Jayde's Little Corner: This Week's Featured Image

Sunday, February 7, 2010

This Week's Featured Image - Week 8

I know I haven't been on in a few days, but I have really good ~~excuses~~ reasons. Friday was a busy day at work, so couldn't do much there. Then I had to get ready for my date Friday night as soon as I got home. I had a great time. We went out to eat and watched Avatar. Yes, it really is a great movie. I loved the scenery as much as anything. Then Saturday I HAD to go shopping, because my income tax refund came in and I had lots of stuff that I needed (and still need) to do with it. So forgive my absense, but I did actually remember that I am supposed to change my Featured Image today. Here is last week's image.

The flower is a Rose of Sharon (or so I've been told, because I don't know much about plants, trees or flowers except that I love them) from my back yard. It has pale purple blooms and they are truly gorgeous. I started by cutting the flower from the original image in which it was actually centered. I then used Brightness & Contrast to increase the definition, and of course Saturation to enhance the color. The 'drawn' look is accomplished with the Colored Pen tool and I really liked the way it looked with that alteration. Time for the background. I found an older image I took of just some foliage and went through the same process as above, B&C then Saturation. I placed the flower over the foliage, but it seemed too .... something. I just knew I didn't like it. Then I remembered the gradient tools I had and used that to 'cut' the stripes out of the background. I used a purple Gradient Fill on the base, then replaced the cut piece and I really liked the play in color. I then used the Colored Pen tool once again to match the flower and added the shadow behind the flower for depth. I really like this one, I think it turned out very well. As you can see (if you look to your left), I used a cut of this image as my Shop button.

Here is the original images I used, the flower and the foliage.