700

I couldn't help myself.... the post title has nothing to do with the subject matter, it just happens to be my 700th post. Wow... how did that happen?

I've been doing quite a lot of machine and hand stitching lately, but nothing to show for it yet. And my fingers and back were getting tired, so I took a Photoshop break. Recently my camera got filled with tons and tons of nature textures, so I thought I'd play with these in contrast to my usual architectural subject matter. I wanted to see where each transformation would take me and didn't have any specific goal in mind, just a pleasing image different from the original photograph.

rock lichen

wacky rock lichen

I solarized, played with hue and saturation, played with brightness, distorted with ocean ripples and played with hue again selecting different sections with the magic wand. Then I cross-hatched and filtered with sprayed strokes.

tree lichen

psychedelic tree lichen

Poster edges first, then saturation, made a copy with an opacity change and shifted it a bit. I think I would love some fabric printed in this for a skirt....Hmmmm....

silty sand

purple silt

Made a copy into a layer, removed sections with the magic wand, turned it, another copy, another turn, removed more portions, merged layers, played with contrast, then the watercolor filter and played with hue/saturation and lightness.

butterfly

Mucha butterfly

Altered the green colors first (too bright), selected the butterfly with polygonal lasso, played with hue and saturation on the butterfly, played with hue on the leaves and filtered with paint daubs. Now for some reason this reminds me of art by Alphonse Mucha, one of my favorites during the high school art years.

yummy blueberries

ghostly blueberries

I made them black and white first, then gave them a purple hue, played with the brush strokes filter, some more with hue and saturation, duplicated three times, flipped the layers different ways, changed the opacity of each layer and hue and saturation, with the magic wand deleted sections of the top layer.

rock with a bit of marble

sage rock

This was the simplest of all transformations. Just played with hue and saturation and applied the watercolor filter.

Well that was fun! Now back to stitching!