dandelion goes b/w

Kim Klassen is having a texture... challenge, I guess, altho she isn't calling it that. You just need to use one or more of her many free textures on a flower photo. It starts tomorrow and I assume she'll post a way to link a blog post, so I'm getting ready now.

I started out with a dandelion image I took a few summers ago, in our front yard. Cropped it more or less square, then duplicated it. I began dragging Kim's various filters onto it, playing with the opacity and fill percentages. (Honestly, I don't even know the diff between those two things, I just adjust till I like the look. I really must learn more about PS.)

I settled on one called luminous - darker around the edges with some just barely visible text. Changed the duplicate layer to multiply mode. Played with levels until I had the white tufts positively glowing, made it a little more contrasty. I liked it well enough but it wasn't really blowing my skirt up, to borrow a Pioneer Womanism. 

Then I had the brilliant idea to desaturate it. That did the trick. Gave it a vintage look, like a faded old picture you might find tucked in the pages of a book, forgotten on some long ago summer's day.