How nice to return from vacation to find people still willing to write 500 Words stories.
Yesterday's provided some splendid coffee-break entertainment.
This week's sentence is a nice easy one. Short and enticing. I do hope you have fun with it.
It is from Gustave Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary.'
The sentence is:
'They heard in the passage the sharp noise of a wooden leg on the boards.'
I've already sketched mine out so I'll trim it to the right length and come around to collect yours up ready for next Thursday's Story Time.
Enjoy!
Friday, November 13, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
More Fun With Teeny Tiny Things
If any of your compendious memories stretch back to two posts ago you'll remember me giving a few hints and tips on how to fake lens-tilt effects using Photoshop.
The lovely Kim (purveyor of the most truly awesome secret soup on the planet - and no, I'm not giving away the secret, so nyaa!) has requested a somewhat more informative tutorial than my previous "dick around with the sliders until it all goes Toytown."
So … Strap in and let's go!
First up. Open a photo in Photoshop.
Don't moan that you've not got Photoshop. This is a tutorial specifically for Kim, but if you do have it and want to play, feel free to join in.
Today we'll be shrinking the cute little park under the Eiffel Tower to tabletop size.
So that we can do that, we need to create a new layer (Layers Menu - New - New Layer).
If - like me - you're using Photoshop CS3 because your skanky boss won't stump for CS4 in a recession you'll get a little pop-up window like this.
Hit the OK and let's move on.
From your "Window" Menu you'll want to make sure these two submenus are open: the "Layers" and the "Channels" menus.
Next step is to turn your new layer into an "Alpha Channel" so we can get whizzy and do cool stuff.
If you look down in the bottom right you'll see I've rather scruffily drawn a little red square around the button you want to push.
If you hover your cursor over it a little descriptor window will tell you "Create New Channel".
Oh, by the way, you might want to click on these to get a bit better image.
Yikes! It's all gone black!
What we're looking at here is a blank Alpha Channel.
Alpha channels are incredibly useful, especially if - like me - you work in 3D programmes a lot. With a little messing in this window I can create bump map masks and do awesome stuff like this. Yay for alpha channels!
Anyhoo …
Top left of this picture is how you want to set up your gradients using the simple drop-down menus and just the normal presets.
Click and drag and you'll see you're making a line. You can hold down "Shift" to constrain it to the vertical and then let go to produce your gradient.
Mess around in here making a few different sorts and within a minute or two you'll be more than proficient.
So!
Here's what we want to see next. Single click on the "Background" to bring up your original picture again. The alpha channel should default to "off".
Should you wish to check your gradient against the picture simply click the alpha channel to "on" using the little eye-shaped doohickey I've outlined in messy freehand red.
Here's where the fun starts:
Go to your "Filters" menu and scroll down the drop-down until you reach "Blur", then scroll down the sub-menu to "Lens Blur".
First up:
Click on the "Faster" button (if you've not got a whizzy new Mac you'll want to save the "More Accurate" button for the final stage otherwise things take all day to happen).
Next: In the "Depth Map" menu, use the scroll-down menu button to select "Alpha 1" (or whatever you've named your alpha channel) as the source for the filter.
You can mess with shapes but I generally leave that button set to the default "Hexagon"
Now set the sliders to whatever you feel looks good, but a good place to start is with my own settings here.
This is where my previous, more sketchy and generally crap tutorial said "dick around with the sliders until it all goes Toytown", but once you've done it you'll know that's actually a pretty accurate description of what it feels like.
When you're happy, hit the "More Accurate" button, then "OK".
For outside shots with lens-tilt effect, you can enhance the "Toytown" look by adding just a couple more touches to make it look like it's a model lit by a light bulb.
Under the "Image" Menu, and the "Adjustments" sub-menu, select "Hue/Saturation" and crank the saturation slider a little.
You can really go to town on this by using the "Master" drop down menu to adjust the saturation of individual colour channels, but as a quick fix the "Master" setting is just fine.
Back in the "Image" - "Adjustments" Menu, select "Brightness/Contrast" and whack up the contrast to give a nice, cheesy fakeness to your photo.
Et voilà! A teeny tiny horse chestnut tree underneath the Eiffel Tower.
Here are a few more lens-tilt fakes:
The tiny London Eye by night.
