in which people are little.

I decided a while ago that father's day gifts would be something that the girls and Jeff could do together (giant bucket of tinker toys were a hit a few years back), so the Geek Dad books have been a great thing the past few years.  (That guy knows he has a good thing going:  I see there's a new book up!)  These are fun books with some easy and some interesting (and some both) projects;  we ran across them through WIRED magazine.

Some of the projects Kaatje can do herself, some would require specifically dad's help (being that my days with a breadboard are very faint by this time), but once in a while we have sat down with the books to see what we can do ourselves for fun.

This was a project the girls enjoyed, and I didn't need to do a lot of research to do and could teach Kaatje a bit about photo manipulation in the process.... also leading to a discussion of how one can't always trust a picture!

The project is pretty straightforward if you are familiar with some sort of photo software (our software of choice being the GIMP, powerful and free!).  You need a set of pictures first:

preferably taken at the same angle in the same light.  Easiest way to do this is to take them in the same room from the same place!

Then, with some careful cutting, pasting, and hand-waving (more specific instructions are in the book, or trial and error always works well), you too can put small children (or large adults) in smaller vehicles of their choice!

By the end of the project Kaatje could successfully cut pictures out of pictures.  I suppose next is teaching her shading and fading and shadows to really get the whole 21st century digital jackalope thing going.

Amusements on a rainy (or soon to be snowy!) day - there's lots of potential for fun and mischief in a project like this... and hey, Christmas cards need to be made soon... hmmmm...

"colorizing" "b&w" (or, "ignoring lists")

since I'm sick of thinking about packing and all the other things I need to do before we go away this weekend (without the kids! for the first time in 3 years!!!), and since lovely sil Cary had a GIMP question, I thought it sounded more fun to make a photography blog post than a 3rd list of things to pack.

(I think I probably have a list on each level of the house and one in my bag.
I am a list-making fiend.
jeff has to remind me to check all my lists before we go.)

~
here's the cute pic Cary wanted played with:


I take no credit for it, she took it herself, of her oldest crawling in the grass (she's 3.5 now, hard to believe!)

she wanted the pic "colorized," a la what I did with these pics.

here's a simple little tutorial. a lot more can be added to it (sharpening, color correcting, color curve adjustment, etc) but here's the basics:

open your original, then make a layer.

in the "layers" box, find "mode:", then choose "hard light" for that new layer you made.

your new picture will look all crazy-colored!


whooeee!!

don't get scared and start playing with the "opacity" (in the levels section) just yet.
we're going to add another layer. before we do, if you want, you can double click on the name of the layer you just made and call it something to remind you it's the "hard light" layer.

maybe, um, "hard light"?

choose "background" again, then create that new layer, moving it to the top (above the hard light layer). note that your crazy color went away - this is because we made the new layer a copy of the "background" layer.

lets call this "desaturated," since that's what we're going to do with it.
rename away, if it suits your fancy.

being sure you're on that newest layer, go to "colors" then "desaturate."
the pop-up box will say "remove colors"
and we're going to do "Choose shades of grey based on: Average"
then click on "desaturate"


desaturate away!

now we don't have any color, and now's the time to knock yourself out playing with that opacity! while you're on the top layer (the b&w layer), move the opacity bar around and see what you like.

here's the desaturated layer at 40% opacity:


and here it is at 80% opacity:


it's totally up to you.

now there's even more fun to be had!

we can cut out pieces of our layers to show the layers below them -
I used the "scissors select tool" to cut out baby g's hat in both the desaturated layer and the hard light layer. trace around your piece by clicking along the edge, then click in the middle to make the outline march, then hit delete. I wanted to see the original color, so I did it to both layer copies.

here's the cut out hat, and the desaturation set at 80% opacity:


and, because I wasn't sure what would be better, here's the b&w set at 100%:


note how that little bit of color makes a subtle yet marked difference.
what's best?
whatever you like the best!!

~
m'kay, there's lots going on here - but just jump in and play around.

I use the hard light layer in between the base and the b&w because it makes the contrast a little stronger on the b&w, but you totally don't have to do "hard light" at all. try "soft light" or don't even add that layer.

or set the opacity different on the hard light layer and see what happens for you!

one note - for those of you that sharpen or adjust curves or whatever - do that unsharp mask or curve fix before you start making layers... it's just a pain in the neck if you try to "fix" the pic with all those layers.

~
lastly, for newbies (or reminders for the rest of us): you can't save layers as a .jpg.

you'll need to flatten your image - but either do this WHEN YOUR FINISHED PLAYING, or be SURE that you do a "Save as" and not "Save," or you'll lose all your layers.
save a working copy as a .xcf to save yourself some grief, then flatten and save as a .jpg. EVEN if you think you're finished, I've done this so often, you may wish you had those layers to play with a bit more when it's all said and done...

ready to flatten it?
go to "image" then click "flatten image."
no pop-up box, it will just flatten that baby away. then you can save as a .jpg.
{forgot to save a .xcf working copy first?
undo! (UNDO!!)}


now you can post on your blog for all the world to see...

~
and lastly, remember - GIMP is free for all!!!!!
(and works just fine in windows, if you're into that sort of thing).
it's an awesome and powerful image manipulation program.
and thanks to many geeks everywhere, absolutely free.

I love geeks!

more GIMP with g in the garden (or yard, or whatever...)

sooc:

fun with cropping, smudging, painting, curves, and saturation:
meh. got fine pics that day, but nothing spectacular. always fun to play with gimp to see what you can do.

I wish my hair (still?!) was that color. I refuse to pull out the 3 grey ones the kids gave me. I think they add interest. or maybe I just think the maturity in them will leak down into my head. (hmmmm, maybe it's the maturity leaking out?)



....and soon soon soon I'll have pics of the crafts I'm in the middle of! I promise!

g in wdm GIMP

sooc shot of g in my parents backyard. I knew it was backlit by the sky, but I wanted to play with bokeh (note the tree in the background). I had the aperture set really low manually.

here I've used the "curves" function to lighten some of the med-dark tones, and the unsharp mask to punch up the sharpness. maybe it's a little too light. we'll see.

here I made her eyes pop a little by running an unsharp mask on just them, and I used the smuge tool to clean up the dinner left on her mouth.

stay tuned for perhaps more. perhaps not.
!

GIMPtastic

i've been having a little too much fun with the GIMP lately.

(i'm sure i've linked to the GIMP download before, but here it is again, for the last time...)

the GNU Image Manipulation Program is the freeware digital darkroom, on par (for the layman) with photoshop without the $400 price tag. without any price tag. GIMP rocks.

anyhoo, instead of figuring out what to cook for supper for the past few days, i've been reading up on some fun photoshop things that i converted to use my very own self in the GIMP.

i'm tired, so you don't get how-to's.
but aren't before and after's fun, too?

(sooc means "straight out of camera")

sooc - here's a pic of 9-mo-old nephew w
and after fun with GIMP
it's subtle. but that's the good part for a nice pic here of w.

sometimes not subtle is fun.

sooc- here's g from february
okay, now be very proud of me for sharing so much of myself with you. i would never let this pic see the light of day like this. horrible horrible lighting from the stained glass window in our dining room, slightly fuzzy because i was hand-holding a long exposure with my point'n'shoot.

here's a little fun with it. cleaned up a bit, layered some effects:

and a little more fun (i'm loving this fuzzy border filter):


isn't warping reality fun?