Not many ups/downs this time. Such a shame as they help the learning process

Sorry about the long pause - not always in a position to use the net. My up was Clive and the ultimate winner, an excellent image and it brought a little pzazz to the competition. Being picky, I may have been tempted to fade the edges of the star bursts.

My downsy is DigiDiva and in fact the entry I voted for. I thought it was imaginative and one of only a few who captured the real intention of the competition. No complaints on this one at all - ideal background and nicely lit.

Graham

Thanks graham

Ups & Downs...

Up - Misty by Arthur53. A nice effect which almost looked as though it had been done by the old trick of Vaseline on a skylight filter but I suspect done in PS. For me I think I would have liked the jutting out bit in the centre of the frame to have been kept sharp

Down - Guardian of the Gate by Graham. Well captured and I admire your patience. I think if it had been my shot, I'd have corrected the verticals & given the contrast & saturation a bit of a punch. Also I just wasn't quite sure how well it fitted the theme (although I know sometimes I stretch the boundaries a bit ;) )

As always JMHO guys

Here's an thought extending Digi's idea of learning form each other... how about when voting has closed, if appropriate particularly with a theme like this, the author of the image post a short 'Behind the Scenes' of how the images was created?

So for my image Behind the Scenes...

1. Shot the base image of the abstract picture with three bottle of ink.
2. Created an explosion layer using this snow technique but keeping the 'snow' vertical
3. Masked off a rectangular selection the width I wanted for the top of the explosion down to the top of the bottle & deleted the rest
4. Transformed the selection inwards at the bottom using the warp transformation to give the desired share
5. Added a colour photo filter clipped to the explosion layer so it only coloured the explosion
6. Repeat for bottles 2 & 3

Love the idea...just sorry that I haven' been around lately.