I love the way it makes the chubby little tugboats alongside Westminster Pier look like something from the bathtub.
My tiny train station.
A teeny tiny little racing car at Silverstone.
Even a tiny Katie doll outside the doll's house from the previous lens-tilt post.
Okay, so some subjects work better than others, but it's fun to play and find out.
So there you have it, Kim. I hope that helps you have a big bundle of fun playing with your Photoshop.
Love to you and Arthur!
Toodle-pip!
The lovely Kim (purveyor of the most truly awesome secret soup on the planet - and no, I'm not giving away the secret, so nyaa!) has requested a somewhat more informative tutorial than my previous "dick around with the sliders until it all goes Toytown."
So … Strap in and let's go!
First up. Open a photo in Photoshop.Don't moan that you've not got Photoshop. This is a tutorial specifically for Kim, but if you do have it and want to play, feel free to join in.
Today we'll be shrinking the cute little park under the Eiffel Tower to tabletop size.
So that we can do that, we need to create a new layer (Layers Menu - New - New Layer).If - like me - you're using Photoshop CS3 because your skanky boss won't stump for CS4 in a recession you'll get a little pop-up window like this.
Hit the OK and let's move on.
From your "Window" Menu you'll want to make sure these two submenus are open: the "Layers" and the "Channels" menus.Next step is to turn your new layer into an "Alpha Channel" so we can get whizzy and do cool stuff.
If you look down in the bottom right you'll see I've rather scruffily drawn a little red square around the button you want to push.
If you hover your cursor over it a little descriptor window will tell you "Create New Channel".
Oh, by the way, you might want to click on these to get a bit better image.
Yikes! It's all gone black!What we're looking at here is a blank Alpha Channel.
Alpha channels are incredibly useful, especially if - like me - you work in 3D programmes a lot. With a little messing in this window I can create bump map masks and do awesome stuff like this. Yay for alpha channels!
Anyhoo …Top left of this picture is how you want to set up your gradients using the simple drop-down menus and just the normal presets.
Click and drag and you'll see you're making a line. You can hold down "Shift" to constrain it to the vertical and then let go to produce your gradient.
Mess around in here making a few different sorts and within a minute or two you'll be more than proficient.
So!Here's what we want to see next. Single click on the "Background" to bring up your original picture again. The alpha channel should default to "off".
Should you wish to check your gradient against the picture simply click the alpha channel to "on" using the little eye-shaped doohickey I've outlined in messy freehand red.Here's where the fun starts:
Go to your "Filters" menu and scroll down the drop-down until you reach "Blur", then scroll down the sub-menu to "Lens Blur".
First up:Click on the "Faster" button (if you've not got a whizzy new Mac you'll want to save the "More Accurate" button for the final stage otherwise things take all day to happen).
Next: In the "Depth Map" menu, use the scroll-down menu button to select "Alpha 1" (or whatever you've named your alpha channel) as the source for the filter.
You can mess with shapes but I generally leave that button set to the default "Hexagon"
Now set the sliders to whatever you feel looks good, but a good place to start is with my own settings here.
This is where my previous, more sketchy and generally crap tutorial said "dick around with the sliders until it all goes Toytown", but once you've done it you'll know that's actually a pretty accurate description of what it feels like.
When you're happy, hit the "More Accurate" button, then "OK".
For outside shots with lens-tilt effect, you can enhance the "Toytown" look by adding just a couple more touches to make it look like it's a model lit by a light bulb.
Under the "Image" Menu, and the "Adjustments" sub-menu, select "Hue/Saturation" and crank the saturation slider a little.You can really go to town on this by using the "Master" drop down menu to adjust the saturation of individual colour channels, but as a quick fix the "Master" setting is just fine.
Back in the "Image" - "Adjustments" Menu, select "Brightness/Contrast" and whack up the contrast to give a nice, cheesy fakeness to your photo.
Et voilà! A teeny tiny horse chestnut tree underneath the Eiffel Tower.Here are a few more lens-tilt fakes:
The tiny London Eye by night.I love the way it makes the chubby little tugboats alongside Westminster Pier look like something from the bathtub.
My tiny train station.
A teeny tiny little racing car at Silverstone.
