Winter Trees and Fractalius Fun

Fractalius Rendering of  Winter Tree

Fractalius is a Photoshop plug-in that is both fun and highly addictive. The winter tree above was photographed on a slightly foggy morning just down the road from my home. Often during periods of winter fog or hoarfrost I will jump in the car and go for a drive down some of the rural roads in search of pleasing subjects. For the fractalius treatment above I chose the ‘ArtFlakes’ preset as a starting point. I was quite pleased how the Artflakes preset picked up on the greenish lichen that covered much of the tree’s larger branches. Finishing touches were applied to the image using Nik Software’s Color Efex 4 Detail Extractor filter.

To find out more about photographing winter trees be sure to take a look at my latest article in Denise Ippolito’s ‘Creative Photography eMiniMagazine’ and while you are there be sure to check out the other great articles by the many talented contributors.

On another note: Denise Ippolito and I have completed working on an eGuide to using the Fractalius plug-in which should be published in the near future by Arthur Morris. The guide is loaded with many images with the Fractalius rendering applied to them, and we will be including both the before and after versions of each image, as well as our custom presets that we frequently use to achieve our desired results.

Do remember to click on the photo to see the larger, sharper version.