Black Great Egret – artistically speaking
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Not long ago I upgraded my Photoshop CS5 to CS6. For the first time instead of the newer version taking over, I now have complete CS5 available and complete CS6 separately. This is fine if I want to go back and forth for any reason, but what was left of my C drive space was nil. So either Photoshop wouldn’t load properly, or I had to choose an external drive for scratch, or lose work in the middle of edits due to memory issues. So, since there is a process to getting rid of CS5 once CS6 is installed (a lot of deinstalling and reinstalling and all) , I decided to sacrifice temporarily Lightroom which I was planning to learn. So I am admittedly in sore need to a more robust system and a bigger hard drive for quicker work flow. And to think I thought I was set for life on computers. I know, right!!
Last night since I had a little free time and some newly freed space, I decided to pick a photo and play with artistic filters and blending modes with no apparent plan in mind other than going for a sketched appearance. This is why now you can visualize what a Great Egret with rich black feathers might look like. Kind of like a black swan maybe. The starting image was simply a Great Egret preening beside marshy waters with green pickerel weed aquatic plants in the foreground. I thought the rough drawn look and muted colors had a nice quality and thought I would share it. Sometimes people who are unfamiliar with egrets in preening positions will ask me what they are looking at with some of my images, so I hope that this is not utterly nonsensical and confusing rather than having an air of possibility to it or at least interesting. Or maybe things look better at midnight than they should!! And, the irony is that I used only old Photoshop filters and Blending schemes, nothing unique to CS6 at all.
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Judy
Janthina Images - Photo Journal 
This is beautiful, Judy!
Thank you Jill!! I appreciate the input since I didn’t really know if the treatment would look attractive to others. I found I like the black feathers with the gold tones for the foliage and water around it.
It’s like a pen and ink drawing, an excellent one that many artists would envy.
That is one fun thing with Photoshop and other software…that you can do these artistic type treatments. For me sometimes it is trying to do something that I would if I could draw or paint. I am happy that you enjoyed the effort.
Judy et al, Took a workshop in about 1992 when the PS version was 2.0, I think, and the ability to manipulate images using a MOUSE was impressive to me! The program is extremely robust in all versions.
Great work with the primitive tools available to you. Jack
LOL! Well I don’t know if the tools are primitive at all. Just the old original ones that have been part of Photoshop since the first version I ever had. They’ve stood the test of time I guess despite all the third party plug-ins which can do so much for you.
WOW I love this rendering! It’s as though the real bird melts into a make-believe world… Just love it! I’m sorry you’re having issues with computer space-stuff, but you know me and my knowledge of Photoshop: NADA! 🙂
Your computer will always run out of at least one critical resource years before you planned to replace it. In my case, it’s usually memory that proves to be the problem.
And a very striking reworked picture. You’ve got a good eye.
Judy, it’s just beautiful. Once again, I’m envious of what you’re able to do with PS — but there’s no need for me to worry about learning that now. For one thing, I can’t even load the software that came with my new camera until I get a new computer. The good news is that I’ve moved along from my Win98 and AOL, but not by much. Sigh.
Once again, when I saw the image, I thought of Audubon. There’s nothing wrong with that, at all.
Beautiful Judy, it’s great to see the results of your wonderful experiments.