Good morning, dear friends. I was going through my photos from our Great Lakes cruise. One I particularly liked featured a house nestled in the woods, surrounded by trees in various stages of fall beauty. The relative darkness of dawn and the gentle, but certain, movement of the ship, required that I up my ISO to 1600 to get a decent exposure. This resulted in an image that captured what I saw, but added some noise and a slight blur that I did not want, of course. I liked the image so much, however, that I decided to do what I could to turn it into a work of art and opted to enhance that magical quality that initially attracted my eye. Sometimes you can use an artistic filter from Photoshop or independent parties (Painter, Nik, Alien Skin and Topaz filters come immediately to mind) to give your image a painterly look, that has the added advantage of covering up minor flaws. In my case, I played with several before I settled on a filter that just simplified the pixels in my image. I used the old Buzz filter, which is no longer available, however, a version is included in the Topaz Adjust package and is called Simplify.
Cozy, 8 x 12 inches
© 2010 Fran Saunders
So, what do you think? Does it work?
Fran Saunders Photography 
I think the consensus on this one was that the effect was a bit overdone. I’ve toned it down in the final version. Thanks, everyone, for your dollar’s worth!