Playing with Swirls

I was interested to play with some photo effects after reading a blog post on one of my favourite sites – The World According to Dina – about swirls and twirls.

I don’t have Photoshop, but I do have a version of Photoshop Elements so I thought I’d give it a go. I selected two photos that aren’t the best compositions.

(1) Tulip – I was interested to see how these colours would transform

I followed the video linked to in Dina’s blog, but I made some changes and stopped when I got this result because I rather like it.

Changing the colour hues makes a very different image

(2) Dusk – this was a fairly poor shot of a sunset and I dislike the trees at the bottom of the photo, but thought the streaks might work well.

And this is the result. I kept it very soft and pastel.

While we can’t go out to create new photos, or at least photos of different scenes, then using photo editing software to be creative is one way of enjoying photography at this time.

Thanks Hanne for the idea.

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Heyjude

I have lived in the UK for most of my life, but when young I definitely had wanderlust and even ended up living in South Africa for several years which was a wonderful experience. I now look forward to a long and leisurely retirement doing what I like most - gardening, photography, walking and travelling.

51 thoughts on “Playing with Swirls”

  2. Now that is fun—a lovely combination of swirls and the flower. I think the last one was great. There is certainly two different schools of thought when it comes to altering photos. Some will not use editing software, and others always do.

    1. I usually only do basic editing to my photos like adjusting the contrast and light and resizing them for the blog, but playing with effects sometimes can be fun.

  3. That is certainly a fun occupation at this time. I like the tulip one. I have a photo shop elements 5, really old now, but it does the few things I need to do. I thought I would have time to read more books, but after a few pages I nod off zzzzzz

  5. This obviously put a big smile on our faces this morning, Jude. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
    I love your interpretation of the swirls, the colours comes out so well.
    It’s fun and a playful way to do something with our photos, also the not so good ones. Like Otto says: I think too many of us—included myself—take our photography too serious. Let’s play more. Let’s have more fun. And that’s what this technique offer.

    Sorry about your flowers not coming, I ordered some flowers (periwinkles) for the garden through Gardens4you.co.uk, they were the only ones who didn’t advertise “due to high demand”, maybe you can try them as well?

    Wishing you a good weekend. The sun is out in Norfolk today, the washing is on the line and the watter butts are full again after some much needed rain. Take care! 🙂
    🤗
    🙋🏼‍♀️🧚🏻🧚🏻‍♀️🙋🏼‍♂️

    1. Thanks for introducing me to the video Hanne, it is a lot of fun to see what happens to various photos. I have a couple more that will pop up on the blogs, but I really do need to start deleting all the duplicates and the bad photos that are clogging up my system. I might have a different plan for the project I had in mind which means the plants can wait until the autumn. We’ll see.

      1. If you want to take the swirls to the next step, it’s quite easy. No need to blend two photos – when you’re in layers and have the swirl, just add a layer mask, invert it and brush the areas you want to reveal with a white brush.

        1. I thought I had tried that but it didn’t work. I must have done something wrong with the layers. I’ll try again 😊

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