More Dahlias

Dahlias come in so many beautiful shapes and colors!  It's pretty overwhelming to be in a room with hundreds of them (I should have taken a picture of that -- )

[Linkup to Picture Perfect]

I love the spidery ones -- yellow and red, purple and white -- some of them are huge.  This is one I brought home --

These are all processed partially with Nik Software's Color Efex Pro, one of a group of excellent photo processing programs I bought last spring.  So far, I've only used Color Efex and Silver Efex (haven't had the time to put in to learning the others), but they're wonderful -- they offer so many possibilities for different effects.  The one right above is supposed to look like a Polaroid picture.  The black-and-white effects you can get with Silver Efex are just stunning.

The programs don't come cheap, though -- the individual programs are $100-200 each, but you can buy the whole set for $299.  That's what I did with my income tax return this year :)

[Linkup to Mellow Yellow Monday]

Anyway, hope you enjoy the dahlias.  I have about a bazillion pictures to process.