White Columbine (Aquilegia).

This is another image of the white Aquilegia flower that was rescued for me by my wife on one of her walks around the village. I previously published a straightforward version, but it was around the time of the Flickr transfer hiatus so it wasn’t widely circulated at the time.

But this one is totally reimagined for Sliders Sunday. The objective I set myself here was to create colour from very little without resorting to my usual tricks of gradient mapping or filters.

This one was done more or less entirely by mucking about with Curves tool in LAB mode. LAB is like RGB but separates the colour (channels A and B) from the luminosity L, hence LAB. The advantage here is you can mangle the lightness without affecting the colour at all, or vice versa.

Both Photoshop and Affinity Photo allow you to mess with the Curves tool in LAB mode without converting the document from RGB. LAB is used internally by these programs anyway as it is easier for them to process image alterations in LAB - so they convert back an forth internally when you use tools like Brightness or Vibrance.

Forget the theory though - LAB is just a rich playground for toytime :)

This is based on a focus stack of ten images to start with. I’ll post a link to one of them so you can see how far we came.

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Sliders Sunday :)

[Tripod; delayed shutter; natural light indoors. Black card background.
Focus stack of ten images in Affinity Photo.
First the basic set up: Levels to take out the grey background; Unsharp mask and Clarity for sharpening; ordinary Curves layer in LAB mode tweaking the Luminosity curve in LAB mode to get a range of tones.
The colouring and solarisation was done in another Curves layer also in LAB mode dragging the three channels all over the place.
I also needed to tidy up the background using the Inpainting tool.
Finally a simple frame.
It sounds complicated but basically it was just messing about looking for pretty results :) If you’re mad enough to want to see the Affinity Photo layer stack just ask and I’ll work out a way to send you the Affinity file…]

Tags:   Aquilegia Columbine curves LAB LAB curves Sliders Sunday square white

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White Columbine (Aquilegia).

I thought I would provide some refuge for my viewer who tires rather of my Sunday chromatic manglings here is a straightforward monochrome version of the Colours of White.

First it was converted using Nik Silver Efex and then slightly tinted using Split Toning in Affinity Photo which gives a subtle warmth to the image (I used red and yellow I think for the split tone).

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image :)

Tags:   B&W black and white monochrome Aquilegia Columbine split toning

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White Columbine (Aquilegia).

This is another mangling of the white Columbine images. This is based on a focus stack of 28 images and uses Curves in LAB mode, like Colours of White, but also some Split Toning.

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image!

Tags:   solarisation Aquilegia Columbine curves LAB LAB curves white

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White Aquilegia flower.

This year we don't have any white aquilegias in our garden. This lovely little columbine flower was retrieved from the roadside by my wife while she was out walking and given to me photograph (because I like doing that sort of thing). This is the result.

It was actually taken indoors in natural light from a window while resting on black card. This result is a focus stack of 15 images.

I really had problems trying to imagine what the best composition would be for the picked flower. I'm not terribly intuitive. I took quite a few different aspects - this one seemed to be the best of the lot. Ah, well. Try it and see approach again...

Aquilegias get the name from the Latin aquila which means eagle. It looks like an eagle claw... supposedly :)

They are delightful statuesque plants that readily self-sow and have a wide range of colours from dark pink to rich purples, and they can be singles or doubles.

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Flora Friday!

[Stacked and processed in Affinity Photo. A lot of work in curves to get the tonal balance right and enhance the colour.
Also used a yellow/green split tone filter to add interest.]

Tags:   Aquilegia 105mm f/2.8 focus stack Columbine flora petals white flower tone texture stigma stamen nikon z 6 five black background

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