Lucis InterplayArt by Barbara Williams

Creating the image Dragonfly Flowers

This image was created in two parts. First the image of the blue flowers was processed several times in Lucis Pro 6 to create a pattern. Then this pattern was mixed with the dragonfly image and processed again with Lucis.

The original image of the blue flowers is shown below (Image 1) and the original image of the dragonfly is shown below that (Image 2). Click on the images to view and download a high resolution version of those images.


Image 1: Original image of some blue flowers.

Image 2: The original image of a dragonfly. Click here or on the image above to view and download a high-resolution version of this image.
First I will explain how to transform the image of the flowers into a pattern.
As a first step I opened the original image in Photoshop, duplicated the layer so I can work with a copy of the image, opened Lucis Pro 6 and moved the Enhance Detail slider to a point where the detail was greatly increased (in this case to 29). The Lucis Pro User Interface is below. Click here or on the Lucis User Interface image below (Image 2) to see a high-resolution version of the image processed with Lucis with these settings.

Image 2: The Lucis Pro User Interface showing what the original image will look like when processed with the Enhance Detail slider set to 29. The number of Processing Scan Lines have been set to 50.
I processed the image with the Enhance Detail slider set to 29, duplicated the layer so I can work with a copy, and open Lucis again. Now I move the Enhance Detail slider to 63 increase detail even more. The Lucis Pro 6 User interface with this Enhance Detail slider setting is shown below in Image 3. Click here or on the Lucis User Interface image below (Image 3) to see a high-resolution version of the image processed with Lucis with these settings.

Image 3: Lucis User Interface showing how the image of the blue flowers would look if I processed it a second time with the Enhance Detail slider set to 63. I did not process the image with this setting because it was too busy.
But the image that results is looking too busy so now I move the Smooth Detail slider to 51 to smooth image detail and create more of a pattern (see Image 4 below). Click here or on the Lucis User Interface image below (Image 4) to see a high-resolution version of the image processed with Lucis with these settings.

Image 4: The Lucis User Interface showing how the image will look when processed with the smooth detail slider set to 51 and the Enhance Detail slider set to 61.
I duplicated the layer with this image, select the duplicate layer and opened Lucis again. Now I move the Enhance Detail slider to 43 to increase the detail in the pattern. This creates the final "patterned" image to be mixed in with the dragonfly image (Image 2). Click here or on the image below to view a high-resolution version of the entire image processed with Lucis. This final patterned image of the blue flowers was processed with Lucis 4 times..

Image 5: The Lucis User Interface showing how the image will look when processed with the Smooth Detail slider set to 1 and the Enhance Detail slider set to 43.
Now I place the image of the dragonfly on the layer above the patterned image of the blue flowers. I make sure that all the layers are invisble except these two layers. When mixing a patterned image with another image I typically make the opacity of the patterned image significantly less than 50%. This is because the patterned image has strong contrasts so it will emerge strongly when combined with another image and processed with Lucis. In this case I set the opacity of the layer with the dragonfly to 65% and merged it with the image of the blue flowers. The result is below. Click here or on the image below to view a high-resolution version of the unprocessed merged image.

Image 6: Merged Image. The dragonfly image is set to opacity 65% and merged with the patterned blue flowers image.
Now again I duplicate this layer, select the duplicate layer and open Lucis. The User Interface is shown below. This time I use Split Channel mode (check the Split Channels check box). Using Split Channel mode gives me a lot of control over image contrasts and color. I unchecked the Display Composite Image check box so I can view the intensity information in each channel and make adjustments. To begin with I selected the Red Channel and moved the Enhance Detail slider until I have an image with a level of detail and interplay that I like, in this case to 153. I experimented with altering the Smooth Detail slider but did not like the results, so I left it set to 1.

Image 7: The Lucis Pro 6 User Interface, Split Channel mode, Red Channel selected, with the Smooth Detail slider set to 1 and the Enhance Detail slider set to 153.
Then I selected the Green Channel and moved the Enhance Detail slider to 149. The Lucis Pro 6 User Interface is shown below.

Image 8: The Lucis Pro 6 User Interface, Split Channel mode, Green Channel selected, with the Smooth Detail slider set to 1 and the Enhance Detail slider set to 149.
Then I selected the Blue Channel and moved the Enhance Detail slider to 133. The Lucis Pro 6 User Interface is shown below.

Image 9: The Lucis Pro 6 User Interface, Split Channel mode, Blue Channel selected, with the Smooth Detail slider set to 1 and the Enhance Detail slider set to 149.
Next I checked the Display Composite Image check box so I can view the composite image. The User Interface is below.

Image 10: The Lucis Pro 6 User Interface, Split Channel mode, the Enhance Detail slider set to 153 for the Red Channel, 149 for the green Channel, and 133 for the Blue Channel.
This image is close to what I want, but I would prefer to have a little more blue in the image and maybe a little less detail. So with the Display Composite Image check box checked I select the Green Channel and a gradually move the Smooth Detail slider up. I liked the image with the Smooth Detail slider set to 21. The User Interface is shown below.

Image 11: The Lucis Pro 6 User Interface; Split Channel mode; the Smooth Detail slider set to to 1 for the Red Channel, 21 for the Green Channel, and 1 for the Blue Channel and Enhance Detail slider set to 153 for the Red Channel, 149 for the Green Channel, and 133 for the Blue Channel.
Below is the final image, Dragonfly Flowers. Click here or on the image below to view and download a high-resolution version of this image.

Image 12: The final image, Dragonfly Flowers.