Pat David

Anubis and caddy-docker-proxy

Thu, 08 May 2025 09:42:31 -0500

As part of my work infrastructure I run an instance of the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) as a data center. Things were running along nicely for quite some time before I was alerted to the site being down yesterday afternoon.

Investigating things I found the server was getting hammered by requests with rotating IPs. It wasn’t so bad in the grand scheme of things (approximately 60 requests/second) but it was still enough to break access to the site.

Why can’t we have nice things?

I brought the site down while I figured out what I would do to mitigate this. No need to incur the egress traffic costs from the Google cloud. Investigating a little further showed me that a large sample of the IPs where being generated from Brazil.

When something like this happens I usually turn to the pixls-admin Matrix channel where I can ping my favorite computer nerds, darix and mica. Not surprisingly, moments after lamenting my problem they piped up with a suggestion to look at Anubis.

Anubis

On it’s homepage, Anubis states that it will:

Weigh the soul of incoming HTTP requests using proof-of-work to stop AI crawlers

Well, this sounds like exactly what I need! The basic idea is that a request to my website hits Anubis where a challenge is presented to the client and a service worker on the client to compute an SHA256 hash. If successful, the challenge is validated by Anubis after which it sets a cookie that validates the (presumably valid) browser for a while (a week by default).

Subsequent requests to the site don’t need to re-validate if this cookie is set.

All of my services on my server are run as docker containers and I happen to use the awesome caddy-docker-proxy to do all of my proxying. This means that all I had to do to use Anubis was fire up the containers and tell caddy where to route things. This is a bit different than a normal caddy deployment due to the way that caddy-docker-proxy defines its caddyfile through the use of labels in the service compose files.

For instance, with caddy-docker-proxy handling all of my traffic, in my CKAN compose file I just need to include a labels section in the compose file for my CKAN instance to define the routing:

...
  labels:
    caddy: data.disl.edu
    caddy.reverse_proxy: "{{upstreams 5000}}"
...

When this service starts up caddy-docker-proxy will read the labels section and add it into an in-memory caddyfile automatically.

Adding Anubis

For convenience I just added the services for anubis and httpdebug into my compose file for caddy-docker-proxy. (This is the pretty much the same as the docs for using it with the plain caddy container.)

...
  anubis:
    image: ghcr.io/techarohq/anubis:latest
    pull_policy: always
    environment:
      BIND: ":3000"
      TARGET: "http://ckan:5000"
    networks:
      - caddy

  httpdebug:
    image: ghcr.io/xe/x/httpdebug
    pull_policy: always
...

I did set the TARGET environment variable to point to my CKAN container for when a valid request comes in. I also added the anubis container to my caddy network.

Over on the CKAN container side of things, I just had to modify my labels to use anubis and forward some headers (again, per the anubis docs for a plain caddy container):

services:
  ckan:
    ...
    labels:
      caddy: data.disl.edu
      caddy.reverse_proxy: http://anubis:3000
      caddy.reverse_proxy.header_up_1: "X-Real-Ip {remote_host}"
      caddy.reverse_proxy.header_up_2: "X-Http_Version {http.request.proto}"
    ...

Restart the containers and let Anubis do it’s thing!

Checking my docker logs for my caddy compose file shows all of the bot requests now being DENIED:

anubis     | {"time":"2025-05-08T22:13:30.989738613Z","level":"INFO","source":{"function":"github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/lib.(*Server).checkRules","file":"github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/lib/anubis.go","line":164},"msg":"explicit deny","user_agent":"Opera/9.47.(X11; Linux x86_64; quz-PE) Presto/2.9.173 Version/10.00","accept_language":"en","priority":"","x-forwarded-for":"45.234.232.24","x-real-ip":"45.234.232.24","check_result":{"name":"bot/deny-aggressive-brazilian-scrapers","rule":"DENY"}}

Yay! And just like that I was able to connect to, and use, my site again.

References

caddy-docker-proxy: https://github.com/lucaslorentz/caddy-docker-proxy
anubis: https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis

HTML figure and figcaption Fiddling

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 15:46:06 -0600

I was fiddling with some site designs recently where I wanted to use an HTML <figure> tag and to include a <figcaption> with it where the <figcaption> text wouldn’t grow past the width of my image.

This is easily demonstrated with this photo of possibly one of the greatest U.S. authors (at least in the top 3 - probably Hemingway and Washington Irving would round out the list). Mr. Mark Twain:

This is Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Otherwise known as Mark Twain.

The code for this would look like:

<figure>
  <img src='twain.jpg'>
  <figcaption>
    This is Samuel Langhorne Clemens.  Otherwise known as Mark Twain.
  </figcaption>
</figure>

You can see it looks just like my “Don’t do this!” above. The long text goes right past the boundaries of the actual image.

I’d rather the text wrap to the maximum width of the image itself.

It turns out to be pretty simple, simply set the <figure> element to display: table and the <figcaption> to be display: table-caption. Then set the caption-side to top or bottom to taste.

So…

<figure style='display: table'>
  <img src='twain.jpg'>
  <figcaption style='display: table-caption; caption-side: bottom;'>
    This is Samuel Langhorne Clemens.  Otherwise known as Mark Twain.
  </figcaption>
</figure>

Which gets me what I’m looking for:

This is Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Otherwise known as Mark Twain.

