Chrysanthemum

It's another wet'n'wild day so today is another indoor flower shot.

Today's offering (I'm reliably informed) is white chrysanthemum with red roses (heh, I knew that one). However, it is the first image to go through my new imaging software. After a few months of using (and loving) SEP2 for my mono shots, I decided to take the plunge and purchase the complete NIK software package.

Hahahaha, I won't tell you each time, the magic performed to make my images presentable, but this once...

The light was pretty poor and flat as a result of the grey day so the colours and contrast were muted. First thing I did was run the image through Viveza 2. This allowed me to reduce the brightness and contrast on the background colours while increasing the same elements for the white flowers. Once that was done, I passed the resulting image through Colour Efex Pro 4. The filter options in CEP4 are amazing. I applied a white neutraliser to it which gave the image just a little more punch. I was going to be happy with that but had a look at the HDR Efex Pro and applied a subsequent process for the final image above.

It was a close run thing but I decided to go with the extra punch of the HDR image for today's blip, but I have added the non-HDR version here. I'd love to know which you prefer.