From Blah to Beauty
Sometimes a hibiscus picture lacks appeal because there’s little tone change from central to outer parts as in the left-most picture below. Here is a quick fix. Add a new layer and draw a circular gradient from black to white as shown in the center below, set its mode to Soft Light and the magic occurs:


By the way, you may notice the picture now has more “3D” depth, which is due to the eye’s associating darker with farther away.

Want more control? Here’s an alternate way. Duplicate the image, and using the duplicate layer, first lighten it using e.g., Ctrl+L, then add a layer mask, and paint black with a large, soft brush, those central areas where you want to restore the original tone.

Yet, there always seems to be another way in Photoshop: in this case, the Dodge and Burn tools can be very useful. In the above example, the Dodge tool can accomplish roughly the same thing using the original layer. 

But you can do still more! You might, e.g., want to darken just the Petal edges to emphasize them. That’s easy! Use the Burn tool and paint with a very small brush.



And in some cases, don’t forget to use Filter > Liquify to straighten out bent stamens.

Adobe Photoshop CS2
Yes, there is a new version of Adobe Photoshop and it has some new features to offer hibiscus fans. Below is a before-and-after picture showing what I mean:


The perspective distortion was removed using Filter > Distort > Lens Correction. The debris on the petals was removed by simply clicking with the new Spot Healing Brush Tool. It was sharpened using the new and superior Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. The background is an enlarged, blurred, and color-inverted copy of the original bloom.

If you’d like to see a blow-by-blow account click here to bring up a .pdf file. 

Here’s another tip: The new Filter > Blur > Surface Blur filter can smooth out petal surfaces very artistically. Follow with Edit > Fade. Unreal!


Creating Hibiscus Petals
In Adobe Photoshop create a new RGB document 200 x 200 pixels. Add a new layer (Layer 1) on which we will draw a single petal.

To do this, we first create a petal-shaped path. Use the Ellipse Tool with the Paths button clicked, and while holding down the shift key, drag to draw a circle with a diameter a little less than 100 pixels. At this point it doesn’t matter where it is, so long as it’s entirely within the document area. Now pick the Direct Selection Tool and click the circle to reveal 4 nodes. Then use the Convert Point Tool and click the bottom node to create a petal-like shape:



Now we convert this path into a selection by clicking the Paths tab and clicking the Load Path as Selection button. Delete the Work Path by clicking the trash can. Click on the Layers tab and make sure that Layer 1 is highlighted. Select a yellow color from the Swatches tab by clicking one of your choice, and then execute Edit > Fill, set Use to the Foreground Color in the Fill dialog, and click OK. Next, Select a light red color from the Swatches tab and this time execute Edit > Stroke, make the width =10 px, select the Inside selection and click OK. We also added 5% Gaussian noise (you can also paint in some creative brush strokes at this point). Deselect by using CTRL+D. The colored (rather rudimentary) petal is now in Layer 1. Use the Move Tool to position the petal in the upper center of the window:



We will now make 4 copies of the petal layer suitably rotated and superimposed.

Drag Layer 1 to the New Layer button to make a layer named Layer 1 copy. Use CTRL+T to bring up the Transform-er and drag the central point to the bottom center square (it will slip precisely into place) which is now the center of rotation. On the Options bar, select the 5th entry area (angle of rotation) and enter the value of 72, and like magic, the new petal rotates 72 degrees (that’s 360/5).  Press ENTER twice to make it permanent.

Repeat the above procedure to create the third, fourth and fifth petals. Each time you make a new copy of Layer 1, drag it so it becomes the top layer. Use rotation angle values of 144, -144 and -72.  At this point things should look like this:



Part of the petal in the top layer needs to be erased (the part that overlaps the very first petal in Layer 1). We’ll recreate the original selection by highlighting Layer 1, and clicking near the bottom right with the Magic Wand Tool (set Tolerance to 0) and using CTRL+SHIFT+I to invert it. Then select the top layer and execute Edit > Clear, CTRL+D, and finally, Layer > Flatten Image with this as the final result:



Of course this was a rather simple petal, but you have many ways to jazz that up! You can even start with a hibiscus bloom and replicate it (see HibiscusHibiscus on the Fantasies page). Then there’s the stamen, etc., and leaves, too. But there are other issues.

Hibiscus Bloom Mirror Symmetry
To draw the preceding bloom, we used a sequence of rotation angles of 72, 144, -144 and -72 degrees.  But another sequence exists: -72, -144, 144 and 72 degrees. Shown below are two blooms drawn using the first and second sequence:
 


The two blooms are mirror images (I’ll call them left-handed and right-handed). This leads to the question, “Which choice did nature make?”

The answer is, “Both”. And in most cases I’ve seen, both can exist on the same plant with about equal frequency. 

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