Playing With Leaves

These are digital images of actual leaves I picked up and pressed. I've done this type of thing before several times...but I wanted to try and show a little more about the process. I really enjoy playing around with digital art...maybe you will too. I would love to help.

The possibilities are endless!!!

I pressed a few beautiful leaves a while ago....and just remembered to check them. Because I'm easily distracted that led to a little playing around on the computer...which led to this little "Pages" tutorial.

I thought I might want to use the images of the leaves in various artwork and cards....so I needed to isolate them.  I started by photographing each leaf on a dark background.

Next I imported each photo into a pages document.  When you have an image selected you can manipulate it in a variety of ways.  I chose the feature called "instant alpha" so I could eliminate the background.  Putting it on a solid dark background makes it easier.



You can see below I have already eliminated the background on two leaves...and I'm just starting the third.

When you you are in instant alpha mode you get this little square. You drag the square and it grabs all the color that is the same as what's in the view finder and eliminates it. If your background has different colors...you just keep repeating until you are satisfied. Now you can see why a plain, distinctively different background makes it easier.

Here I was grabbing a little black shadow that was along the edge of a leaf. That tiny little square inside the square is what is detecting the color so you can isolate and remove tiny little bits. Unfortunately on some of the leaves the instant alpha also eliminated the stem...but I had a plan.

I copied and pasted the red leaf and masked out the leaf leaving that floating stem you see.

Then I coped and pasted the stem next the the stemless leaves. 

I selected both the leaf and the new stem and grouped them so now they could be moved and manipulated as one unit.

Once you have the leaves....they can be copied, resized, turned, flipped, and used in any document or photo. These little falling leaves could be made into note cards or stationary...and they're MY leaves.  

One last experiment...a starburst of fall leaves on a beautiful blue sky.