Beauty @Thomas_Do thanks for allowing us to mess with it =)
In PhF main focus was to give sensualy lick on each petal, stopped here.
NOTE to @Carmelo_DrRaw I did my usual conspurcation but somehow the export was inmediate… I almost cried, what the fuck are you feeding the child you scene referred non flying wizard!!!
Then to Mr Parthas’ gimp 2.10 rc wii-glich build, ended up using g’mic exclusively; the usual suspects: DRincrease, some local normal vanila enhancementations, A LOT of fumbling with layer blend modes, testing deblur ( I wished digikam sharpening method was available, that is guuud) and 1 LUT (for personal ref jorgito - if I’m not mistalen I think I’ve already shared that one here on the pixls’ forums). Of course a coarse golden grain shower on top of everything. G’mic was on mushs but I respect all binaries the same
Anyway, we arrived here and it’s good enough 4 me =)
That is high praise. I did spend a lot of time working and thinking on what to do with the soft factor. My colour image was purposefully subtle yet detailed so as to get the viewer to linger on it and look beyond the plastic appearance. The second, as you remarked, is about texture and movement. I am not an artist but thanks to @Thomas_Do, I was inspired to be one .
after RT, get to gmic (equalize local histograms // -fx_map_tones_fast 20,0.2,11,0 // -simplelocalcontrast_p 25,1,50,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 opacity 40%), then silver-efex
Cracking image, beautiful flower. This was lots of fun to let loose and push the limits of color and contrast, keeping detail in the brightly lit feathered edges of the petals. Was trying to pay close attention to the blues and greens, also the incredible violet and brown anthers on the stamen. Exported as flat and neutral as possible from darktable, and took it all the way up in gimp.
I used a great deal of time in RGB curves to pull the colors within the gamut.
As a consequence I’ve got a nice color separation between yellows and reds: