Sepia Saguaro Skeleton

Fun with sepia and layers in Photoshop:

full sepia

half-sepia lights

half-sepia darks

sepia close-up

half-sepia vertical-horizontal montage

sparrow on branch

sparrow-saguaro montage

For more posts with sepia-toned photos, visit Mary T/TheTeach at Sepia Scenes.

Sepia Scenes - Sunset

These sunset scenes weren't particularly colorful, so I gave them some sepia tone. The first one is full sepia, the last two are half sepia. In the last image I also added a layer of crinkled wax paper to the clouds for texture.

In the first one, the opening in the clouds made the sun look like a spot light. I considered cloning out the distant plane and old radio antennae, but I left them alone.

sepia

half sepia

half sepia + texture

To see more sepia images, visit Sepia Scenes, a fun photo meme hosted by maryt/theteach.

Colorful Chirpers

Green-tailed Towhees are large long-tailed sparrows. Spending most of their time under the cover of dense shrubbery, they are more often heard than seen. They make strange catlike mews and noisily thrash leaf litter around looking for food.

Towhees forage on the ground with a quick backward two-footed hop known as "double scratching." They are also said to run like rodents. I think this one looks more like a roadrunner than a mouse.

The scientific name, Pipilo chlorurus, means "colorful chirper." Hiding under bushes, they look drab grey or brown. But their colors become more obvious when they venture out into the sunlight. Field marks are: rufous cap, white throat, black mustache, grey chest and olive-green upperparts.

The books don't mention blue, but I noticed some.

This towhee didn't have a rusty colored cap.

Apparently, their head feathers can move from flat to puffed.

Sometimes they stop their fast foraging to stretch their necks up for a moment.

I don't understand all of their quirky behaviors, but they are fun to watch.
The most towhees I've seen at one time is four. Did you know that the collective name for a group of towhees is a "tangle" or a "teapot?" The group name for sparrows is "host," "quarrel" or "ubiquity."

Surprise Sunrise

I didn't think I could see the sunrise from my backyard. But early one morning I peeked over the wall, between tree trunks, and spied a palm tree way in the distance surrounded by orange and violet sky colors. As the wind gently blew the palm fronds, the view changed. It was like looking into a kaleidoscope. Each moment was fresh and new. Neat!

I snapped this picture. Not a sharp image, but I did capture the shapes and colors.

original image

Then I played around with the image in photoshop, trying out different adjustments and filters. I'm not sure why it's so much fun manipulating photos. Maybe the element of surprise, and the chance to experiment with colors without having to clean up big messes.

mosaic, inverted colors

glass distortion

spin, inverted colors, paint

pinch, extrude

These last two are abstracted quite a bit and barely look like palms anymore. But I think they still the have the essence.

wave, crop, rough pastels

liquefy, crop, paint


cool september breeze
sunrise and palm colors dance
painting a new world

Classical Art Color Match

Have you ever wondered what some of your travel photos or favorite portraits would look like colored with the palette of famous paintings?

I learned about this cool photo editing technique to change the color scheme of photos from unfocusedbrain.com.

The process is simple. Load your original photo and artwork reference image into Photoshop*, then use "Match Color" under image adjustments. The artist's color palette is instantly applied to the photo and then you get to tweak 'Luminance' and 'Color Intensity.'

These are some of the results after playing around with this technique for a couple of weeks. Not all photos and paintings "work" together. This project takes a lot of experimenting, but it is fun! And, there is a practical side to playing around like this. If you want to make a painting, it could be helpful to do explorations on the computer first before committing to expensive art materials.

In these examples I used famous paintings of the masters, but the colors from any photo can be used. That opens up a lot of creative possibilities.

Sunflowers with color palette of Claude Monet's Poplars on the Bents of the Epte 1891

Creek with color palette of Paul Cezanne's View of l'Estaque and the Château d'If 1885

Tree with color palette of Raphael's School of Athens 1510

Bunny with color palette of Raphael's School of Athens 1510

Canyon Rock Face with color palette of Albrect Durer's Self-Portrait 1500

Gary's Visitor with color palette of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks 1942

Track with color palette of Paul Gauguin's Woman Holding a Fruit 1893

Track with color palette of Andre Derain's Boats in Port of Collioure 1905

Cat with color palette of Pablo Picasso's The Weeping Woman 1937

Cat with color palette of Vincent Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night 1888

Bench with color palette of Paul Cezanne's View of l'Estaque and the Château d'If 1885

Bench with color palette of Vincent Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night 1888

Click on any photo to see it larger.

*I used Photoshop CS2, but there might be some free web-based programs that can do this technique.
An article at makeuseof.com explains how to color your pictures like famous paintings with FlauntR.

Dabbling in Motion Blur

I followed this Photoshop Essentials tutorial on how to make a photo look like the Bourne Ultimatum movie poster.

Here's a copy of the movie poster with Matt Damon to show what the effect looks like:





The technique uses a motion blur filter on everything except the subject. Also, the image is colorized, and a noise layer is blended in to give a slightly gritty look.

It can be rather time consuming to get this effect because the subject is masked twice. Once to add blur to the background and again to change the color of selected areas.

At first I didn't think the photoshopped images looked like they were in motion. But after staring at the a blurred image for a few seconds and then back to the original, the original looks surprisingly stationary.

Purposely adding blur and grain to images is a new experience for me. As a beginning photographer, those are the types of things I usually try to avoid. These first exercises in motion blur aren't exactly dazzling, but they have opened up a new realm of possibilities for me.

It is exciting to see what can be done with motion blur. Smashing Magazine shows 45 beautiful examples to amaze and inspire you.

Pixel Magic

Greetings and Happy Cactus Monday!

I've been playing around with this simple Photoshop trick. A single line of pixels is selected and then pulled using Ctrl+T. This technique works vertically as well as horizontally. The stretched sections can be moved, and the canvas enlarged, if desired. These are some of my experiments:

Red Bird Of Paradise

There is something about viewing altered images that gets creative juices flowing. Hopefully I've included enough cactus examples to provide color and design inspiration for cactus lovers as well as art and nature enthusiasts.

Budding Barrel Cactus

Prickly Pear Fruit

House Finches in Red and Orange

March Ocotillos

Purple Prickly Pear

Cactus Wren

Azurite and Malachite

Creosote Seeds

Sunset

I learned about this process from an article by Evad at Colourlovers.com. Click here for some stunning examples of Single Pixel Color Inspiration from Photos.

Visit Teri's Painted Daisies to see more Cactus Monday posts.