A Picture’s Worth With Catherine Restivo
You may of seen this wonderful image that Catherine created and published yesterday, entitled, “When you reach the heart of life you shall find beauty in all things, even in the eyes that are blind to beauty.” ~Kahlil Gibran. Well, we were totally enthralled by it and asked Catherine to use this image to participate in our very special A Picture’s Worth section. Catherine is a sweetheart and was only too keen to oblige. Read this exclusive article and find out just how Catherine managed to create such a stunning image.
Over to you, Catherine…
This Is The Final Image

‘I’m in love with peonies. The flowers are quite delicate and short-lived, and it’s always a bit sad when they’re gone for the season. As they went through their life cycle, I was touched by the different stages of beauty, and tried to capture their many personalities. As the soft, creamy white, fragile petals fell, there remained a beautiful vulnerability, rather a proud baring of their soul’.


‘Then I brought it into FilterStorm, cropped it square, and using the Clone tool, I removed the busy background’.


‘Using Image Blender, I combined the two versions so that the ShockMyPic squiggles weren’t as prominent. Then I brought this into VintageScene and applied color, overlay and border’.

‘Next, I brought this version back into Image Blender and combined it again with the Original/SMP blended version, keeping the VintageScene background as-is, but masking out the flower so that it popped more’.

‘Finally, this was brought into Iris Photo Suite where I applied the “Grunge” filter just to the background, using the mask feature’.
Final Image

‘A bit of the Polarizer filter, sharpening and resize finished off the piece’.
Screen-show Of The Process



2 Comments
David
So that’s how you did it!! Fantastic image, Catherine!! When I saw this yesterday, I sat there thinking…so how did she do this?? Now I know. Thank you so much for sharing your process with us!!
Mike Valdez
Catherine,
Beautiful image. I also love shooting peonies.