Another try at a Japanese peony

[DanK]

Only a first edit, but a little more thought went into this one.

I again used the multiply blend mode, but with a black mask, brushing it only onto the center of the nearly white flower, and reducing the opacity some. Focus bracketing was again automatic. Stacked in Zerene, using DMap with default settings. Lots of tweaking in Photoshop. Comments welcome, as always.

[mugge]

I love it! Just one bit of criticism: that darn green leaf bottom right. It annoys me
Cheers Ole

[Round Tuit]

This is lovely Dan. I agree with Ole, if one were nitpicking, that the floating leaf could be removed.

[DanK]

Thanks, both. Grandparenting the next few days but will put this on the list to return to later.

[Manfred M]

When I see the results in this image, versus the one posted a few days ago, it certainly demonstrates that old axiom that a few extra minutes in set up in shooting can save a lot of time and effort in post-processing. Not only that, but the image tends to be stronger.

I've always found that a minute invested in "getting it right in camera" is worth at least 10 minutes in post.

[DanK]

Thanks again for the comments.

Have a little time before fetching the grandkids, so I did another edit. I removed the offending leaf. I toned down the yellow in the stem areas closest to the opening flower on the right. I increased the luminance of the greens slightly because I want the greens to be a subtle background, not a seeming mistake



Almost everything I post here is from my "test" gallery on Smugmug, which you can find only via the links. This one I decided to put in my public-facing flowers directory, not that it actually matters...