Ed Book's Journal

Tree Peony ©2007 Ed Book (all rights reserved - DO NOT COPY) http://edbookphoto.com

©2007 Ed Book

I made a few exposures with the 180mm macro lens but couldn't get far enough away enough for the composition I wanted unless I went to get a ladder so switched to the 24-105 macro zoom and added a D500 auxiliary compound closeup lens. The distance from the petals and flower internals was too great for them both to be in focus even with the aperture stopped all the way down so I made multiple exposures with different focus distances.

The images were downloaded to my computer and imported directly into Photoshop Lightroom where they were initally adjusted the images narrowed to the two I would use and exported into Photoshop CS3.

In Photoshop, I tried the improved Photomerge feature of CS3 to bring both images into one file and align them but found that it also did an automatic blend and I didn't like what parts were used from each image. So, I did it the old way– I put both images in different layers into one file and then lowering opacity of the top layer, I lined up one point common to both layers. Then I chose the Transform command with 'rotate' and lined the center point to swing on at the common point of both images. I then rotated the top image till both lined up where I wanted them. Then I returned the opacity of the upper layer to 100%. The reason both images didn't line up satisfactorily using Photomerge was because when making two exposures with different focus distances, there is a slight change in image size.

Then, because the inside of the flower was darker because it was lit by light coming through the petals and the little opening in the flower, I was able to use a Threshold adjustment layer to select only the inside of the flower in the top layer (I would use the upper layer for the petals–the lower layer would be the flower inside) I used a mask based on the selection made using the Threshold adjustment layer and softened the selection edges by applying a gaussian blur to the mask.

tree peony image layers

Here's an image of the layers palette with all layers when the file size was >6GB. Then, I made curves and saturation/hue adjustment layers and used the new CS3 smart filters so I could go back to what I didn't do with adjustment layers to readjust later if needed for fine tuning prints. Resizing to print at 360ppi at ~24"x30" increased the file size to greater than 6GB and caused my computer to slow way down and it took about two hours for it to resize. It kept stopping along the way to rest and catch its breath, I'm sure. Then, when I tried to save the file, it chugged along again slowly and after generating all it needs to do, refused to save the file because it's greater than the normal Photoshop filesize limit of 2GB. I flattened the file and saved, safely arriving at a filesize about 500MB.

I planted the Tree Peony about 6 years ago and last year we had the first four flowers. This year, we'll have over a dozen flowers before they finish. The flowerrs are about 5-6 inches across. We have more Peony but their flowers are different and the blossoms require ants to open them. I'll photograph them when they're ready.

Peace

Tags: -print available-, flower, macro, nika trail, red, wa, white, yellow