It’s important to be careful, as the image width dictates the space for the caption. Small sizes will tend to collapse things and look awkward:

This is Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Otherwise known as Mark Twain.

Although, at that point you can probably skip the image + caption as it gets lost at these sizes but you get the point.

Of course, I’m lazy and using Hugo these days, so I wrote a quick shortcode to handle this for me simpler:

{{< figure src="twain.jpg" caption="This is Samuel Langhorne Clemens.  Otherwise known as Mark Twain." >}}

Converting Ordinal (Julian) Dates in SQL

Fri, 08 Oct 2021 21:24:57 -0500

I was recently put in charge of some (Microsoft SQL) databases for monitoring meteorological (and hydrological) data down here in Mobile Bay. One of the fun things I’ve found is that it’s apparently common to identify this data based on its ordinal day in the year. That is, a sequential count of the number of days since the first of that year.

(Not to be confused with the Julian date which is the number of days since 01 January 4713 BC Greenwich noon. Yeah, fun.)

For example, the first of the year can be written as 2021-001 while today, 11 July 2021 can be written as 2021-192. All the way up to 365 (or 366 for leap years).

This may be great for astronomical data but it’s a bit cumbersome when looking at data that has expected range values for a given season. At least for what an investigator’s expectations may be.

For instance, if I told you it was 90° F (32.2° C, 305.37 K) on August 1^st you might think it’s normal (well, normal for southern Alabama). If I said it was 90° F on day 304 you might have a harder time noticing that it seemed unusually warm (for a Halloween day).

So I needed to generate a report in something more easily consumed by non-date nerds. I also wanted to throw some of this data into something like Grafana for some nice visualizations, which is expecting a more familiar ISO-8601 datetime (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS) when graphing data.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment I decided I wanted this as part of my SQL queries.

The Data

My data looks like this in the table (these columns are all smallint types):

yeardata	jday	timedata
2021	1	1
…	…	…
2021	45	959
2021	45	2359

What I’d like to get is a more common ISO datetime format of:

YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS

(On a side note, ordinal date representations like YYYY-DDD are actually part of ISO 8601.)¹

`DATEADD` to the Rescue

Luckily for me, MS-SQL has the function DATEADD available ².

The syntax for this handy function is:

DATEADD (datepart, number, date)

Which allows me to easily add some arbitrary value to datepart which could be year, month, day, hour, or minute and it will return a datetime. Perfect!

This means I can continue to nest DATEADD calls as the date parameter and build up an actual datetime object by just adding minutes, then hours, then ordinal days to the first of the year (which I already know).

The nice thing about this approach is the automatic handling of leap years (you should have seen the code previously written to account for this…).

Now I can set a known date as a base and add days/time to it. Since I know the year easily enough I can generate a valid datetime for the first of the year at 00 hours and 00 minutes.

The final magic:

select yeardata, jday - 1, timedata,
dateadd(day, jday,
            dateadd(hour, timedata/100,
                dateadd(minute, cast(right(timedata,2) as smallint),
                    convert( varchar(4), yeardata) ) ) ) as datething
FROM [Monitoring_Data].[dbo].[628_2016_met_min]

[Edit]: I had to make a minor change of subtracting 1 from the current jday, as we’re using dateadd. :)

Episode IV: A New Job

Tue, 18 May 2021 21:56:05 -0500

After spending the last 20 years (!) of my career in shipbuilding (and 15 at a shipbuilding software company doing R&D with the U.S. Navy) I was given an incredible opportunity to switch gears to something much more aligned with my personal convictions.

I am the Data Architect for the Dauphin Island Sea Lab!

I had already been spending the last fifteen years working on data problems for shipyards, design agents, and the USN. Turning that experience to helping scientists manage their data and bringing new tools to them is a much more satisfying endeavor for me.

While warships are cool and interesting I don’t think I’d want something like “Death Star Architect” on my tombstone.

Don’t be this guy.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but the utmost respect for my colleagues who are all way smarter than me and continue to fight the good fight for the love of shipbuilding. We were all big nerds for ships and building them and I certainly plan to keep in touch.

It was just time for me to move on.

I mean, I get to support some heavy hitters in marine science which is really cool and this is literally where I work now:

Aaaand, I finally get to use this extremely relevant xkcd in context!

Completely implausible? Yes. Nevertheless, worth keeping a can of shark repellent next to the bed. (XKCD - Outreach)

Using Multiple GitLab Accounts

Sat, 08 May 2021 11:14:06 -0500

I got a new job (more on that later)!

One of the things I needed to setup is multiple GitLab accounts. I want to continue using my personal account but I also want to automatically be able to use a new work account as well.

My personal repos were in ~/personal/ and work was (gasp!) ~/work/.

I tried out a few different things I read online such as this article on Medium by Arnelle Balane that uses includeIf in .gitconfig to change the user configs based on the gitdir. It didn’t work for me, however.

In the end what ended up working for me was from this stackoverflow comment:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/63308511

Where I could load a separate .gitconfig based in each of my directories. Then I could include configurations specific to each workflow in general (personal vs. work).

