Greeting Janet, Digital Manipulation is an art all by itself, my suggestion is practice, Good photo shop programs have wonderful tools, such as working in layers, merging your back ground to the foreground creating a smooth transition, there are blur tools that could be used to soften the edges, and A Gaussian blur is a good tool. Smoothing filers are good, but they all take practice. Personally I do not touch too many of my photos, other than to tweak lighting levels. or when working with IR Photos which require post processing, Through practice I have been able to master the skill of removing objects, very small ones such as a sign or post. The key too good manipulation is practice, remember, if you can see it on you screen chances are we can too. Also have fun with it. my other suggestion would be to shoot the flower with a black background. best regards, sandra
Thanks for the critique. I am reasonably new at digital manipulation and appreciate all the help I can get.Not sure how to soften the edges either. Janet
Greeting Janet, the flower is very pretty with good detail, my only suggestion / observation is the photoshoped background, it is showing on my screen that it is bucketfilled / magic fill, the tell tail signs are the edges of the outer petals, I don't mind "touched up photos" but we should not be able to see your touches in the work. a soften edge on the petal would work a bit better best regards, sandra
0 
{K:8352} 2/10/2007