Here is the third (and final) version of my windmill photo (see Adventures in Compositing and Adventures in Compositing, part 2), which I used for this month’s photo club. It is a composite of the windmill and Granite Mountain- with lots of layers in Photoshop, including the use of Topaz Glow and Texture Effects and On 1 software. Fun to do!
The El Nino storms have been hitting Prescott this week. Here’s a very early morning shot of a snowplow clearing the street yesterday, making it safe for the kids to get to school on a “snow delay” day.
Edited with Topaz Impression and Topaz Texture Effects
Yesterday’s snowfall gave me the chance to take some macro shots of the snow that was caught in the little twigs of a shrub out front. 
Edited with Topaz Texture Effects.
When I woke up this morning, our neighborhood looked like a Christmas card. As a California transplant who has never lived in snow until the last couple years, I am enchanted by the transformation that takes places overnight. It snowed here a week ago, and parts of town were still covered- but we only had snow left in patches until this morning. I put on my boots and went out with my warm jacket over my PJ’s and took some photos with my Nikon- but my favorite shot has to be this iPhone panorama.
I did a quick HDR edit in Snapseed and posted it to Facebook. As usual, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, so brought it into Lightroom for some brightening and noise reduction. I then took it into Photoshop and applied some Topaz filters. First, I used Simplify to create more of a painterly look- and then Texture Effects, where I did a “from scratch” edit to bring in a texture that made it look like it was snowing.
And now it really does look like we live in a Christmas card!
It is highly unlikely that we will have a white Christmas, but we are certainly enjoying the pre-Christmas snow!
It was sooo cold when I went out front to shoot these curly tendrils on my spiky plant (someday I’ll find out what its called…) with my macro lens. Although I’ve photographed them before, my attention was caught by the combination of curves and lines hit by the morning light. The colors you see in the background were present in my photograph and accentuated by the Color Burst preset in Topaz Texture Effects, turning it into a little bit of art for a Wednesday morning.
I love editing with textures, and the new Topaz program, Texture Effects, is giving me a whole new way of approaching the process. You can start from scratch, making basic adjustments and then adding dust or scratches, lens leaks, vignettes, borders, and/or textures OR you can start with a filter preset and then adjust everything from there. There is a masking feature, which works well, except that you can’t use the bracket keys to control brush size (I usually choose to mask in Photoshop, because it’s easier for me). You can upload your own textures into the program, as well as create your own presets, which you can choose to share with a community of other users of the program. To be clear- it’s not just about textures- it’s other effects as well. You might decide to not use a texture, but just other effects- or add your own textures in Photoshop afterward. It’s a very flexible program! With that said, I will add that many members of the FB group devoted to this program have had technical issues with installing it and getting it to save their edits. I have had no issues, thankfully.
So here’s an edit of a macro photo I snapped last weekend in our front yard (I think I used a filter and added 3 textures in Texture FX and then masked in Photoshop).
My husband and I took a short walk at Willow Lake last week. We were hoping to view some migrating birds, but they seemed to be avoiding us. Of course there were weeds to photograph- one of my standard subjects for photos. This weedy image was edited using the new Topaz Texture Effects, which I downloaded on a 30 Day trial. It reminds me of some of my iPhone apps- what a fun new filter! I have only just begun to explore what it has to offer.
melinda anderson photography 