussian blur filter. After reopening the image in Lightroom, I 'dreamified' the image even more by reducing the clarity, applying noise reduction, and adding a heavily feathered white vignette.

Thanks for the inspiration, Lisa! :-)

4 comments:

  1. It is BEAUTIFUL, and you are quite welcome dear friend!
    Sending you wishes for a good weekend!

    lisa. xo

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  2. Beautiful. Have a nice weekend. Greetings from Romania

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  3. Thanks, Lisa, and hello, Costin! :-)

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  4. I think you have done a brilliant job here, it looks amazing! lovely and soft and dreamy.

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