For example ~/personal/.gitconfig looks like this:

[user]
  name = Pat David
  email = patdavid@gmail.com
[core]
  sshCommand = "ssh -i /home/pat/.ssh/gitlab/id_rsa"

The sshCommand ... line was the magic sauce that lets me tell git which keys to load when working with and personal repos. I have a similar one for my work directory as well.

Then in my global .gitconfig at the end I have:

...
[includeIf "gitdir:/home/pat/work/"]
  path = /home/pat/work/.gitconfig
[includeIf "gitdir:/home/pat/personal/"]
  path = /home/pat/personal/.gitconfig

to load the appropriate information when needed. Easy peasy!

* Note that I believe you’ll need at least Git version 2.13 for the includeIf directive.

You Go Hugo!

Sat, 06 Mar 2021 23:48:58 -0600

I finally got around to updating this site to use my static site geneator of choice these days, Hugo!

In case you hadn’t noticed I’m a big fan of using Hugo these days (see: RawTherapee.com, digiKam.org, LibreArts.org, and Siril.org). It does many things right and it’s fast, fast, fast (over 500 pages for this site, not including assets, renders in about 1.4 seconds)!

It also handles my content sensibly. That is, the site that is rendered will mimic the hierarchy used for the source files. For instance, this site’s content is structured like:

content/
├── posts
│   ├── 2021-03-07 Hugo
│   │   ├── hugo-wide-logo.png
│   │   └── index.md
│   ├── 2021-01-08 Libre Arts
│   │   ├── LibreArts.jpg
│   │   └── index.md

And I can expect my output to follow a similar pattern. This doesn’t seem like a big deal for a simple site like this one but it makes life much easier when building something a little more complex like LibreArts.

The overal transition was relatively quick. The hardest part was migrating old posts that I had poorly managed once upon a time. Like a fun archaeological dig the further down (back) I went into the archives the more insane I think past-pat was.

On top (most recently) was sensibly created markdown files and good use of <figure> tags and other semantic markup. Further back were awful cases of <div>’s nested with inline styles that must have made sense to past-pat (but he was insane remember).

There are a few things that I would like to address at some point with Hugo though. I don’t have a good option for using a shortcode for responsive images using a srcset for instance (at least without having to roll-my-own shortcode which I could do). I also need an override to include a title attribute with an href around an image (this is something you can see when reading the alt text on xkcd comics).

I will look into creating my own shortcodes but it’s something I like to do sparingly to keep the build system from getting too fragile.

Libre Arts

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 10:34:09 -0600

Over a year ago my friend (and fellow GIMPer) Alexandre Prokoudine asked me if I’d be willing to help him build a new site for a transition of Libre Graphics World to something broader in scope that he was calling Libre Arts. Of course 2020 managed to get in the way and I didn’t really get a chance to work on it as much as I would have liked.

Fast forward to my December break and I finally had time, energy, and desire to get things finished up for him. Some furious part-time hacking over a couple of weeks et voilà!

Please welcome Libre Arts to the world!

The Libre Arts announcement post.

This has been an incredibly fun project to work on (I realized that I had actually worked on other stuff that I just never got around to posting here about - I’ll try to rectify).

I’m looking forward to more great content from Alex on the site and continuing to tweak things and help migrate data where I can.

Support

On that note, I think it’s important to point out that it’s incredibly time-consuming to produce as much content as he does about the Libre Arts community. He’s writing constantly (check out all of the weekly recaps he’s been providing!) and has started branching out into producing a podcast in addition to all of the other material he works on.

This type of reporting and in-depth look at the Free Software world supporting creative work is invaluable in my opinion. If you can you should really consider supporting his work. Every little bit helps!

Support Alexandre Prokoudine and Libre Arts:

With A Little Help From My Friends

As you might know, part of the work we’re doing at PIXLS.US is to provide any infrastructure support that the community needs. In particular web-related infrastructure support. I can’t take credit for this as it’s really a community effort of support and expertise in various areas.

So it was amazing that Mica (@paperdigits) and darix were willing to step in and really help get things done here. I can’t thank them enough for spending their time helping me and Alex to get Libre Arts built, hosted, and launched. (Also, andabata for providing the Matomo back-end for analytics!)

New Servers

This website launch actually came at the same time that we were able to finally start migrating the PIXLS.US infrastructure to a new server. Up until recently we were hosting the websites using a traditional webhost (Stablehost) and the forum was on it’s own Linode server with forum assets and uploads being stored on Amazon S3 buckets. This works well but has the downside of creeping costs as the traffic increases.

Amazon costs for storage is cheap (~$4/month at ~100GB) but transfer is running us around $50/month. The Linode server is $20/month and the traditional webhost runs us about another $10/month.

One of the problems is that the forum on Linode only has 2 CPU cores, 4GB of RAM, and 80GB of storage. I’m trying to look forward for growth and to keep costs minimal.

Our new Hetzner server (AX51) is 8 CPU cores (16 threads), 64GB of RAM, and 2x8TB disks. All for about 25% cheaper than our current setup across multiple services.

More resources + less costs == good.

