Well, I’ve been having some fun recently with my processing. I don’t know if I’ve been just feeling winter blahs or is it that I just feel the need to do something new, but whatever it is, I found some new inspiration by trying something different in my processing.
My first go to, in my workflow is always Lightroom, and quite often after that, OnOne Software as well. In the past week or so, I’ve been having a whole lot of enjoyment experimenting with many of the Topaz Plugins, like Topaz Impression, and Topaz ReStyle. In this post I used Topaz Impression.
I have created special galleries for my “Photographic Art” and “digital Painting” here in these links. I have just a few images at the moment, but am adding to them pretty quickly. You can check out these here too for more Photographic art . It’s not that I plan to be doing this form of processing all of the time, I don’t. It will never replace my normal processing of my photographs, but it did give me a change to have some fun, look at things from a new perspective and have a new creative outlet, especially during this winter.
In this first image you’ll see the lovely Charlevoix Michigan Marina, it’s a very peaceful image in my opinion. I love it as a simple photograph, it has a nice soothing blue color and quiet mood. If you’d like to see other images of Charlevoix as well as other Small Town images you can find them here in The Small Town .
I decided to take that same photograph and do something different with it. I brought into Topaz Impression, and chose one of the oil painting presets in order to give me a starting point. After that, I used sliders to make a lot of adjustments, including those to paint saturation, type of brush used, brush stroke sizes, paper or canvas texture, vignette, and many more.
My final product was this beautiful digital oil painting! I kept the blue tones, the shimmer of light on the water, and the feeling of motion on the water as well. I added lots of texture, brush strokes and a slightly fanciful feeling.
The same image above, but processed as a digital oil painting.
I had also been doing a lot of processing of spring buds, blossoms and flowers recently. These were images from last year when we had an abundance of blossoms!
In this first image a simple photograph of crab-apple blossoms of varying hues, and stages of blooming, with a lovely bokeh in the background, I first processed this ever so slightly, in Lightroom. It didn’t really need much work in my opinion, it was a beautiful floral in pink.
On the spur of the moment one evening, I decided to turn it into a digital oil painting. Again, I used Topaz Impression and one of the Oil Painting presets as a starting point. I did a lot of experimenting with the sliders until I came up with what I feel is a lovely image that has a lot of color, depth, and a feeling of movement.
I know many of you have tried this type of processing before, and there are also some of you would never try it, as it feels to be untrue to the original photograph.
I would enjoy hearing your thoughts, feelings, and experiences with your processing forays and journeys.
In the end it is up to each of us to find new ways to keep inspired, to get our groove back, or maybe just try something purely for fun.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these images and might even be inspired to try something new yourself! 🙂
Lovely colorful pink crab-apple blossoms from last spring.
The same image as above, but processed as a digital oil painting.
