I found this interesting two headed Gerbera daisy while picking out flowers for one of my three day Macro Boot Camps.  I’m always searching for flowers that have character, and this one had lots of it. I was in a hurry while setting up for my workshops and took a quick moment to photograph this interesting flower.  In my hurried state, I forgot to check my white balance, and didn’t check the LCD to view the image before I continued setting up for the workshop.

When I got home and viewed my shot of the Gerbera daisy, I was sick. The image looked terrible due to the camera’s white balance being off.  Most of you that know me know that I shoot with jpegs, and getting the white balance correct during the shot is important. Oops.  Had I been shooting RAW I could have adjusted it in the RAW converter.

The test now is to see if the incredible power of Color Efex Pro 4 can turn this image from a frog into a prince.

Here is the original out of the camera.

© Mike Moats

After loading it in to Color Efex Pro 4, I clicked through the various filters seeing which ones had the best effect.  I found that the Bleach Bypass filter did a really nice job of bringing the colors back to the original colors of the subject, and it also had a nice pastel feel in the color of the petals.  Here is the image with the Bleach Bypass filter. In Photoshop, I cloned out the little stray petal in the gap between the two flowers.

© Mike Moats

After my filter was applied in Color Efex Pro 4, I then went into Viveza 2 and did some fine tuning.  I added Control Points to the flower on the right side, which was a little dark, and used the Brightness slider to lighten the petals and sepal.  I also used the structure slider to pull out some of the nice textures in the sepal and the petals.

Next, I added Control Points to the flower on the left.  As this one was a little light, I darkened the brightness slider down on the petals and sepal so it would balance with the flower on the right side.

I placed a Control Point on the stem and darkened it down just a bit.

Next I worked on the background to soften down the blotchy look.  I added a Control Point and extended the circle to cover the entire background.  This time, instead of using the structure slider to pull out details, I slid the slider to the left which took away and softened the blotchy details.

I’m really happy that I was able to save this unique image with the help of Nik Software.  So, don’t throw out those bad images until you first experiment with Color Efex Pro 4 and Viveza 2.   Here is the finished image.

© Mike Moats