Even a tiny Katie doll outside the doll's house from the previous lens-tilt post.Okay, so some subjects work better than others, but it's fun to play and find out.
So there you have it, Kim. I hope that helps you have a big bundle of fun playing with your Photoshop.
Love to you and Arthur!
Toodle-pip!
500 Words XIV - Story Time
This week's sentence was taken from Dickens' 'A Tale Of Two Cities'.
The sentence was:
"Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than the summits of the two-great towers of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations."
Without further ado, here are the happy tales to while away your coffee breaks:
Prudence's 'At Seventeen'
Welcome back, Prudence!
But ah, you are so cruel.
A shoe-fetishist's nightmare to tantalise your readers.
Todd's 'The King And The Nightmare'
And taking of nightmares. Brr!
Todd scares the willies out of anyone thinking of a nice, wine-sodden wander through the midnight streets of Paris.
Dive's 'Breaking Point'
More miserable meditations on the nature of God. Hey ho.
Next week's sentence will be posted tomorrow.
The sentence was:
"Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than the summits of the two-great towers of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations."
Without further ado, here are the happy tales to while away your coffee breaks:
Prudence's 'At Seventeen'
Welcome back, Prudence!
But ah, you are so cruel.
A shoe-fetishist's nightmare to tantalise your readers.
Todd's 'The King And The Nightmare'
And taking of nightmares. Brr!
Todd scares the willies out of anyone thinking of a nice, wine-sodden wander through the midnight streets of Paris.
Dive's 'Breaking Point'
More miserable meditations on the nature of God. Hey ho.
Next week's sentence will be posted tomorrow.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Teeny Tiny Town
I love dicking around in Photoshop.
One of the spiffy things you can do with it (and very trendy among landscape photographers at the moment) is to make a lens-tilt effect.
Lens-tilt is something we've been using for decades in architecture. Basically, when you point a normal camera up at a tall building it gets all foreshortened, but if you use a bellows lens with a tilt facility you can make the building the same width all the way up, like you're looking at it straight on instead of from underneath.
Boring, huh?
Well the fun part is that it also messes with your sense of focus in a really neat and trippy way, and if you apply that effect to a normal photo with a bit of Photoshop jiggery-pokery it makes things look all teeny tiny like toys.
Woohoo! Petit Paris from the top of a three-foot Arc de Triomphe!
Click on these to get a better effect.
If anyone's curious, this is how you do it:
- Open a photo in Photoshop and add a blank layer to it.
- Convert the layer to an alpha channel and add a monochrome gradient to it (black/white/black - top to bottom).
- Open the lens-blur filter and choose the alpha channel as your source, then dick around with the sliders until it all goes Toytown.
- Yay!
While Katie was here we visited Stranger's Hall Museum in Norwich. Here are some pics I took in there that I've used lens-tilt to make into doll's house rooms.
A teeny tiny dining room for dieters.
A teeny tiny music room for me.
A teeny tiny toyroom for even teenier tinier tots.
Now have a go yourselves.
Have fun y'all.
One of the spiffy things you can do with it (and very trendy among landscape photographers at the moment) is to make a lens-tilt effect.
Lens-tilt is something we've been using for decades in architecture. Basically, when you point a normal camera up at a tall building it gets all foreshortened, but if you use a bellows lens with a tilt facility you can make the building the same width all the way up, like you're looking at it straight on instead of from underneath.
Boring, huh?
Well the fun part is that it also messes with your sense of focus in a really neat and trippy way, and if you apply that effect to a normal photo with a bit of Photoshop jiggery-pokery it makes things look all teeny tiny like toys.
Woohoo! Petit Paris from the top of a three-foot Arc de Triomphe!Click on these to get a better effect.
If anyone's curious, this is how you do it:
- Open a photo in Photoshop and add a blank layer to it.
- Convert the layer to an alpha channel and add a monochrome gradient to it (black/white/black - top to bottom).
- Open the lens-blur filter and choose the alpha channel as your source, then dick around with the sliders until it all goes Toytown.
- Yay!
While Katie was here we visited Stranger's Hall Museum in Norwich. Here are some pics I took in there that I've used lens-tilt to make into doll's house rooms.
A teeny tiny dining room for dieters.
A teeny tiny music room for me.
