It's Not An Orange

For today's Abstract Thursday Challenge Ingeborg asked for "anything but orange" which was the only excuse I needed to dig out a glass vase, some oil and water, and a dash of washing up liquid, to experiment.  I also have a collection of coloured backdrops which I lit using LED lights, making sure there wasn't an orange to be seen.

Things I learnt:
1) Olive Oil (which I tried first) doesn't spread in water as much as my preferred choice of sunflower oil, but it can be manipulated into pretty shapes better.
2) Although I washed the vase first, my SOOC images suffered from speckles and dust particles.
3) Photoshop techniques to remove the speckles and dust particles!

PS technique:  Duplicate layer;  use dust&scratches filter to smooth/remove dust and speckles; set blending mode to lighten (or normal , whichever works better depending on type of blemish) and add black mask; paint white on mask to "remove" speckles and dust; use remove tool to clean up any remaining blemishes.  


Thanks Ingeborg for the inspiration for an interesting and informative session.