I did some peeking around the sycamore patches I found on a few trees in our local cemetery. Did not see any lace bugs, BUT, I did find a few spiders and a couple of other neat things to shoot. So thanks for that tip! I don’t like disturbing these guys who have beat the odds and found a cosy spot to winter, but I only took off a few patches and the few I did find with life, I managed to wedge back into more secure, thicker patches. I hope that will work.
Anyhow, next year I’m definitely going to checking the sycamore leaf undersides. Cheers.
A combination of Topaz DeNoise AI, Topaz Sharpen AI, and back to Photoshop for many different tonal tricks, followed by a final Camera Raw run through, and some layer masking. Any more detail than that would take me too long to describe. Why are you asking? Is it way off from a reference? (Which I wish I had with this one!)
I don’t suppose this is as much of a challenge as some of the others you have done, but I was upset that it came out a little blurry, because I like its intricate color patterns.
As you said, it didn’t look like too big a challenge except…
I got this distinct feeling that this one has been pre-tinkered. I felt like some upsampling had already been done here, or something. I was fighting a foreign algorithm. It just didn’t feel like where I started was what came out of the camera.
In any case, the elves got to work and did the best they could, but to me, it sort of looks like a wooden toy (a sign of pre-tinkitus). Anyhow, here we go…
Before I start, is this a crop of the original shot, or did you just upload the whole image? (I want to make sure I’m working at the best resolution I can get.)
