The Flow

This gallery shows the evolution of an abstract/creative image from a photo of a simple leaf.

A Nikon D3x on a camera stand with strobe lights was used. The camera was tethered using NkRemote software. Focus stacking software used was either Helicon Focus or Zerene Stacker. I don't remember which. Photoshop CS6 and Pixel Genius PhotoKit and Sharpeners were used.

Fifteen years ago I would have had fun with this image in a wet darkroom. With the use of Kodalith masks, pin registration and a color enlarger, I could have generated a comparably interesting image. It would have taken a few days and involve maybe fifty exposures of Kodalith film and lots of printing on paper with different colors and masks.

This is a leaf from an unidentified succulent plant. The leaf was about two inches long. This image is the extended depth of field capture of the leaf. That is, a sequence of about thirty pictures was made, moving the focus from the closest to the farthest point of the leaf. Each of these pictures has part of the leaf in sharp focus. This sequence was then combined using software that extracts the sharpest part of each picture and composites an image with depth of field (range of sharpness) greater than would normally be achievable.
Here the extraneous plant material at the top has been removed, the background was make black, and the leaf had significant contrast added with a curves layer. This brightened the image significantly.
The image was desaturated. A sepia tone was applied. This toning turned out to be unnecessary and not used in the long run, but it hurt nothing. A heavy dose of the Poster Edge filter was applied to create the contour lines.
This iteration has several filters applied. I often use the Pixel Genius PhotoKit filters. Here I applied three sharpeners. First a Auto Dimensional Sharpener, then a strong Edge Sharpener, and finally a strong Luminance Sharpener were applied. Combined with the previous Poster Edges, the image starts to develop a 3D appearance. Noticably boosting the contrast and reducing the resulting brightness enhanced the background gradient that progresses from light at the top to very dark at the bottom.
A Cold Tone filter was applied. This obviously yielded a bluish tone. Sampling the gradient shows a modest boost in the blue components, with a very slight green enhancement. Sample RGB triplets, near the top, middle and bottom are (232,233,236), (112,114,134) and (25,26,30). This color tonality is important for the next step.
The previous Cold Tone image was put through a Curve Layer with a Color Negative adjustment applied. The gradient's cold tones became warm tones. An Auto Color adjustment and a Depth of Field Narrow Edges (from PhotoKit) were also applied, just for good measure.
This final version had a tan background layer added to soften the image. When I started this project I did not know what the result would be. I liked the shape of the leaf and suspected the red mottling would do something interesting in the long run.

rickholmesphotos

The Flow