For quite some time now, in the evenings, I find myself playing in Photoshop with adjustment layers and some of my pictures. I want to be creative but I just don’t feel like I have enough juice at the end of the day to create a work of art (aka scrapbook page. . . not necessarily art but a full something.) I can play with pictures and see the different ways I can change them without too much thought. I sometimes save my changes to another file; other times I don’t. In all the playing I’m learning. I know that if I really wanted to make some finer changes to just simply make a better pictures, I’m confident that I could.

Here’s an example, one I worked on a bit tonight. . . This is the original picture (except it’s cropped):

And here are six different variations created with various combos of layers:

Of course, this isn’t the high quality version.

The layers in this file include:
1- A copy with Hard Light blending mode
2- Exposure
3- Layers
4- 2 different color balance layers
5- A Hue/Saturation layer
6- A layer that makes all but the flower black and white
7- A layer with a black border (and then different transparencies and blending modes)

I like to turn some layers on, turn some off, and see what I’ve got.

I’d love to hear which variations you like most or what you think.