The pictures in yesterday’s post caught my attention.  The splashes of yellow, orange, white and purple in that field of green tend to lift my spirits.  I decided to use a shot for wall paper on my monitor.  I chose this shot:

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Actually this shot is cropped a bit tighter and has a different aspect ratio than that of my wall paper.  Among the grass I see clover, buckhorn (top, left of center) and hawk weed both orange and yellow.  (I’ve always called the orange hawk weed Indian paintbrush.)

As it appears here, it lacks “snap.”  At least it does to my eyes.  I decided to put Photoshop Elements to work and try a couple of graphic filters on this image.  The first filter I tried is called “poster edges.”

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I was very pleased with the results.  The first photo appears a bit blurred to me.  This filter sharpens element edges and makes the various parts stand out better as the contrast is also enhanced.  It looks great here, but on my desktop the icons didn’t show as well as I’d like.  I wanted something a bit softer so that that the sharp edges of the icons would be more apparent to the eye..  Here’s what happened.

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This is the original photo with the watercolor filter applied.  I adjusted filter parameters, such as brush size and detail, to get the desired effect.  An image similar to this one now graces my Windows desktop.

Once in a while the image captured by the camera is exactly what I had in mind.  Frequently, I find it necessary to crop and touch up a picture.  It takes time and patience, but the results are worth the effort.

Don’t have fancy software nor the budget to purchase it?  Check out the Photo Editing and Photo Fun gadget in the right-hand column of Doreen’s blog.