ForgottenRose

Hi Stan, to my eyes the centre/right of the rose could do with brightening a bit, but I would leave the glass as is.

I'm afraid I'm not at all proficient with PS (my copy is PS7) and I've never used Topaz. However Pentaxophile walked me through a sequence in PS which helped me (https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/today-in-the-sun-30756/p-0)

regards
Bernard

The second version looks OK, but is the rose a two-toned flower? The inside of the petals looks red, and the outside yellow... the transition between the two colours looks a bit posterised... especially in the second version. Maybe raise the lightness without raising the saturation (somehow)!

Wow you totally changed it! I like what you did with the background, but perhaps it was a bit strong for the petals.

Try working on the blue background first - go to hue/saturation, select 'blue' and pull down the brightness slider.

You can also use the magic wand selection tool to select the blue background and darken it.

Do the above on a new (duplicate) layer and when the background is dark enough, you can erase parts of the flower which have become too dark using the eraser brush tool (use a soft edge to the brush and a fairly big brush diameter). As you erase, the original image underneath will come through.