affinity photo Passion flower - Before-After Editing

[unni]

The original, straight out of camera and edited image along with the layer stack details are given below.
This is to give an idea of the work flow and results before/after sothat it may be useful to the viewer to get
some feel of the process.

First, a B&W layer was made after adjusting the sliders in the B&W adjustments. The end result is a bright area for
flower and dark area for background leaves. Use Levels to further increase contrast between bright and dark area.
This forms the base layer (lower most)for masks. By pressing CNTRL+ALT+left click on this layer a selection can be made. This selection
can be used on other adjustment layers. In some cases, the selection is inverted to make flower area dark and leaves
bright. I also slightly gaussian blur the selection inorder to avoid halos. Now the rough base mask is ready.

The few selective colour adjustment layers are for enhancing the colours of various parts of the flower. So Each such adjustment layer
is initially made fully black by "invert" and then with a white brush, it is painted to reveal the required parts. This is simple and rough painting
with brush at 100% fill. The HSL layer is used to shift the leaves colour to a greener shade using its sliders.

The Darken leaves and brighten flower adjustment layers have the mask applied. Some rough touchup of mask with brush will be required
to make transitions smooth and balance the image. As an example, In Darken leaves curves adj layer, the mask is white for the leaves and dark for the flower.
Then the curve is brought down around mid point. This will darken only leaves. A blur of about 15 pixels is also given to the adj layer to avoid halos.

The sharpen layer has bright area only for the flower. So the leaves will not be sharpened.

Thanks for viewing !
 

Best Regards,
Unni

After Editing in AP

Original from camera before editing

[Smee Again]

Nice job!

[unni]

1 hour ago, Smee Again said:

Nice job!

Thank you Smee !

[John Rostron]

Nice also to see the layers panel to see how the magic was performed.

John

[unni]

9 hours ago, John Rostron said:

Nice also to see the layers panel to see how the magic was performed.

John

thanks john. what i have noted is halos whenever selective adjustments are attempted. there are various videos on tackling it, for PS. i realized, understanding them is crucial. those methods are all related to modifying masks, having another clone layer, growing selection borders, blurring masks etc. i was always doing simple modification of mask by painting black or white but this is tedious and will never bring a smooth transition ,it will finally result in halos and unnatural look. 

best regards,

unni