bioneural.net » photoshop

iPhone wallpapers for homesick Kiwis

Bruce — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:52:51 +0000

Everyone loves customizing new toys and making wallpapers for your phone is probably one of the easier ways to do it (a lot easier, for example, than trying to find an inexpensive yet good-looking protective case!). I took a selection of images from Project Koru are turned them into three thematic wallpaper sets for my iPhone using this great Photoshop template. Blue Welly We love Wellington. We miss it and this makes us feel blue at times; the Windy City also has blue skies more often than those above us in England. These are evident in the Blue Welly wallpapers, featuring public sculptures around the city. The images in this set show: The Fern Ball in the Civic Centre; One of the totem poles on the City to Sea Bridge; One of the metal nikau palms outside the Public Library; The Weta Workshop Tripod in Courtenay Place. Click thumbnail to enlarge imageBlue welly iPhone wallpapers Godzone patterns New Zealand has a lot of different landscapes in relatively close proximity, making it an ideal place for the photographic pursuit of natural pattern spotting. The images in this set show: The golden sands of Abel Tasman National Park in Golden Bay; The leaf structure of the New Zealand tree fern; The rippled surface of Queen Charlotte Sound in the Marlborough Sounds; A dense stand of manuka (NZ tea tree) on the slopes of Mt. Taranaki (looking rather like a wooden barcode). Click thumbnail to enlarge imageGodzone patterns iPhone wallpapers Kiwi icons I've touched on iconic Kiwi symbols before (and noted a couple of icon sets). The images in ...

Bridge v Lightroom v Aperture

Bruce — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 23:30:52 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Ben Long nicely summarises the capabilities of Bridge (included with Photoshop CS3) in the context of dedicated workflow applications like Abobe's Lightroom and Apple's Aperture. The last word? "No piece of software will make you a better photographer... Instead, go out and shoot!". Perhaps too much efficiency could mean missing valuable lessons if not enough time is spent analysing individual images in order to improve capture, composition, and processing technique?

In the shadow of Mt. Doom

Bruce — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 08:38:13 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

We end this month in New Zealand with a sense of achievement: we walked the Tongariro Crossing without significant pain nor injury. We had good weather and got some great photos of the beautiful volcanic landscape. Our 18.6 km walk began early morning in the shadow of Mt. Doom, as Ngauruhoe is now popularly known following its role in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. In the bright sunlight at altitude, capturing well-exposed images of the dark landscape required extra care to avoid blown highlights. Click thumbnail to enlarge image Mt. Ngauruhoe (a.k.a Mt. Doom) Getting good exposure I have the AE-L/AF-L button on my Nikon D70 set to AE Lock only, meaning exposure locks while the button is pressed but focus is unaffected. The default locks both exposure and focus: AE-L/AF-L settings (© Nikon) I've ignored this button until recently, perhaps because using it requires some dexterity and coordination: Zoom in and focus on a highlight—usually horizon sky (half-depress the trigger); Depress the AE-L/AF-L button; Keeping my thumb on the AE-L/AF-L button, release the trigger; Zoom in on the subject and half-depress the trigger to lock focus; Zoom out and recompose; Press the trigger; Release the AE-L/AF-L button! Fingers and thumbs (© Nikon) I recently tried this routine repeatedly on the Crossing and it soon became automatic, but granted it does seem cumbersome. Is there a better way to do this? After taking the shot I always check for over-exposed areas on the LCD, which I keep on Highlights display (the brightest areas flash; the less the better). Raw material The idea is to get ...

Clean up your image

Bruce — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 06:47:44 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Every time you swap a lens you risk dust getting inside the body of your SLR. It can settle in front of the sensor and appear in every image that you take thereafter as an indistinct spot (dust on the lens apparently makes for a more defined dirty spec, although it depends on aperture). While many of these artifacts can be effectively dealt with using Photoshop's invaluable healing brush (working at 100% image size), sometimes they fall on an image zone that makes correction difficult. At some point they become to numerous to ignore; that's when I decided to get some CCD housekeeping organized. If you search the D70 manual for "cleaning", it refers to the mirror lock-up control and describes the protective role of the low pass filter—recommending that it be "cleaned only by Nikon-authorized service personnel". That's all I needed to know, although DIY instructions are given. Thom Hogan's Complete Guide to the Nikon D70 goes as far as including a specific disclaimer: In particular, the author and publisher shall not be responsible for any damage to the CCD of the camera of any reader who follows the cleaning instructions contained in this book. Using Nikon Capture (which I don't own) to create a "dust reference photo" is imperfect alternative option discussed by Thom. Lacking the experience, nerve, and equipment, I took my D70 into a local photographic store. WPS charged $NZ150 for a next-day cleaning service and provided before and after pictures to demonstrate its effectiveness. Click thumbnail ...

