Bench negative
by Melethia

Comment:
I love playing with Curves adjustments to create strange colors -- by making the colors unreal, you the semi-abstract shapes get into the essence of their type of object, rather than trying to document some particular example.

Try dragging several points into arbitrary shapes (e.g. the letters "M" or "W") and see what you get, and also try inverting or distoring the individual color channels -- I create a new adjustment layer for each ... this also allows you to order them differently in the Layers window, as the order in which they're applied makes a difference. Have fun!

You can see some old examples of mine in this pBase Gallery.

Spider Lily '05
by Pug-H

Comment:
I think your crop and color adjustments work well, and shallow DOF is perfect; love the tiny details refracted in the water drop.

Compared to my camera, that's minimal grain, and in the soft OOF areas it is not a distraction at all for me -- I think people are usually way over-sensitive to it.

Beach-people-copy-Sand-boys.jpg
by jomari

Comment:
Nice transformation from what most would call a "snapshot" into a fine piece of candid portraiture. The border works pretty well; fits in with the concrete and sand.

Heat
by Hipychik

Comment:
I don't know what that "topaz" adjustment does -- to me it gives everything a kind of bright, "hard" look, almost like it's a piece of glazed ceramic sculpture. I guess my experience with rustic, wood-paneled rooms like this has been where it's much dimmer lighting, with a softer, moody look.

You might consider using a perspective correction; near the sides (especially the left) there is a noticable slant to the vertical lines.

Faces of Cancer
by cryan

Comment:
Good use of the selective desaturation technique. Too bad the melanoma mask wasn't twisted a bit towards you to get more light detail on the far side, but a powerfiul image anyway.

Week 2: Silly Filly Face
by lynnesite

Comment:
If this were mine I'd probably play around and try and bring a blue tint into the sky area. Nice expressive face.

APAW-2-Original-2027.jpg
by PGerst

Comment:
This reminds me a lot of an old photo of mine of a sunrise over Mt. Rainier (I have a print version posted). On that one, I made separate masks for ocean and sky and did tone (Curves) adjustments separately to bring out the color and contrast in the sky; see if you can bring out the patterns of the rays/beams. To my eye it might benefit from a slight CCW rotation.

Mr. and Mrs.
by bvy

Comment:
Good tone and contrast. I think the square crop and the angle work fine, especially with the the way his arm is parallel tot he edge.

Fall in West Cornwall (APAW-1)
by PGerst

Comment:
I think cropping the washed-out sky helps, though the verticality of the original helps draw one into the photo; however, the contrast between the trees and the path/fence/rock line-up work well enough to do the same. I definitely prefer the increased saturation in the new version -- nice rich color but not overdone.

Paper Roses
by cgino

Comment:
Very nice effect -- they look like antiques. The kanji text in the BG makes an interesting effect -- essentially a random abstract pattern to those of us who can't read it.