One of the comments from my recent Photoshop post had me playing with the full, uncropped circular plant design.
I really disliked the red woodchips around the plant so I made them green. I used an extracted layer and various image adjustments.
I think the darker background enhances the plant forms and shows off the circle. That's why I made the changes on an extracted layer. I can manipulate the two areas separately.
Here I've played a bit with the color. While I think it highlights the tangle of stems, I'm not really thrilled with it. I like the burgundy hints.
A different color view. I added in more shadows. It just looks rather dead to me--graveyard.
I tried to keep the colors somewhat realistic until this one. I used three layers, one a black and white threshold-image and the others inverted. I think it shows off the circular shape nicely but I loose the impact of the leaves that I liked.
For this very last one I used liquefy moving from a center point out--like tracing the hands of a clock. This feels much more stained glass to me but I can see a bargello embroidery pattern developing. Fun weekend play.
