12/18/2015 - A Christmas Rose

The Daily Texture for 12/18/2015
​A Christmas Rose

Like this texture?  Buy it here.  Commercial Use OK.

Today's Daily Texture is filled with wonderful golden tones, along with some splashes of rose red and a touch of light olive green.  I had a vision here of what I wanted to do with this one - I wanted a dog holding a rose.  Looking through three years of dog photos, I can't believe how difficult it was to find a dog with his/her mouth closed so I could insert the rose!  I finally found a dark colored Cairn Terrier in the perfect pose.  

As an added bonus, I'd photographed a light colored Cairn Terrier at the same time, in the same light.  So...I got more adventurous and decided to add this second dog into the art.  

​Both photos were beyond horrible.  Too much noise.  Weird lighting.  The kind of stuff you get when you're photographing a dog show indoors where it's about as difficult on the photographer as it can get! I had to make a lot of adjustments on this one.

The art ended up being a composite of three images - both dogs and the rose, paired with the texture as a background.  I used Topaz Lens Effects to play with lighting on both the dogs.  After merging, I darkened the area around their feet more to ground them, since I had masked away a large portion of the weird looking floor.

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After merging, I realized I still had too much noise present in the dogs.  It was then I decided to take this image into Topaz Impression, and run some custom presets I've made, which give the image a SLIGHT painterly look, removing the noise, but leaving enough detail.  This program is wonderful for things like this, especially when used in a light application and on layers!  If you haven't purchased Topaz Impression yet, you can do so here.  It can be used as a stand-alone program, or as a plug-in other software applications.  Be sure to read the system requirements first, as you will need a graphics card which is Open GL 3.2 or higher.  The program is very intensive, so that's something you'll want to check before you buy it.  P.S.  Topaz Labs is having a holiday sale until December 31, 2015, where you can get 35% off anything in the store!  Use Code:  TOPAZ2015 at checkout.