A teeny tiny toyroom for even teenier tinier tots.Now have a go yourselves.
Have fun y'all.
Monday, November 09, 2009
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Friday, November 06, 2009
500 Words XIV - This Week's Sentence
Yikes! It's Friday already.
I suppose now that I'm recovering from my vacation I'd better get back to the discipline of writing a 500 Words piece.
After yesterday's visit to Stohrer, we'll stay in Paris for this one and take our sentence from Dickens' 'A Tale Of Two Cities'.
The sentence is:
"Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than the summits of the two-great towers of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations."
If anyone out there is still remotely interesting in taking part, I'll collect up your stories for next Thursday.
Have fun
I suppose now that I'm recovering from my vacation I'd better get back to the discipline of writing a 500 Words piece.
After yesterday's visit to Stohrer, we'll stay in Paris for this one and take our sentence from Dickens' 'A Tale Of Two Cities'.
The sentence is:
"Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than the summits of the two-great towers of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations."
If anyone out there is still remotely interesting in taking part, I'll collect up your stories for next Thursday.
Have fun
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Cake Break
Rue Montorgueil in Paris is a wonderful place; a market street awash with cafés, artisan patisseries, fruit shops, veggie shops, fishmongers, butchers, poulterers and awesome cheese emporia.
But the jewel in the crown is Stohrer.Established in 1730 by the former pastry chef at Versailles, it has survived the Revolution, the Republic, Napoleon (twice), yet more revolution and two World Wars and is still going strong as the most venerable and revered bakery in France.
It was there when Valjean and Cossette wandered the streets of Paris; there when Sidney Carton went to the guillotine for love; there when the Russians entered the city, and when the Nazis came and went a century and a half later; and it was there a couple of weeks ago when Katie introduced me to its wonders.
It's there still.
Go visit.
In the window sits the Eiffel Tower accurately recreated with macarons.What's not to love?
Let's go inside, shall we?Beautiful mosaic floor, glorious painted ceiling and flamboyant chandelier.
Not your usual local bakery then.
As you enter, the left hand side is sweet stuff and the right is savoury.Indeed spicy, if you count the pretty, semi-naked girl armed with an olive branch and ready to spank you if you don't spend all your money in there.
The things in the foreground were labelled as "prawns in negligées".I want them!
Now.
Ah, the infamous "Hazelnut Thingie", aka Feuillete Noisettes.Boy howdy, those are good!
That prune tart looked tempting, but then so did everything else.
Porn.No other word for it.
Let your greedy eyes linger, people.
Yes, we ate these.
And this lovely little snackette of wild mushroom tart, quiche, bread and a terrine that was almost as good as the terrine of pig's trotter with pickled wild mushrooms and mustard jus that I had for a starter at l'Epigramme (awesome) on Friday evening with Katie and Eric.
You have my permission to squeal.
That cherry had so much kirsch in it Katie almost fell off her chair.
The English simply cannot make proper chocolate éclairs.
After all that lot I need a coffee to wash it down.Yum.
Now I just need to get back to Paris …
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
On The Wall
I do like the variety of things people in Paris tend to put on their walls.
Here are a few:
Lots of lovely signage and lamps.
Napoleon (inevitably).
Light.
Exhibition posters.
The Tiffany exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg was totally awesome.
Er … a giant seahorse with a swim bladder problem.
Sensible advice on what to do with capitalist vermin.
Colonial racism.
A weirdo religious woman unfeasibly happy about her Catholic guilt.
And a nice old iron grille.
Lifesized photos of people (in the basement of the Louvre).
When Katie posted this one we were somewhat bemused by the amount of people who thought the girl in the poster was Katie herself. Hee hee.
Lots of lovely signage and lamps.
Napoleon (inevitably).
Light.
Exhibition posters.The Tiffany exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg was totally awesome.
Er … a giant seahorse with a swim bladder problem.
Sensible advice on what to do with capitalist vermin.
Colonial racism.
A weirdo religious woman unfeasibly happy about her Catholic guilt.And a nice old iron grille.
Lifesized photos of people (in the basement of the Louvre).When Katie posted this one we were somewhat bemused by the amount of people who thought the girl in the poster was Katie herself. Hee hee.
Monday, November 02, 2009
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