Thanks to the magic of having a darix we’ve started migrating services over to the new server(s). What’s even cooler is we’ve been able to do it with minimal interruptions thanks to the use of HAproxy on the machine that points traffic to the corresponding virtual server (static web hosting, dynamic web hosting, and our Discourse instance on discuss.pixls.us).

We’ve migrated things like this website, Libre Arts, pixls.us so far and it’s pretty easy to migrate darktable and RawTherapee soon as well. Rawpedia is going to have it’s own server for PHP/MySQL so it can continue using Mediawiki (for now?).

Of course, in true nerd fashion, darix also wired up the new server to be a GitLab runner for us so our automated build pipeline is even easier (and integrated). Just push to master on one of these projects and the deploy happens pretty darn quickly (also using an image from darix to use Hugo)!

On the Open Source Creative Podcast

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 23:07:05 -0600

Last weekend I was honored to be a guest on the Open Source Creative podcast with the one and only Jason van Gumster!

Before recording he made the mistake of telling me to feel free to go off on a tangent. I’m thinking I probably made him regret staying that. :)

I was super excited to get a chance to talk with Jason and prattle on about all sorts of odd things. We had actually been orbiting near each other online for a while and just hadn’t had the chance to catch up yet, so this was a fun opportunity to chat!

Plus, any chance to introduce PIXLS.US to a wider audience is a good thing in my world!

You can listen to the podcast here:

Or if you’re really a glutton for punishment, you can actually see me in the video of the podcast:

Some minor points/corrections (because I am speaking off the cuff and prone to making mistakes anyway) that I noticed after watching myself for almost two hours:

0:07:40 - I re-did the GIMP website in 2015.
0:09:02 - First commit for PIXLS.US website was FEB 2016.
0:15:08 - LGM 2014 was in Leipzig, not Saarbrucken.
0:21:39 - Pregnant Eyeballs!
0:32:51 - “But a technically perfect blank wall? I’ll take a technically, horribly imperfect emotional image any day of the week.”

Landing of the American troops on Omaha Beach, France, 1944, Robert Capa

0:42:45 - It’s Expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights. I am not a smart man.
0:46:38 - I love the GIMP team!
1:00:25 - It’s Jason Salavon and it was 76 Blowjobs.
1:12:12 - The PIXLS.US mission statement is actually: “To provide tutorials, workflows, and a showcase for high-quality photography and cinematography using Free/Open Source Software.”

Towards the end we sort of touch on something that has been brewing in my mind for quite some time - the idea of a larger community with a basis in much more general creative arts with Free Software. Basically a PIXLS.US idea but extrapolated for the other creative pursuits with people using Free Software. I don’t have the bandwidth (yet!) to really act on this but it’s certainly something I’ve been giving thought to for some time. Especially with the success of PIXLS and the positive results with the community there.

I wonder if we could pull it off?

My Tools

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 13:25:38 -0600

I’ve been meaning to write up something more comprehensive about the Free Software tools I use daily to help me work remotely or with distributed teams. I have no idea if this will be interesting or helpful to anyone but my hope is it might in some small way…

In B.C. (Before Coronavirus) time I was already working towards being able to work from anywhere. One of my personal computing goals is to be as computer-agnostic as possible.

I think when computering, most people are focused on the software they’re using and not as much the underlying OS (if anything I’d bet the primary interface to the OS and filesystem for most would be a file manager). They want to use particular programs to get their work done and if the programs are cross-platform the OS just fades into the background. As I believe it should be—just get out of my way and let me get to work! :)

On that note, I wanted to talk about the programs that help me get work done!

(Note: all of these programs/projects are Free/Open Source Software, which is a primary requirement for me, as well as cross-platform.)

Writing

I’d say that the majority of my work, both personal and professional, is centered around writing things. As such I like to have an environment that I’m comfortable and familiar with. This goes for writing prose as well as writing code. For this purpose there really is only one editor for me: Vim. (Come at me, Emacs!)

Vim is life...

The bigger point, though, is to invest time learning a tool that you feel the most productive in and can get the job done for you. Some people may use a different editor for certain tasks and that’s just fine! The important thing is being comfortable in your editor. (It’s one of those things when if you get into a good groove of writing or working even the editor itself hopefully fades into the background.) It’s also important that your editor can allow you to grow into better or more efficient work. A simple text editor (Notepad, TextEdit, etc.) may be comfortable but lack the ability to expand and grow with you.

Conversely, some editors have a ridiculous amount of capability and expandability but have a correspondingly steep learning curve just to get started using it. Vim is one of those but I feel there’s only a small initial learning curve to get the absolute basics down, and the payoff later is huge for productivity.

What’s the old joke?

I’ve been using Vim for about 2 years now, mostly because I can’t figure out how to exit it.

After all: 1 in 20,000 visits to Stack Overflow is to figure out how to quit Vim). Honestly, just 20-30 minutes of time with vimtutor is enough to let you do as much as you could in something like notepad but you’re building a foundation for some ridiculously efficient text editing later on.

Vim Plugins

Plain Vim is rather sparse as an interface for writing. Luckily some much smarter folks than me produce some fantastic plugins that have made my environment much nicer for writing. These are not essential for using Vim to write, but they make the overall experience so much nicer for me.

