Lighting effect using Photoshop

I was playing with photoshop today, using my new book, The Photoshop CS2 Book, by Scott Kelby. I love this book.

This is an effect called a Soft Spotlight. It actually looks like there's light emanating from inside the little flower bud.

I still think the layout options on this particular blogging template leave much to be desired, but the

top photo of each picture is the one I worked on and the bottom is the original Straight Out of Camera Shot.

For the flower bud, the first thing I did was sharpen up the original. Not too much, though. Next I adjusted the hue & saturation by turning up the red just a little bit. And finally, I used a render filter called flashlight. I situated it in the center of the bud. I've never used the spotlight effect before and that's the trick I learned today.

It's a trick that Scott says he learned from the famous nature photographer Vincent Versace. Before he learned this trick, he goes on to say, it used to take him a long time to finally achieve this effect. Now it's done in one step. For the tree photo, I shapened it up. A whole lot. Enough to bring the branches out noticeably. Then I chose the same render filter and style and placed the circle over by the cloud on the left. This effect more resembles how the sky looked to me that evening when the sun was peeking through the clouds. I think it's just enough.

Best thing is that it's basically really easy. And it's fun.

What do you think?