patterns | John Wallace Photography

If you are into the creative aspects of photography then no doubt you have a use for filters that come with photo editing tools. I find that these filters are often very useful in creating that very different approach to an image be that creating an abstract or enhancing an original image as demonstrated in earlier posts on this site.

Image 1

Image 1 – Craquelure filter applied

There are of course many filters offered for sale on the web but there are many that are free as well. I’ve attached two flower images that started off as straightforward record shots of flowers in a local park.

Image 2

Image 2 – Mashberry Filter applied

To each of them I’ve applied a filter that was offered free on the web and as can be seen the end result is very different.

For those with an interest Image 1 is a filter called Craquelure and Image 2 is named Mashberry and both are available at http://www.redfieldplugins.com/ . Have fun…

Who doesn’t like abstracts?, I expect that there’s a few but for the rest of us those crazy patterns manipulate the eyes and the brain and yes they can make great posters. Take this abstract ‘Vortex’, well to create it I needed something that contained a lot of bright colours so I chose this shot of coloured balls as a starting point.

Vortex

Coloured Balls

Sunrise

Photo editing tools contain lots of built in filters that can be used to manipulate the image, they can twist and pull colour in all directions, slice it bend it, blur it, the list is endless. With so many variables inside each filter its virtually impossible to re-create the image again so as you play with filter after filter save a copy of what you like before you experiment further.

The balls also formed the basis for ‘Sunrise’, a totally different style of abstract. Digitally manipulating images to abstracts does have an advantage over traditional art in that the manipulation goes down to pixel level, zoom into a high resolution image and you will see patterns inside patterns.

To demonstrate, on view is a zoom into the high resolution version of ‘Sunrise’ as it looks at 100%, there’s detail inside detail.

With abstracts it’s like throwing paint onto a canvas, just manipulate the outcome until you like what you see.

Further digitally manipulated images can be found in this sites gallery ‘Digital Enhancement’, as well as high resolution versions available through my online shop, please enjoy.