Wellington panorama

Bruce — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 05:42:42 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

For those who don't know Wellington, New Zealand's capital is located at the bottom of North Island. The central business district sits right on the harbour edge, and is surrounded by green-clad hills upon which the inner suburbs perch. A great view over the city can be had from the lookout on Mt. Victoria; it just asks for a panorama. This image was stitched with Photoshop CS3's much-improved Photomerge tool from 5 x 6MP images: Click thumbnail to enlarge image Wellington City from Mt. Victoria Click to download a larger version (1.7MB, 7632 x 1781px JPEG).

Creating a page curl in Photoshop

Bruce — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 05:32:59 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Veerle has posted a great Photoshop tutorial that visually walks you through the process of creating a 3D "page curl" effect—something I've wondered how to achieve for quite a time.

IOTW: Leaders wear silk jackets

Bruce — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 20:36:48 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

What do Vladimir Putin, George Bush, and Helen Clark all have in common? Answer: they have all been subject to Photoshop treatment and hang on the wall at Silk Factory No. 1 in China's industrial city of Suzhou. But why is New Zealand's Prime Minister hung between the presumably more influential leaders of Russia and the USA? How many people passing through the factory shop even know who she is? Apparently Clark is an "old friend" of the Chinese President, having been a strong supporter of China's entry into the WTO. Click thumbnail to enlarge image World leaders in doctored jackets, Suzhou, China Want to see more from IOTW? Click here for an archive view.

A conversation with Adobe

Bruce — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 08:38:25 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Why do Adobe products cost more to download than buy off the shelf in Europe? Why do they cost way more than they do in the US? Do US upgrades work with UK products? Why doesn't Adobe respond to Customer Support e-mails? Good questions: now here for the answers... 17 June 2005, Adobe Customer Service 020 73 65 07 33 I'm ringing because I didn't get a reply to my fax or e-mail, which I sent some time ago. I own a licensed version of Photoshop 7 and am interested in an upgrade to Photoshop CS2 for Macintosh. On your Store you are selling the boxed upgrade for £140 and the downloadable upgrade for £144. Can you please explain why it costs more to download than receive the media and printed manual? The Online Store is based in Ireland so Irish VAT is charged on the download. I think that's about 22%. [It's actually 21%, vs. 17% in the UK]. Can you explain why the same product costs $US150 from the Adobe Store in the US (that's approx. £80)? Obviously this discrepancy has nothing to do with exchange rate or tax. I understand where you're coming from. I have a written statement on this which I'm not going to read out to you. Basically what it comes down to is that everything is cheaper in the US. [I asked if he could e-mail me the statement.] He did, and here it is: Why are European products more expensive than UE or American products? The price of software ...

Colour management basics

Bruce — Sun, 12 Jun 2005 17:57:12 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

If you walk past an electrical retailer with a row of TVs in the shop window, you'll notice that the skins tones and other colours look different on each set. The differences may be subtle, and no TV is necessarily any more "correct" than any other. But each TV will have a control that lets you tweak the colour until you match what you are seeing with what you expect to see i.e. colour management (color, if you don't speak standard English). Gamut A TV is but one type of device; now imagine a series of devices, each unique in the way it handles colour. What are the chances that an image will look the same as it passes from your camera, through your monitor, to your printer? Slim, if the range of colours available (the gamut) on each device differs widely and you're not using colour management. Colour spaces A colour space is a 3D representation of the gamut (colour range) for a particular device (see the graphic below). The aim of colour management is to match a particular tone in the colour space of one device to the same tone in the colour space of another device. For example, in the RGB colour model values are made up of three numbers corresponding to Red, Green, and Blue. So the specific tone of grey defined by 190,190,190 on one device might match up to a different numeric description on another device. Device profiles For colour matching to happen, each device must have a device profile ...

Re-purposing photos for e-mail and web display

Bruce — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 17:00:46 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

If you produce high-quality images (e.g. by means of a raw conversion workflow), you may find that they are unsuitable for e-mailing or display on the web as JPEGs in their present form. They may be of a large dimension, high-resolution (e.g. 300 dpi), high bit-depth (i.e. 16 bits/ channel), with an unsafe colour profile (e.g. ProPhoto), not enough compression, and be a bit fuzzy after re-sizing. You could open each individual image that you want to re-purpose in Photoshop and change the pixel dimensions, the resolution (to 72 dpi), the bit depth (to 8 bits), the colour space (to sRGB), the quality (e.g. to 8 cf. 12), and apply sharpening. But there is a much easier way using Photoshop Actions and Automator... Generic automation The Fotogenetic Photoshop Actions by Alex Mabini automate the above processes. Stop reading here—unless you have Mac OS X Tiger. Under Tiger Mabini's "Save for Web" Action can be combined with the "Do Action" (and other) Photoshop Automator Actions by Ben Long (available here): The resulting Automator workflow can be saved as a Finder plug-in so that it is available whenever you right-click on an image in the Finder: Alternatively, it can be saved as a stand-alone application that sits on your Desktop (or in your OS X Dock) onto which you can drop one or more files: It really works! What about iPhoto? iPhoto includes an "Email" button. Let's throw a 34.5 MB TIFF at it (16 bits/ channel, 300 dpi, 3008 x 2000 pixels, ProPhoto colour space). clearly, not something you ...