Continued progress.

Now comes the funny part. Take the petal you have just created and save it as a jpeg. Now bring it back in a new layer and change the blending mode to hard mix. This will create a more random color spread for our gradient. Ok then save that hard mix layer as a jpeg and delete the layer you have just made. Now bring the hard mix jpeg in on a new layer, and change the blending mode to overlay and take the fill down to a low number, somewhere around 30



You should get something like this. Trust me it gets better.


Save that out as a jpeg, bring it back in on a new layer and give it a new blending mode and transparency. Make sure the new layer is not quite visible, but enough to cause a change in the image. The finished petal with added detail to give it a natural look.


Now we have to create a bump map, and a shine map. Save out a jpeg, then desaturate the petal and adjust the levels. Do not auto adjust the levels because we want to work with all the gradations of grey.




Now we add a Gaussian blur to the petal to give the shine map a nice glossy shimmer.