Goyo

Goyo is described by it’s author, Junegunn Choi, as Distraction-free writing in Vim and boy does it deliver! This is mostly a visual upgrade to Vim for writing but it does make a world of difference when writing to have something pleasant to look at. (If it’s ugly, and you don’t want to look at it, you’re less likely to actually use it.)

Much kinder on the eyes!

junegunn also creates an even more focused plugin for writing called limelight.vim that mutes the colors of lines not currently under the cursor (so you can focus on the sentences that you’re currently writing better).

Hyper-focused writing in Vim.

My font of choice when writing prose is Cousine by Steve Matteson (seen here). For code or most other uses I like to use hack.

vim-pencil

A pretty editor is only useful if the functionality is there and this is managed quite well by Reed Es and his fantastic vim-pencil plugin! This is the plugin that makes the markdown in the screenshot above look great (concealing in Vim) and also provides great line breaking options (and much more).

He also produces a neat plugin for checking language usage to avoid weasel words, excessive adjectives, and more (16 different dictionaries covering different types of word usage) called vim-wordy. It’s a great tool for checking your writing and getting you to think about clarity and succinctness.

vim-surround

One last plugin worth mentioning quickly is a simple one (out of many) from Tim Pope: vim-surround. This provides a much easier (to me) method of deleting, changing, and adding surroundings to text (parentheses, quotes, brackets, markup, etc.). There’s not really any neat animated gifs to show off here. Just a very handy new set of mappings for quickly dealing with surrounding elements.

Nextcloud

I’ve written about Nextcloud previously here and I’m happy to report that it is still working perfectly for me! As I mentioned previously, my major use cases are simple:

Temporary file sharing
Storing my ebook library and syncing for Calibre
KeepassXC password database storage and sync to all my clients (previously about KeepassXC)
Automatically uploading photos from my phone to my home server.

As a drop-in replacement for something like Dropbox or Google Drive it’s perfect. Especially for being able to control my data on my own server and not worrying about it being scanned or data mined (plus upgrades to more drive space are dirt cheap). I also gain a nice collaborative markdown editor and other perks (calendars, contacts, my own maps service and more).

There’s a Nextcloud client for all major platforms (desktop and mobile) which means I have access to all of my files on any machine I want or at least web access to those files through a browser if needed.

Joplin and jrnl

A nice perk of having my own file syncing service is easy use of tools that leverage it. In particular I’ve been looking at journaling and note taking options.

I spend much of my time at least SSH’d into my server at home for various reasons (port forwarding things that a firewall restricts me from doing, using SSH as a sort of poor mans tunnel, and other nefarious activities). As such I thought it might make sense to have a journaling system in place to let me access it from my SSH session if I wanted. Plain text is nice as it lets me easily search and filter my entries and of course it allows me to use that fancy Vim environment to do my actual writing.

I had originally looked at using the neat application Joplin for this, but was slightly put off using the GUI to manage the notes and notebooks.

Joplin running multiple clients across multipled devices

It definitely has a neat interface and uses the concepts of “Notebooks” to collect notes and to-do lists. What I didn’t like as much was the plain text files for the notes are stored as hashed filename markdown files:

pat@mother ~/Nextcloud/Joplin
$ ls -1
0792d9698eef4a9797ff1c22be31a4f6.md
0d3248bfff3f4c75893ed78b1a0c9d04.md
0d80d7400ece4c1e92ee3fad7a07bbc2.md
0faac5399f984d3db1139bdb4ecd9221.md
1069385084794e239690124c68ea12e7.md
...

I could still use tools to check the text quickly, but it’s just an ugly view of the notes from the filesystem. Of course, if you use the actual application it all looks quite nice and orderly. So I may be nitpicking here.

I do confess to not having quite solidified a good process for this yet. I looked briefly at vimwiki and a couple of other note taking options but I’m still undecided on this.

I had previously written about using jrnl successfully, and I still try to write there every time I remember to sit down and take the time to do it. At this point I think I’m due for a deeper dive again on a good note-taking solution that lets me stay in Vim mostly.

As I wrote in the jrnl article, the hardest part is certainly not the tools but the discipline to set aside time to actually write every day if possible.

Messaging

I try to make myself as easy to reach as possible in general. Email is still king in my opinion (for asymmetric communication, that is) but if someone wants to reach me right now I can usually be found on IRC (old habits die hard). The best places to reach me are usually #GIMP on gimpnet or #pixls.us on freenode.

Lately I’ve transitioned to using the fancy new Matrix network. It’s a nice protocol for handling all manner of realtime communication needs (chat, telephony, video). Their client, Element, is available on all of my devices and with their IRC bridge I can keep a persistent connection to my IRC channels including notifications on mentions (this last bit is awesome as a solution to staying connected to an IRC channel on your phone).

If you want to reach me there my username is: @patdavid:matrix.org

Of course, I’m on many of the usual social channels these days and you can find those links on my About page.

I meant to write about a bunch of other tools but I figured this would get boring quickly and it might make more sense a series of smaller posts. As such, this is just a short look at my writing environment and how I pull together a handful of incredible Free Software tools to help me work better no matter where I am or what device I’m using.

