#sliderssunday

No AI, no CGI, just good old-fashioned Photoshop

This is a true slider, a composite made of my other option for Macro Mondays' "Pastel" theme: a photo of a small round glass flacon (which also would make a pretty vase for a tiny bouquet), mostly clear, and decorated with a beautiful pink and rose banding (stratification? I'm not sure which is the correct word) with dark accents. Those dark, almost black lines in the banding were the main reason why I did not consider using the flacon image for "Pastel" (plus I thought the photo of the toothbrush, my previous upload, looked nicer and also more pastel). But I still liked the image, and the way I had photographed it (as close as possible and with the main focus on a tiny, roundish inclusion in the glass, the "eye"), it reminded me a lot of a pastel planet.

So why not actually turn it into a "real" Pastel Planet and create a space scene for Sliders Sunday? Since I had photographed the flacon against the same white backdrop as the toothbrush, the first step was to black out the background, or rather the bit of negative space on the left corner of the original photo's frame. I started with a dark vignette in Analog Efex, but that didn't look very realistic. Neither did the field of stars which I tried to create with the "Add noise" filter. There is a technique to create a realistic-looking starry space with the Noise filter, but it didn't quite work out for me, the main reason probably being the buggy Photoshop performance due to my now too-old graphics card. In fact, just the other day, after Creative Cloud had automatically updated PS to the latest 2023 version, I was greeted with the message "Your graphics processor is not compatible" (Dang! This means I'll need a new graphics card (etc.) ASAP!), so I had to go back to the previous PS version because that at least kind of still works. But luckily, I found a very easy way to create a field of stars with a custom brush. You can find a link to that tutorial at the end of the description.

In the end, I also decided to use only a section of the flacon to create a whole, perfectly round planet floating in space. The easiest way to make a round shape look like a 3D sphere is to use the "Spherize" filter (at 100%). After adding the moon (for which I used a sunset cloud photo I'd once taken from the balcony), I also added a Lighting effect from the left (please make sure your image mode is set to 8-bit). I also used the burn brush at a large size (midtones at 45% and 25% opacity) to add more of a 3D look to the spheres by painting the planet's and the moon's respective right edges a little darker. The (free) cloud photo I've used to create the nebula is courtesy of "Lemuria" on pixabay. How to make the nebula and also how to add a stratosphere-like glow around a sphere is also explained in the second tutorial. Here are the links to two of the tutorials I've checked out on YouTube:

"Star Brush" (which also includes the Noise filter technique; the video is in German with full English subtitles): Strg/Ctrl+ www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2RKefn5z5U&list=PL4f5dkvCwBQ...

"How to Make PLANETS in Photoshop": Strg/Ctrl+ www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLtvcrS4ph8

Please also make sure to check out the two photos of the flacon in the first comment, the first one was taken by magrit k. :)

Happy Sliders Sunday, Everyone!

#Mittwochsmakro

#MacroMondaysOuttake

#Keepsake

I don't post MM outtakes often anymore, but this time it had been a really difficult choice between two images, and I also didn't want this image to end up in a permanent hard drive slumber. So here is MM choice No 2 that simply didn't make it to the group's pool because it looks a little weird (I like it weird, though), and not as elegant as my official upload. Most of the weirdness here probably derives from the fact that I had taken some photos with the watch placed upside down (and rotated this one to the left twice in LR) because it was easier to get a clear image of the 12 and the moving cursor at the same time this way.

Some of you may know that my Dad's watch had officially been declared "out of order for good" by a watchmaker many years ago and that it had miraculously started to work again when I photographed it for our November 2022 theme "Vintage". Well, I'm happy to say that it still runs happily and steadily, and this so much so that it runs really fast because it apparently always likes to be ahead of (the correct) time – but that doesn't matter at all as long as it keeps working ;)

What surprisingly also still works, is the lume on the hour and minute hand, even if it only glows for a few seconds after being activated by a strong light source. In this image, however, the lume glows courtesy of a few Lightroom sliders ("Lightlume") because it had not even crossed my mind to activate the lume during my MM Keepsake photo shoot. To make it look glowing, I masked the lume part, increased the whites, and tweaked the tone in the white balance menu. The fan-like effect on the moving second hand once again is a result of using the in-camera Live ND filter. And the colourful texture in the upper left corner is the Nato strap I keep the watch on. The watch has an unusual 19mm lug width and curved spring bars on top of that, and an 18mm Nato strap was the easiest way to fit it with a fresh-looking new strap (ordered from Esprit Nato in Paris because that's the only store that offers almost all the different colours and patterns a Nato strap can have with gold hardware).

Happy Mittwochsmakro, and happy hump day as well :)

#MacroMondaysOuttake

#Tile

#Mittwochsmakro

So this is my other option for the Macro Mondays "Tile" theme. It's a little more subdued and not as eye-catching as my MM participant (in the first comment), but I still like it. The "wobbly ground" look of the single tiles that are held together as one big square tile by the reinforcement fabric on the back reminded me of tile puzzles in computer games or the traps one might find in movies like Indiana Jones or The Mummy – step on the wrong tile first, and everything comes tumbling down or the hero(ine) breaks through the floor. Not my favourite type of puzzle in adventure games because I absolutely hate it when my character "dies" and it's game over, or I have to retry over and over again (or ask a walkthrough for help).

This, too, is a single shot. I had placed one of my colour filter glass jars underneath the tile to create the "wobbly ground" look and make single tiles protrude. The light setup was pretty much the same as for my MM photo, but here, I tried to create yellow/orange highlights only on the tiles' protruding edges.

Happy Wednesday Macro and happy hump day, everyone :)

#Mittwochsmakro

My Macro Monday "Dutch Angle" outtake, the furry autumn leaf of unknown ID. I didn't choose it for MMs because while I clearly photographed it at a Dutch angle as one can see from the stem, the leaf's shape somehow "evened" the tilt out again which somehow defeated the theme's purpose for me.

The leaf is almost 4 cm wide, wide enough to comfortably place my small LED flashlight behind it so it would nicely illuminate the dense covering with trichomes without being visible in the photo. In-camera focus stacking already looked nice but stacking the 15 ORFs in Helicon Focus (method A, R7, S3) looked better because it yielded a crispier, more detailed image.

If somebody happens to know the ID of this fairly succulent, furry little leaf, please let me know.

Happy Wednesday Macro, Everyone!

#Mittwochsmakro

#WednesdayMacro

As promised, here's my Macro Mondays "Shell" outtake. It's the same snail shell as in my official photo for the theme, but this time, it's a small detail of the shell's underside. While taking the MM photos, I noticed that this particular shell has a tiny extra hole next to the actual hole/opening. It took me a while to find info on that particular part of the shell, and what we are looking at apparently is its umbilicus. The search also helped me to identify the snail species this shell once belonged to: Neverita josephinia, a member of the moon snail family, and a predatory sea snail native to the Mediterranian region, so it's most likely that this shell is a souvenir from a holiday at Italy's Adriatic Sea when I was six, but Croatia is also a possibility.

When I looked through the viewfinder, the Laowa set to 2x magnification, this part of the shell reminded me of the unique and very special stone formations of Antelope Canyon. Well, looking at the image today, I should admit that it also reminds me of a tongue of sorts, so maybe the snail that once occupied this shell was a Rolling Stones fan ;)

Enjoy the rest of the week, dear Flickr friends!!

This is a Macro Monday's outtake after a day of shooting many props and coming up with nothing! Look closely and see the airplane sketched behind the glass. Better luck next week!