Tue 1 Jul
2003
HAPPY CANADA DAY!
Flowers Outside The Church - Fuji FinePix 2600
Happy Canada Everyone!
I woke up and looked outside. Man .. this is going to be a glorious day. Sometimes you just know. You look outside, and just by looking around, the level of brightness, you can gauge how good of a day it's going to be.
Canada turns 136 today. But we're still a very young country when compared to the European nations. What do they have on us? Thousands of years?
I was spending time with Taaj on the deck. We're pretty sure that he's going to be the outdoor type. Which is just fine by us. Whenever we take him outside, the sky, the sounds, the wind .. it all just soothes him.
Something else struck me as cool. I'm glad a lot of people are liking the images. I've recieved some rather flattering emails about them. Thanks, I'll try to keep shooting. Glen asked how I was able to make the image of the Silkeborg clothing store .. taken with a digital camera .. look like a painting. So for Glen, and a few others, who asked as well...
I shoot most of my digital images, for the web, at a resolution of at least 1280 x 960. Just in the odd case I want to make 5x7 out of them. Anyway:
- Get your image and bring it into a program like Photoshop or Fireworks (yes .. Fireworks IS that good)
- For the web, resize your image to the desired size. My images are 345 x 259 (before adding the border width)
- Adjust the levels, maybe add some more brightness. You'll have to play around with this over and over until you feel you've got it right.
- Duplicate the layer.
- Apply a Gaussian Blur to the duplicated layer. For images around the size I have, I use a pixel radius of around 5.0. Again you can play around with this to get the look you want. For larger images, you should increase the radius.
- Then apply a layer blending mode. For a painted look, choose "Multiply." For a soft look with bold colors, choose "Darken." Applying "Darken", will require you to play around with the brightness levels. Or you can even try setting the layer blend mode to "Lighten." As you can see from the flower above, you can get some really nice results.
So there you have it! Not bad eh? You might want to play around with the various Hue/Saturation, Brightness/Contrast, and Color Balance levels. Don't sweat it though. Just find something you like and go with it.
Now we all can do professional looking work.
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