The Upper Berth

Thu, 17 Oct 2019 14:56:15 -0600

“We are not superstitious in our profession, sir,” replied the doctor, “but the sea makes people so.”

The story this week moves the haunted house concept to sea! I started these stories with a haunted room in The Red Room so here is a haunted cabin on a ship.

This seafaring tale from F. Marion Crawford is related by a solid and grounded character (Brisbane) presented as someone not prone to fanciful tales or fright:

Brisbane was a man of five-and-thirty years of age, and remarkable for those gifts which chiefly attract the attention of men. He was a strong man. . . . though he looked exceedingly strong he was in reality very much stronger than he looked.

This gives us the basis for a character whose authority serves to heighten the possibility that the tale is real (someone possibly more fanciful or excitable might not be taken as seriously by the reader). M.R. James does something similar with the narrator, Parkins, in his penultimate ghost story “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You My Lad”. Except in that case the strength is instead replaced with the practicality and pragmatism of a no-nonsense scientific professor:

I hold that any semblance, any appearance of concession to the view that such things might exist is equivalent to a renunciation of all that I hold most sacred. . . . Parkins was something of an old woman — rather henlike, perhaps, in his little ways; totally destitute, alas! of the sense of humour, but at the same time dauntless and sincere in his convictions, and a man deserving of the greatest respect.

Things start getting creepy early in the story and through the build-up Crawford does a wonderful job evoking imagery (and smells, and feelings).

As before, I’ve created ebook versions for those that would prefer to use an e-reader:

epub (For iOS Books or other readers)
mobi (For Kindle)

The Upper Berth

F. Marion Crawford

(1886)

I

Somebody asked for the cigars. We had talked long, and the conversation was beginning to languish; the tobacco smoke had got into the heavy curtains, the wine had got into those brains which were liable to become heavy, and it was already perfectly evident that, unless somebody did something to rouse our oppressed spirits, the meeting would soon come to its natural conclusion, and we, the guests, would speedily go home to bed, and most certainly to sleep. No one had said anything very remarkable; it may be that no one had anything very remarkable to say. Jones had given us every particular of his last hunting adventure in Yorkshire. Mr. Tompkins, of Boston, had explained at elaborate length those working principles, by the due and careful maintenance of which the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad not only extended its territory, increased its departmental influence, and transported live stock without starving them to death before the day of actual delivery, but, also, had for years succeeded in deceiving those passengers who bought its tickets into the fallacious belief that the corporation aforesaid was really able to transport human life without destroying it. Signer Tombola had endeavoured to persuade us, by arguments which we took no trouble to oppose, that the unity of his country in no way resembled the average modern torpedo, carefully planned, constructed with all the skill of the greatest European arsenals, but, when constructed, destined to be directed by feeble hands into a region where it must undoubtedly explode, unseen, unfeared, and unheard, into the illimitable wastes of political chaos.

It is unnecessary to go into further details. The conversation had assumed proportions which would have bored Prometheus on his rock, which would have driven Tantalus to distraction, and which would have impelled Ixion to seek relaxation in the simple but instructive dialogues of Herr Ollendorff, rather than submit to the greater evil of listening to our talk. We had sat at table for hours; we were bored, we were tired, and nobody showed signs of moving.

Somebody called for cigars. We all instinctively looked towards the speaker. Brisbane was a man of five-and-thirty years of age, and remarkable for those gifts which chiefly attract the attention of men. He was a strong man. The external proportions of his figure presented nothing extraordinary to the common eye, though his size was above the average. He was a little over six feet in height, and moderately broad in the shoulder; he did not appear to be stout, but, on the other hand, he was certainly not thin; his small head was supported by a strong and sinewy neck; his broad, muscular hands appeared to possess a peculiar skill in breaking walnuts without the assistance of the ordinary cracker, and, seeing him in profile, one could not help remarking the extraordinary breadth of his sleeves, and the unusual thickness of his chest. He was one of those men who are commonly spoken of among men as deceptive; that is to say, that though he looked exceedingly strong he was in reality very much stronger than he looked. Of his features I need say little. His head is small, his hair is thin, his eyes are blue, his nose is large, he has a small moustache, and a square jaw. Everybody knows Brisbane, and when he asked for a cigar everybody looked at him.

“It is a very singular thing,” said Brisbane.

Everybody stopped talking. Brisbane’s voice was not loud, but possessed a peculiar quality of penetrating general conversation, and cutting it like a knife. Everybody listened. Brisbane, perceiving that he had attracted their general attention, lit his cigar with great equanimity.

“It is very singular,” he continued, “that thing about ghosts. People are always asking whether anybody has seen a ghost. I have.”

“Bosh! What, you? You don’t mean to say so, Brisbane? Well, for a man of his intelligence!”

A chorus of exclamations greeted Brisbane’s remarkable statement. Everybody called for cigars, and Stubbs, the butler, suddenly appeared from the depths of nowhere with a fresh bottle of dry champagne. The situation was saved; Brisbane was going to tell a story.

