flowers & plants Wild Vine & Flower

While I was showering this morning, I notice a wild vine growing on my

fence. I had been struck by the layered leaves before and had made a

mental note for possible image. Today however, along with the

beautifully shaped and layered leaves was a yellow flower. The flower

was very small, about the size of a quarter, but it stood out

beautifully against the layered fancy structured leaves. The first

thing that I needed to do was make a selection of the flower and vine

,as the fence distracted from this delicate beauty. I selected color

range as my tool, as it would be the easiest to obtain this difficult

selection. It worked like a charm, using the + eyedropper to include

both the green and yellow and the fuzzy slider was fairly quick. There

is always some clean up, which is easily accomplished with the lasso

tool and the shift (add) and Alt( Remove) keys. I reversed my

selection, and filled with black. A simple curves layer added the

contrast and two gradient layers darken the bottom and top,

accentuating the center part of the image. I used a Hue & Saturation

layer to saturate the yellow and greens. I think this came out very

well and displays an elegance for a simple garden weed. The bonus was

the ant on the flower.

This was what I started with.

It seems to glow in the dark. Well done.

A new free plug-in called Pixel Bender is available for CS5. It quite amazing, the attached file shows the Oil Panting effect.