Week 39 good to WOW edit Orange

Time to edit our orange photos from Monday.  Here is my original if you didn't have a chance to view it on flickr.

As you can see, it is a pretty bad picture, but it is just so ORANGE!  I had just picked up my friend's macro lens and only took 3 pictures (of the leaf).  I did not yet realize just how small the depth of field could be and how tricky focus can be.   But while the photo will definitely not win the SOOC prize, it is a great photo to practice all the different skills we learned about editing this last, almost, year.

First I used my very first personal preset--since I was almost always using the LR presets "General Punch" and "Tone Curve - Flat"--I saved them together as one preset w/clarity.  I plan to save one without the clarity, too.  Then boosted the blacks and saturation a little and call that a "clean edit."

Then since the biggest problem was the snail being out of focus, I cloned that out, and I actually was pleased at how good it looked, except then the photo was boring.  So I took it and another picture into PSE6.  I cropped the flower from the other picture, added a drop shadow, and dragged it to the spot the snail used to be.

Then I used Kim Klassen's texture, Scripted Edges Magic 100% screen.  But there was that blank space next to the flower, and it cried for some text, but then the pretty orange leaf would be completely covered up, and that would defeat the point...

So I remembered the lesson about adding the blank space, added the green (giving my photo the triadic color scheme: purple, orange, and green), gave it some of the same texture, and searched for some text to add.

"But out of limitations comes creativity"  seemed to fit this experience perfectly.  (Debbie Allen is some actress from the 50's).