2BD33 An Earthy Still x2

I'm slowly getting back into the habit of doing the Beyond Beyond Lessons every week (now that I'm 10 weeks behind again).    This week, she shared the wonderful work of Anatoly Che.  

This lesson is informed and inspired by his work.

 Here's the original image that I started with.  An old book, a blossom from the Korean spice bush last spring, sitting on the old treadle sewing machine.  Lot's of rich texture and saturated colors. 

So the first thing we did was de-saturate with Kim's new Dark Day Preset.

I would love to show you this step, but I'm still so bad with LightRoom 5 that I tend to lose the snapshots. Gone. History tab is empty. All I have is the final finished pic.

Oh wait--I can start over with the original and apply the preset, and export.

This looks pretty good right here.

I did try to recreate this effect in PSE with Kim's directions, but it just didn't come out as nice and light, so I went back to the LightRoom Preset version.  

The Recipe (simplified from Kim's version):

In LightRoom 5 : Background image with Kim Klassen's Dark Day Preset applied

In PhotoShop Elements :

     Background Image

     Copy Background Image - Screen Blend Mode at 21% opacity (This was easier for me to do than Kim's spotlight effect.)

     Color Fill Frame (black from image) - Multiply at 74%

     Kim Klassen's Waterfront 21 Texture - Multiply 80% - masked over flowers and girl

I did play with other textures wanting to bring back some pink to the girl's face and the flowers, but that always brought back green to the book, which I wanted to downplay.  I also played with hue sat settings, but eventually abandoned all that, and just went back to the simple settings you see above.  If anyone can tell me a good way to bring back some pink, I might try it again ...  There must be something with the color target tool, or something ...

Later edit : Here it is : This one is a little pinker.  Kim says her presets are designed for photos shot in RAW, that they may be a bit much on jpgs.  So for this one, I upped the saturation a bit to bring back just a touch of the pink.  It's a little warmer that the other versions above. 

Here's the first one I did with a still life from our last trip to France.

Saucisson in the mountains.

 Here's the original.

The Recipe (A departure from what Kim showed us): 

In LightRoom5 : 

     Auto-toned.  [This actually worked this time. Usually LR5 overdoes it.]

     Kim Klassen's Dark Day Preset to desaturate.

In PhotoShop Elements:

     Background image with LR% edits

     Kim Klassen's Waterfront 2 Texture - Multiply Blend Mode at 16% opacity

     Kim Klassen's Pumpkin Grunge - Soft Light at 87% opacity

     Color Fill Layer Frame

I added the pumpkin grunge because this image needed some color returned.  The Saucisson just did not look appetizing in gray/yellow.  This made it more of a sepia tone.