How do I emphasize the flower petal here?

mmroden

Hi Everyone,

I've mucked with this image, but to no real help. I'm trying to bring out the detail in the water droplet cupped by the flower petal, but without sacrificing a lot of other detail:



Or is it fine as is, and bringing out the water droplet is just too much?

Thanks!

RogersDA

Problem I see is that the image has a very narrow DOF (f/5). The water drop that want detail is out of focus in the original.

That said, I did some tweaking. TI extrated the petal, and sharpened the drop. To the overall image I also added an additional filter to "hide" the dramatic contrast when bumping up the sharpness of the drop. It's not perfect, but maybe it helps?

BinaryFx

I can hear Rutt screaming (in his sleep?) HIRALOAM from the other side of the planet!

That being HIRAdiusLOwAMount unsharp masking on a duplicated layer, with lower light halo contribution than the dark halo and perhaps a layer mask.
One could set-up a duplicate USM layer as described here:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/howto_sharpen.html


Regards,

Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/

saurora

I agree with David that the DOF is shallow and the focus is on the upper edge of the petal and the brown small petal next to it, not the water drops. I would try a re-shoot!

mmroden

ah, crud, I see you're right about the focus issue.

reshooting is probably not possible, as this was a flower in someone else's garden.

Ah well.

nikos

Something like this?

mmroden

Yes! That's what I'm looking for! How'd you do it?

nikos

mmroden wrote:

Yes! That's what I'm looking for! How'd you do it?

1. Converted to Lab, new curves adjustment layer, and hit auto. In case of your image, it increased the contrast with more emphasis to the highlights.

2. Merged the layers to a new layer and did the HIROLOAM sharpening technique to the L channel. I kept the radius slider higher than normal to emphasize the shape of the entire petal instead of the details within it. I then added a layer mask to reveal the petal only.

3. Converted to RGB (merged layers)

4. Option clicked on the new layer icon and in the pop-up window I selected Soft Light blending mode and fill with 50% grey. This sets up a non-destructive dodge/burn layer where I used a white brush to dodge the highlights and a black brush to burn the shadows of only the water droplets. This increases the contrast of the droplets thus drawing more attention to them.

HTH,
Nikos

mmroden

delicious. I shall try it postehaste. Thanks!

mmroden

How's this?