Some fun with Photos...

I've tried just about every photo editing program out there. I tried Light Room and loved Photoshop 7.0 the program I learned on. I didn't have formal training but learned it by the seat of my pants.

I tried Light Room and even though it is a masterful program I didn't like the fact that Adobe had you rent that and rent Creative Cloud to stay 'up' with the program.

One day I ran across a program called ON1 Effects. I downloaded it and actually enjoyed the free version for about a year before I invested in purchasing the ON 1 Effects version. I found myself using it a bit more and more and withdrawing from the old Photoshop CS3 I had. I also drifted away from Corel PaintShopPro. 

Last year ON1 announced a RAW processing program that they were developing.

I dove in headfirst. If you look them up and find discussions regarding the program there will be comments about the glitches, the crashes, and the program issues.

However.

Even with the problems I've encountered, I am loving this program. 

If I am to do some extensive edits, more creative art stuff, I sometimes go back to PS. 

I wanted to see how 'far' I could take a photo. The original is at the top, this was my 'vision' when I took the shot. Could I turn this into a vintage/sketch/artsy thing?
Well, perhaps I did. I would have gone to the old Creative Suite to do this, but I decided to pursue it in ON1.

I've found it the go to program for my IR shots too.

This is what the interface looks like.

This is the original Infrared shot.

This is the final outcome. I've worked out a workflow that really works well for me.
Some things I don't like. Using layers seems to crash the program often. Working on too many files seems to crash things. Some of it involves my RAM memory and my CPU and other technical things. My laptop is not the newest one out there.

Sometimes when you do extend beyond just the regular shots like adding filters and infrared, you do need a processing program to work with. IR would not look half this good if processed through an online program.

Here are a couple more I did that day ... while on a walk with Morris.

This shot of the cosmos is one I wanted to do in the same fashion as the Sumac leaves. I laid in the garden and shot upwards towards the cloudy dull sky to take the photo of the flower.

And I wanted and etching.
Or something like that.

This weekend, I hope to get out on some cloudy and rainy days to do some beautiful fall photography. Jersey Valley should be incredible.