Pink Hibiscus In Bloom & The Wonders Of Photoshop

**I'm taking a blogging break for a week or so to finish enjoying some of my vacation time**

This week in my perennial garden the pink hibiscus have started to bloom, they are a summer favorite of mine as they always put on such a pretty show for about 4 weeks during the season.

I use a lot of my black eyed susans that have started blooming for cut flowers to bring in the house and sit on the living room coffee table.

With the black eyed susans, I like to cut them to bring them inside after a good rain or after I have watered, that way I find they will not wilt but will last for many many days.  I also run freezing cold water over the ends of the cut stems, which also seems to help.

The hibisucs I cannot cut and bring in, they wouldn't work as a cut flower but they sure are pretty to look at and photograph each year.

I hope you have beautiful blooms in your own garden each week to look forward to and photograph as they put on their summer show.

Ok, on to wonders that don't have anything to do with nature, this particular one centers around the amazing things that can be accomplished by using Photoshop.  This past week when I submitted "Fair Weather Friends" to my licensing agent Laurie, she asked that I change the types of birds in the painting to better suit what they are needing to make the image more usable for them.  

To keep my original painting in tact I decided to create the chickadee, goldfinch and wren that Laurie asked for on loose sheets of unstretched canvas and insert them into the orginal image by using photoshop.  Above is the goldfinch, I painted this bird leaving out the areas that would be in front of him in the painting, so he could just be slipped in behind  the purple climatis petals.

The end result is a pretty cool variation on my original theme.  The original painting is left in tact and a second digital image is created using the newly painted birds.....the finished product is two very different bird house scenes.  These changes of course did not magically appear with the waving of a wand (I wish) I did the painting and Chris (the husband with the photoshop chops) created the new digital image for me.  He did a great job so thank you photoshop for existing in the first place and thank you husband for all your hard work on this image.