With a tad of crinkles it should work 
Now I am curious to see the finished product.
This does create a nice effect, makes it look 3 dimensional. Or if the flowers are floating in plant invested water/liquid.
@Jade_NL Thanks for sharing. It isn’t so much giving advice as it is trying to understand someone else’s process and the circumstances of the photographic event.
@Jade_NL You gave me an idea to fiddle with this a little more. I added another version using the “divide” blend mode instead of the “soft light.” Granted, I didn’t pay great attention to the masks as I was only trying to give an example of the concept. Changing to divide and a slight opacity change gave it a more “hovering/floating in plant invested water/liquid” suggestion, IMO.
RawTherapee neutral
G’MIC >
Details > Pyramid Processing (a little bit more structure)
Colors > Mixer [PCA] (this is the reason for a greater variance in colors)
GIMP > Wavelet Denoise (CbCr)
G’MIC >
Details > DCP Dehaze (to amplify colors and contrast)
Details > Tone Enhance (to boost the structure and contrast even more)
Testing > Reptorian > TR’s Pixel Sharpener (little bit sharpening)
10 Likes
Because this is much fun, another quick one, a bit inspired by @sls141:
RT neutral
GIMP-G’MIC:
the most important ingredients to make this “gold”:
G’MIC >
Testing > Garagecoder > Local F-Mean (to lighten up the image)
Lights & Shadows > Contrast Swiss Mask (maximum blur, no skip, full intensity)
Details: DCP Dehaze (much strength, scale 1)
thereafter amplification of the last result:
@Underexposed, it is in G’MIC.
G’MIC>Testing > Reptorian > TR’s Pixel Sharpener.
@Reptorian translated this paint.net-plugin made by TechnoRobbo at my request:
Nice! Thanks.