Mosaic Street Paint Design - Texture & Altered Art opportunities.

 Another texture find.  This time I found a crosswalk that the white paint had cracked. I took it close up but do not remember if I used macro setting.   The image on the left is the original with some increase in shadow & midtones plus sharpening.  The image on the right I chose the sketch filter in PSE 11 and selected "stamp" which inverted the colors.  If I had selected another color in the color palatte it would have selected that for the white in the default. Orange gave me ideas for halloween background.  I also played around with the paint bucket trying to fill in various colors.  So many opportunities to use this in digital art images abound. .  

Magnolia Macro Sepals and Blossom Conversion to B & W

Magnolias are in bloom in NC.  Have tried different times of day and different poses.  The image on the left was actually one I picked and used a dark green cloth to lie the magolia blossom on it.  This allowed me to pull away the front petal so I would have a macro shot of the sepals.  Tbe petals are
really a soft texture. The image on the right was orginally taken in color.  PSE 11 used post processing.  I cropped, used clone tool to remove some dust artifacts, convereted to
B & W - then increased the contrast more after the B & W conversion as I wanted more black tones.
May have done too much.

Ice Pattern 1 - Variations with Post Processing in PSE 11

I managed to capture a few ice designs on my iPhone the last few days...brrh!!   Difficult to push the buttons with gloves in place. The intention was to try playing with some post -processing adjustments. The darker blue less distinct pattern is the original image without editing.  It was late eveing and very slippery to attempt the shot--thus the blue cast which I did not really see when I captured the image.


The right image was a lot of different filters in PSE 11 and you might not be able to tell it originally was texture from ice patterns.  It ended up looking black and white. It took about 6 different filters/adjustments to obtain this effect.   Step 1.  Adjust Brightness and Contrest.  Step 2.   Lighten/Darken Shadows.  Step 4. Sharpen  Step 4. Change to B & W.  Step 5. Pencil Sketch Effect - Line Drawing. 6. Low Key



The image lower left I just changed light/dark sliders and did a moderate amount of sharpening to get the texture and lighter color I wanted. 

Winter Shrub with Pink Flowers (Evergreen?) Plus B & W Version

I never promised that every photo I posted would be good. "Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder". Meaning just because I like it does not mean everyone else is going to like it. So, I am giving my self an A for creativity but a D to my iPhone 5s and my capturing of the image I wanted. When it snowed I decided to go back to the plant I saw on Sat. and take a bucket of snow and trowel with me (preplanning). I took some images which looked OK in my LED screen I thought? Not everything in the image is in the same plane and I actually got too close to the flower to be tack sharp. Some crystals of ice are in focus and have been sharpened. I did have to crop the image and still have an area of snow blown out in the lower Left corner. I have no idea what this plant may be. The needles suggest it is a low growing everygreen shrub. It was maybe 4 inches high and 8 inches in diameter. I also tried to see how it would look in black and white which shows that the flowers may have been frozen since more translucent.