I love flowers.  The Hunk bought me a half-dozen of roses for our lovely Valentine’s Day.  I love taking pictures of roses.  LOVE IT!

And I took many.

Over 40 at last count.

But here’s one that I’m going to play with:

The above image is the straight out of the camera (SOOC) image.  This is the image I will play with for this post.

Edit 1: For this one, I added a little sharpening by selecting the motion blur option at zero degrees.  I also upped the brightness and contrast on the rose only.  Not a huge change, but still.

Edit 2: Artsy fartsy.  I used a few different artistic filters here.  First, I started with the wathercolor filter (set at 9, 1, 1), then I added a little Guassian blur.  I topped it off with Pioneer Woman‘s action: Lovely and Etherial.  It’s so romantic, don’t you think?

Edit 3: Let’s just see how romantic we can make this rose look.  Dark tones should do it, right?  And while I’m at it, I’ll darken that background, too.

Edit 4:  Okay, I just discovered the “Lens Flare” option.  I found it under Filter > Render.  This is too cool.

I didn’t know I had this power, but I promise to use it for good.

Edits 5, 6, 7: I toyed with three different filters: Sketch > Chalk & Charcoal, Other > High Pass, and Artistic > Paint daubs > Brush type = Sparkle and crank up the levels

Which edit do you like most?  Why?

Love,