Tag Clouds

Tag Clouds are the current rage. Bloggers love them because they highlight the tags most written about. The disadvantage, I guess, is that sometimes the reader needs an alphabetical list of subjects. I guess you can have both. Now I have a tag cloud in my widgets to the right of this post. I will give it some time and see if it is a keeper.



The instructions for doing it came from Fido.

Warning - back up your template in case you screw things up.

How to Remove the Background around Hair

1StopTutorial.com and AliBaba - a good tutorial on removing the background around hair.

Drop Shadows

In order to make text or numbers stand out, a solid shadow and drop shadow add effect. The tutorial to follow is from Lynda.com and the subject is solid-text. The solid shadow appears above the numbers and symbol in a darker shade of blue. The drop shadow appears below and right in a dark gray scale. Both filters are accessed through the filters button at the bottom right of the Fireworks screen.

As the tutorial is straight forward, I won't add an explanation.

Retouch Menu

The Retouch Menu is found at page 174 of the Nikon D5000 User's Manual.

The steps are simple and I will not go through them in detail. Generally, bring up the image in the view finder by pressing the back button. Then press the OK button to view the retouch menu. Select the desired option and hit OK and save.

Here are several examples. The first image is the original, the second adds green, the third is sepia, and the last creates a gray scale using the cyanotype filter.

There are many options including D-Lighting which brightens shadows where the contrast between dark and light is significant. Another option is color balance which allows the editor to shift the color predominance.

Of course, Fireworks and Photoshop editing allows the same operations, but isn't it nice to have a choice?

Drop and solid shadows

Shadows are useful if you want to give the appearance of a subject away from the background. It is often used to lift a piece of paper or an image off the surface.

Here I have applied both a drop and solid shadow using the simple filter selector in CS4 Fireworks.The solid shadow to work like this has to have a transparent background. It is also necessary to clear the unneeded pixels at the top and on the right of the image.

I am not sure how I could use this yet, but it is something to remember.

Old Photographs 2

During the 1920's and 1930's. postcard manufacturers began to colorize photographs.

The colors were predominately reds, greens, and blues. Again, using filters, adjust color, hue and saturation, create this effect. Not a lot is needed. So, heighten the blues and reds with the hue.

Have fun and experiment.

Old photographs

In the early days of film, black and white was all that you could get. Images were fuzzy and blurry. to recreate that look, go to filters, adjust color, hue and saturation. Then, desaturate to remove color from the image.If you like, you can leave a touch of color to give the effect of a sightly colorized version. Now, add a little gaussian blur.

This is as far as you can go in Fireworks, but with Photoshop, you can add filter, texture, grain.

Here is the Fireworks version. In Fireworks you can also adjust the brightness and contrast.

For more on this, go to BioRust. The tutorial was written by globator, a Russian with his own photoshop website.

Pulitzer winning photographs

Denver Post photographer Craig F. Walker has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for photography. The image - Nov. 26, 2008. 6:23 a.m. Ian Fisher cradles his Squad Automatic Weapon during a briefing on the troops' morning escort mission.The feature is on Ian Fisher's decision to join the military and go to Iraq.

The Denver Post.

View Craig Walker's story of the Ian Fisher: American Soldier. Photojournalism is at its best.

Edward S. Curtis at the Wichita Art Museum

The Wichita Art Museum is currently showing an exhibition of 40 photogravures of Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian collection.

In over 2000 photogravure plates and narrative, Curtis portrayed the customs and lifestyles of 80 Indian tribes.


Northwestern University Library, Edward S. Curtis's 'The North American Indian': the Photographic Images, 2001.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ienhtml/curthome.html

Blending modes

http://mashable.com/2010/04/11/youtube-photoshop-tutorials/

Learn blending modes in Photoshop.

Panorama

This is a composite image of three shots taken at the bike trail off of Pawnee Road in Wichita, Kansas. The overall image size is 3000px by 600px. Some color adjustments were made to blend the skies.

I hoped to use the smudge tool and further blend the seams where the images conjoin, but the tool did not work. I will have to give this some thought.

the robin

A robin is building its nest outside my window. The nest is in a Juniper tree, perhaps six feet off the ground.

Robins are found throughout the US. They will remain year round in the US, but in Canada, they migrate south to warmer area.

The male goes in advance of the female and builds the nest, but he doesn't sleep in the nest at night so as to not attract predators.

Habitat and food.

Ansel Adams: The Mural Project 1941-1942

The lost photographs of Ansel Adams.

In early 1941, Ansel Adams was commissioned by Harold Ickes, secretary of the Department of Interior, and asked to produce images and large-format murals of landscapes managed by the department.The project was cut short by the start of World War II, and Adams' 200-plus photographs were stored and forgotten.

The Department of Interior website, more about the exhibit.

View the Grand Canyon in full screen. For best viewing go to NPR.

Levels

I almost feel as if I am beating this subject to death. This original image was taken at Pawnee Prairie Park on the west side of Wichita. The time is late evening on a spring day, the sun has just set below the horizon.

The second image uses Fireworks filters, adjust colors, automatic adjust color. The third image adjusts the levels to heighten the blues and reds.

Blue lake

This image was taken last night just after sunset. This is the pond next to the BMX track in Wichita.

Again, the settings were automatic. The only changes were in filters, adjust levels and add some contrast. The level adjustment heightens the blue color. The contrast sharpens the image.

The sum of the parts

When you think about it, an image is really just the sum of the parts, the parts being the bits that combine to give us an image. So, when working with a poor image that has high and low tones, you can crop small portions of the image and adjust the color independently of the rest of the image.

The above image was taken at night with automatic settings. The result is an obviously inferior image. Below the image color is adjusted using levels and contrast. But to achieve a better result with the marquee and billboard it is necessary to crop these areas and work on them separately.

Both ways

A cold Sunday morning in Kansas - Toby, my daughter's hyperactive pet, went home to Lawrence. So I was left with just Sammy and Lizzie, and we decided to go for a walk in the country.

Blue skies are not always a given. With either Photoshop or Fireworks, you can add a blue sky with the magic wand and the paint bucket. First, highlight the sky with the magic wand setting the tolerance to 30 or whatever works. Then select the paint bucket, use a gradient, and with the press of a button, you have a nice blue sky. I also added a sharpen as a filter to let the dogs stand out.

Compare the original image.

An Irish Prayer

We are all looking for a little wisdom in a chaotic world.
Irish Blessing set to images and sound

Composing shots

The center of the picture frame is dead space.

Thirds : Imagine the camera monitor crisscrossed by lines that divide it into thirds vertical and horizontally. These lines represent the best location of the significant elements in the picture.



Diagonal : Pictures with diagonal compositions make for strong images with lots of energy, but diagonals are harder to find.

The S curve : The S is a sinuous, sensual letter; composing a picture around an S gives the picture interest.

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