I am an old sailor, said Brisbane, and as I have to cross the Atlantic pretty often, I have my favourites. Most men have their favourites. I have seen a man wait in a Broadway bar for three-quarters of an hour for a particular car which he liked. I believe the bar-keeper made at least one-third of his living by that man’s preference. I have a habit of waiting for certain ships when I am obliged to cross that duck-pond. It may be a prejudice, but I was never cheated out of a good passage but once in my life. I remember it very well; it was a warm morning in June, and the Custom House officials, who were hanging about waiting for a steamer already on her way up from the Quarantine, presented a peculiarly hazy and thoughtful appearance. I had not much luggage—I never have. I mingled with the crowd of passengers, porters, and officious individuals in blue coats and brass buttons, who seemed to spring up like mushrooms from the deck of a moored steamer to obtrude their unnecessary services upon the independent passenger. I have often noticed with a certain interest the spontaneous evolution of these fellows. They are not there when you arrive; five minutes after the pilot has called “Go ahead!” they, or at least their blue coats and brass buttons, have disappeared from deck and gangway as completely as though they had been consigned to that locker which tradition unanimously ascribes to Davy Jones. But, at the moment of starting, they are there, clean shaved, blue-coated, and ravenous for fees. I hastened on board. The Kamtschatka was one of my favourite ships. I say was, because she emphatically no longer is. I cannot conceive of any inducement which could entice me to make another voyage in her. Yes, I know what you are going to say. She is uncommonly clean in the run aft, she has enough bluffing off in the bows to keep her dry, and the lower berths are most of them double. She has a lot of advantages, but I won’t cross in her again. Excuse the digression. I got on board. I hailed a steward, whose red nose and redder whiskers were equally familiar to me.

“One hundred and five, lower berth,” said I, in the business-like tone peculiar to men who think no more of crossing the Atlantic than taking a whisky cocktail at downtown Delmonico’s.

The steward took my portmanteau, great-coat, and rug. I shall never forget the expression of his face. Not that he turned pale. It is maintained by the most eminent divines that even miracles cannot change the course of nature. I have no hesitation in saying that he did not turn pale; but, from his expression, I judged that he was either about to shed tears, to sneeze, or to drop my portmanteau. As the latter contained two bottles of particularly fine old sherry presented to me for my voyage by my old friend Snigginson van Pickyns, I felt extremely nervous. But the steward did none of these things.

“Well, I’m d—d!” said he in a low voice, and led the way.

I supposed my Hermes, as he led me to the lower regions, had had a little grog, but I said nothing, and followed him. One hundred and five was on the port side, well aft. There was nothing remarkable about the state-room. The lower berth, like most of those upon the Kamtschatka, was double. There was plenty of room; there was the usual washing apparatus, calculated to convey an idea of luxury to the mind of a North American Indian; there were the usual inefficient racks of brown wood, in which it is more easy to hang a large-sized umbrella than the common tooth-brush of commerce. Upon the uninviting mattresses were carefully folded together those blankets which a great modern humorist has aptly compared to cold buckwheat cakes. The question of towels was left entirely to the imagination. The glass decanters were filled with a transparent liquid faintly tinged with brown, but from which an odour less faint, but not more pleasing, ascended to the nostrils, like a far-off sea-sick reminiscence of oily machinery. Sad-coloured curtains half closed the upper berth. The hazy June daylight shed a faint illumination upon the desolate little scene. Ugh! how I hate that state-room!

The steward deposited my traps and looked at me, as though he wanted to get away—probably in search of more passengers and more fees. It is always a good plan to start in favour with those functionaries, and I accordingly gave him certain coins there and then.

“I’ll try and make yer comfortable all I can,” he remarked, as he put the coins in his pocket. Nevertheless, there was a doubtful intonation in his voice which surprised me. Possibly his scale of fees had gone up, and he was not satisfied; but on the whole I was inclined to think that, as he himself would have expressed it, he was “the better for a glass.” I was wrong, however, and did the man injustice.

II

Nothing especially worthy of mention occurred during that day. We left the pier punctually, and it was very pleasant to be fairly under way, for the weather was warm and sultry, and the motion of the steamer produced a refreshing breeze. Everybody knows what the first day at sea is like. People pace the decks and stare at each other, and occasionally meet acquaintances whom they did not know to be on board. There is the usual uncertainty as to whether the food will be good, bad, or indifferent, until the first two meals have put the matter beyond a doubt; there is the usual uncertainty about the weather, until the ship is fairly off Fire Island. The tables are crowded at first, and then suddenly thinned. Pale-faced people spring from their seats and precipitate themselves towards the door, and each old sailor breathes more freely as his seasick neighbour rushes from his side, leaving him plenty of elbow-room and an unlimited command over the mustard. One passage across the Atlantic is very much like another, and we who cross very often do not make the voyage for the sake of novelty. Whales and icebergs are indeed always objects of interest, but, after all, one whale is very much like another whale, and one rarely sees an iceberg at close quarters. To the majority of us the most delightful moment of the day on board an ocean steamer is when we have taken our last turn on deck, have smoked our last cigar, and having succeeded in tiring ourselves, feel at liberty to turn in with a clear conscience. On that first night of the voyage I felt particularly lazy, and went to bed in 105 rather earlier than I usually do. As I turned in, I was amazed to see that I was to have a companion. A portmanteau, very like my own, lay in the opposite corner, and in the upper berth had been deposited a neatly folded rug, with a stick and umbrella. I had hoped to be alone, and I was disappointed; but I wondered who my room-mate was to be, and I determined to have a look at him.

