Black and Red Butterfly on Colorful Flowers

I'm a little under the weather as I'm posting this, so I won't say a whole lot about today's photo. As we head into the fall/autumn season here, it's nice to look back on the warmer days when we had the opportunity to go visiting the butterflies at the various butterfly houses that we have visited over the years. Thanks for stopping by!

Black/Orange Butterfly on a White Flower

This HDR image is one to which I applied Photoshop's Dry Brush filter and printed off the result on a Shutterfly offer and now have it up on the wall in my living room. For today's image, I thought that I would process it through the stamp filter process and see how it turned out.

Here is the black and white stamp filtered version. When I layered the above image with the colored version, there were all sorts of dark splotches. To get rid of them, I went back to my bw image and erased everything around the flower and the butterfly.

And here is the final result. I still like my original HDR version better, but this one is cool for how it makes the butterfly and the flower stand out (while the background greens... stay in the background.)

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Butterfly on Pretty Flowers (HDR, BW Stamp Filter, Colored)

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Cemetery Cross over the Stone Wall (HDR, Stamp Filter)

One of the things that I especially like in this image is the stonework and how you catch some blue and green hues, particularly in the HDR image on top. I was curious how this image would translate to the stamp filter, figuring that the stamp filter would find all sorts of details - which it did. Between the trees and the rocks, there are so many lines that the background details all blend together, making the white cross stand out all the more. With the color reintroduced in the third image, the colors are not quite as vibrant as in the first image, yet the lined-details in the image are more pronounced.

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Suspended Wheels (Stamp Filter, HDR)

I really liked the HDR image (top) of this buggy and wagon suspended from the ceiling. I thought that maybe the wood - in the buggy and in the ceiling - would make for some interesting lines in the stamp filtered version of the image, which I think it did for sure in the black and white version. I'm not really as crazy about the colorized version in which I layered the HDR image into the stamp filtered image; there's something about it that seems a little too pale. But, I do like the HDR and the black and white version. Thanks for stopping by!

Pretty HDR Butterfly in the HDR Leaves

This post is something of a flashback redux (as the past several weeks have been.) The photo was from 2014, and I cropped it differently when I posted it back then. For today's post, I moved the crop around a little bit differently on the photo. I've added the black and white stamp filtered version and the colorized stamp filter, both below. Thanks for stopping by!

P.S., I'm not sure if that's a butterfly or a really colorful moth.

Blue Butterfly on Fountain (HDR, Stamp Filter)

Today's first image is the stamp filtered image, having erased out everything that was stamped in the image except for the butterfly, giving the butterfly a pronounced part of the image (where everything else is slightly muted.)

This is seen especially in contrast with the HDR image, where the colors are more vibrant, but some of the harsh darker parts of the image are especially... dark.

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Butterfly in the Flowers (HDR, Stamp Filter)

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Black Butterfly with Yellow Stripes

 The first image today is the dry brush filtered image of the black butterfly with yellow stripes.

Next is the black and white stamp filtered version of the image:

And finally is the colorized version. Thank for stopping by!

Butterfly by the Pointy-Leafy Plant (HDR, Stamp Filter)

I like the top image (the HDR image), but it seems a little dark. The stamp filter process that I use tends to lighten images up quite a bit, so I wondered what would happen with this image. 

There are some things I like, but also some things that I'm not so thrilled about with the final result. I like the butterfly and the green plant, although -- maybe some of the yellow could be toned out of the green plant. What I'm not all that crazy about is what happened to the reds and purples in the background of the image, and the orange wire decoration that turned... is that even pale orange? I guess I'll chalk today's photo up to an experiment, with the advice to "keep on trying."

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Butterflies in the Leafy Greens (HDR, Stamp Filter)

I'm fairly certain that I've posted the top image before, but I've sent it through my stamp filter process, to an interesting effect (especially in the black and white version.) First, I really like all of the lined details that are present in the image. Second, the shading is kind of cool. Especially in the black and white image, the shading adds a layer of depth to the image. Thanks for stopping by!

Butterfly on a Big Green Leaf (HDR, Stamp Filter)

First is the hardly processed original image. 

Second is the HDR version.

Third is the black and white stamp filtered version, created from the HDR (which tends to produce lines that are better picked up by the filter.)

Fourth is when the color HDR image (#2 above) is layered back into the stamp filtered image. 

Fifth is when the original image (#1 above) is layered into the stamp filtered image. 

There's not a whole lot of difference between #4 and #5, except that #4 might have a little bit more vibrancy in the color. The yellow shade definitely seems to be stronger. (When I applied the color correct enhancement when blending the original into the stamp filtered, it toned down an overall green tint which shaded the image.)

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Butterfly on the Concrete (HDR, Stamp, Dry Brush Filters)

So, there was an interesting progression for me on these photos. I really liked the blurred legs and shoes in the background of this butterfly on the concrete photo. It looks ok in the HDR and the Dry Brush Filtered photos, and even in the black and white stamp filtered photo. But when I layered the color-HDR into the black-and-white stamp filtered photo, there were some really nasty dark streaks in the background. To get rid of those for the colorized version, I simply got out my eraser, erased away the parts that I didn't like in the black and white (before I layered the colored image in,) and then... voila! In the final image, butterfly on the concrete stands out, while the blurred legs remain subtle in the background. Thanks for stopping by!

Butterfly on the Red Flowers (HDR, Stamp Filter)

The red really went crazy on the red flower in the HDR version of this photo. Taking it back to a black and white stamp filtered image, I was surprised to get as many lined-details as I did in processing this image. Filtering the color back in, it looks a little bit less like the butterfly is resting on a red blob. Thanks for stopping by!

Orange and Black Butterfly in the Pink Flowers (HDR, Stamp, Dry Brush filters)

I really like all of today's images, from the first (the HDR) with its vibrant colors, with the image somewhat slightly blended in its second iteration with the Dry Brush filter, to the third (the black and white stamp filtered version) and the fourth (the colored HDR layered back in to the bw stamped version.) My absolute favorite is one of the top two, as I really like the colors. The butterfly came through really well in the stamp filtered version, but the pink flowers left behind some white space. When these flowers reappear in the layered version, they are really muted, which is cool, because it makes the butterfly stand out all the more.

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Butterfly by the Concrete (HDR, Stamp filter)

I'm not exactly sure what kind of butterfly this is. The first image is the HDR; the second is the black and white stamp filtered image; the third is the colored-stamp-filtered version. I don't have a particular favorite of today's three images; I like them all. I like the vibrancy of the color in the HDR; I like the lines in the stamp filtered version (thought it is perhaps a little dark); and I like the effect that is achieved as the color is brought back in on the colored/stamp-filtered version. 

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