Withered thistle

[mistress_elaine]

In which I go all Warhol on your arses and ask how you like the experience...

Last night I made this and posted it to bestshot, a delightful new photo community which all the serious photographers among you should check out.

Comments

[shizunde]

my favourite is the 1st one. in fact i love it, seriously. it's elegant, beautiful, balanced. please, don't remove the shadow: it would be dull otherwise.

yes, death doesn't require bright light it looks like the poor plant is being microwaved. (don't kill me)

the green one is nice too, but once you've seen the 1st version... and the red one is too red.

how did you changed the tones? i have a way of doing it & i'm pretty happy with the results i'm getting.

[mistress_elaine]

my favourite is the 1st one. in fact i love it, seriously. it's elegant, beautiful, balanced.

Thank you. I'm very glad to hear that. And I agree that the first one is the best.

please, don't remove the shadow: it would be dull otherwise.

That's what I thought, but I was curious to hear whether others would feel the same.

it looks like the poor plant is being microwaved.

Heh. Yes, it does rather, doesn't it? Thank God dead plants don't feel anything. :-)

the red one is too red.

I think I agree. It looked nice while I was doing it, but looking at it now, I wish I'd made it lighter and browner. I'm definitely going to try that later.

how did you changed the tones?

In the most basic way I know. After taking the whole picture through the Levels, Contrast/Brightness and Channel Mixer process, I colorised it through the Colour Hue/Saturation menu and picked different colours and saturation levels I liked. Then I played with Curves, sharpened the picture somewhat, added a border, et voilà.

So how do you go about it?

i don't like big fonts, sorry

[shizunde]

this is a tip i read in a comment somewhere -- very useful and simple, and i'm following it.
so,
when i want to make a picture monochrome, i turn it to greyscale, then back to rgb, and then use the curves and change one or two channels. i love it because it's simple, and you can get nice plays of 2 tones, and you don't loose any resolution or contrast. this is how i did this one

the idea is not not desaturating until the end, but turning it to greyscale - because desaturation & hue changes make them loose a lot of quality, it adds a lot of grain, sometimes the pixelating becomes very obvious and the picture looks rough.

for example, let's imagine i was already happy with this picture.
you can make it "golden" sepia or soft blue
you can go wild on green and pink (with only one channel)
or you can give it drugz (twisting curves like a madman

[mistress_elaine]

OK, this is interesting. And confusing. Tell me, do you turn your pictures into Greyscale and then back to RGB immediately, or are there any steps in between (Levels, etc.)? Because going from RGB to Greyscale and back to RGB without doing anything in between (as you seem to describe it here) doesn't seem to make sense to me

[shizunde]

all i know about ps is by trial-error-trial. i just installed and started it - as i do with most things. so, my ways of doing things tend to be "alternative".
well, this guy explained the basis of that, about light, and stuff (?? and i don't even dare guess it now)
no, there's nothing between greyscale & rgb. the point is that you don't loose a quality that you may want later. the difference is subtle, but it is there: greyscale is richer & sharper than desaturated. it is more obvious if you are playing with extremes:
in this picture i did two (extreme) changes in the blue channel, exactly the same values:

*sweatdrops*

[shizunde]

i took me long to answer 'cause i did those pictures right now.

i like your 1st one as i said. colours and all that is your decision. that thing about channels is only a ps tool. i've found it gives me much more control. i also like the curves, because it's easy to working with them... although i don't know exactly what they are.

oops, lunch time ^__^
*celebrates*