This is a digital painting, not a manipulated photo. This means I painted it using art software, in this case, I used Painter IX.5, a Corel program that works wonderfully with a electronic art tablet called a Wacom tablet. That comes with a stylus pen that you use as if you are holding a marken, pen, pencil, pastel, chalk, airbrush, paintbrush, etc. You pick the medium, brush or tool, adjust sizes, textures, layer, mask, mix mediums (many you could not do traditional, but can with the computer software), and you guide the stylus across the board as you look at the screen canvas. You save as you work often. I may save a image under serveral stages for example, cone flowers 1 tah. Then clone flowers 1 a, or 2. It helps me try out new ideas, and if it doesn't work out, I can go back to a stage I did like and try again with out messing the whole thing up. I can undo a goof, with I do often having wobbly hands. It makes my work more accurate when I want it. I can add, change, adjust brightness, use photo program editing tools, such as equalize, paste in eleents to merge in from other works to collage together and make the colors all equal. I can smooth out brush strokes I want to blend for a soft, more realistic look, or texture like crazy. I can make my own brushes, color palettes and save them. I can instantly dry wet paint, diffuse it, dilute it, all sorts of stuff. Please check out my many posted works and you can see the versitality that is out there. I learn more every time I use, and save so much time. My hands are arthritic due to mulitiple breaks from accidents, and have trouble holding and gripping pencils and regular brushes. Yet, I can do the stylus with ease. The wacom plugs into a usb port and can be used with muliple programs from e-mail to wordprocessing as it has shortcut keys such as cut, delete, copy, paste, open, close, highlight, and othe commands. I also admit to using it to play computer games such as solitare, mahjjong, and other games. I can not click on a mouse to much as it flares up carpal tunnel syndrome. I thought I would not be able to use a compter for much. HAH! It liberated me. I have not found a program it does not work with so far. If you want to ask me questions on my work , software, etc., please e-mail me. This painting started from a blank canvas on the screen. I split screen so I could look at some photos I took of the garden, a pretty sceene, but the flowers were all half eaten and covered with June beetles. It's an organic garden, so the beetles had free reign to devore the flowers. I painted the flowers minus the beetles, and the eaten up leaves and flower petals. I hope you like this work. It took me a 2 months to complete. I hope you like the results of mixed mediums of pastels, watercolor, blenders, and airbrush.