Thistle II

I am never sure whether or not to do these reworked posts or not, but I know that I learn a lot when I can follow what others have done with their images and of course I learned from all the suggestions made here.

In my opinion this image is hugely better due to those suggestions. The major change was cloning out out the grasses that intruded on the thistle, but following that Pat suggested playing with darkening the body of the butterfly.

I used the Nik darken center filter and after seeing the results I also selected just the lower portion of the butterfly body and used the shadows/highlights in PSD to bring down those highlights just a tad. I then burned the bottom third of the thistle into the corner to darken that area. The changes are subtle but I think hugely significant and have raised the quality of this image.

Thanks Bill and Pat for your help. It amazes me that you can look at someone else's image and make such terrific suggestions when I didn't think of them after hours of staring at it. I hope I am learning to "see" better as well as process better.

Many thanks,
Peter