Before I had been long in bed he entered. He was, as far as I could see, a very tall man, very thin, very pale, with sandy hair and whiskers and colourless grey eyes. He had about him, I thought, an air of rather dubious fashion; the sort of man you might see in Wall Street, without being able precisely to say what he was doing there—the sort of man who frequents the Café Anglais, who always seems to be alone and who drinks champagne; you might meet him on a race-course, but he would never appear to be doing anything there either. A little over-dressed—a little odd. There are three or four of his kind on every ocean steamer. I made up my mind that I did not care to make his acquaintance, and I went to sleep saying to myself that I would study his habits in order to avoid him. If he rose early, I would rise late; if he went to bed late, I would go to bed early. I did not care to know him. If you once know people of that kind they are always turning up. Poor fellow! I need not have taken the trouble to come to so many decisions about him, for I never saw him again after that first night in one hundred and five.

I was sleeping soundly when I was suddenly waked by a loud noise. To judge from the sound, my room-mate must have sprung with a single leap from the upper berth to the floor. I heard him fumbling with the latch and bolt of the door, which opened almost immediately, and then I heard his footsteps as he ran at full speed down the passage, leaving the door open behind him. The ship was rolling a little, and I expected to hear him stumble or fall, but he ran as though he were running for his life. The door swung on its hinges with the motion of the vessel, and the sound annoyed me. I got up and shut it, and groped my way back to my berth in the darkness. I went to sleep again; but I have no idea how long I slept.

When I awoke it was still quite dark, but I felt a disagreeable sensation of cold, and it seemed to me that the air was damp. You know the peculiar smell of a cabin which has been wet with sea-water. I covered myself up as well as I could and dozed off again, framing complaints to be made the next day, and selecting the most powerful epithets in the language. I could hear my room-mate turn over in the upper berth. He had probably returned while I was asleep. Once I thought I heard him groan, and I argued that he was sea-sick. That is particularly unpleasant when one is below. Nevertheless I dozed off and slept till early daylight.

The ship was rolling heavily, much more than on the previous evening, and the grey light which came in through the porthole changed in tint with every movement according as the angle of the vessel’s side turned the glass seawards or skywards. It was very cold—unaccountably so for the month of June. I turned my head and looked at the porthole, and saw to my surprise that it was wide open and hooked back. I believe I swore audibly. Then I got up and shut it. As I turned back I glanced at the upper berth. The curtains were drawn close together; my companion had probably felt cold as well as I. It struck me that I had slept enough. The state-room was uncomfortable, though, strange to say, I could not smell the dampness which had annoyed me in the night. My room-mate was still asleep—excellent opportunity for avoiding him, so I dressed at once and went on deck. The day was warm and cloudy, with an oily smell on the water. It was seven o’clock as I came out—much later than I had imagined. I came across the doctor, who was taking his first sniff of the morning air. He was a young man from the West of Ireland—a tremendous fellow, with black hair and blue eyes, already inclined to be stout; he had a happy-go-lucky, healthy look about him which was rather attractive.

“Fine morning,” I remarked, by way of introduction.

“Well,” said he, eyeing me with an air of ready interest, “it’s a fine morning and it’s not a fine morning. I don’t think it’s much of a morning.”

“Well, no—it is not so very fine,” said I.

“It’s just what I call fuggly weather,” replied the doctor.

“It was very cold last night, I thought,” I remarked, “However, when I looked about, I found that the porthole was wide open. I had not noticed it when I went to bed. And the state-room was damp, too.”

“Damp!” said he. “Whereabouts are you?”

“One hundred and five——”

To my surprise the doctor started visibly, and stared at me.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

“Oh—nothing,” he answered; “Only everybody has complained of that state-room for the last three trips.”

“I shall complain, too,” I said. “It has certainly not been properly aired. It is a shame!”

“I don’t believe it can be helped,” answered the doctor. “I believe there is something—well, it is not my business to frighten passengers.”

“You need not be afraid of frightening me,” I replied. “I can stand any amount of damp. If I should get a bad cold I will come to you.”

I offered the doctor a cigar, which he took and examined very critically.

“It is not so much the damp,” he remarked. “However, I dare say you will get on very well. Have you a room-mate?”

“Yes; a deuce of a fellow, who bolts out in the middle of the night, and leaves the door open.”

Again the doctor glanced curiously at me. Then he lit the cigar and looked grave.

“Did he come back?” he asked presently.

“Yes. I was asleep, but I waked up, and heard him moving. Then I felt cold and went to sleep again. This morning I found the porthole open.”

“Look here,” said the doctor quietly, “I don’t care much for this ship. I don’t care a rap for her reputation. I tell you what I will do. I have a good-sized place up here. I will share it with you, though I don’t know you from Adam.”

I was very much surprised at the proposition. I could not imagine why he should take such a sudden interest in my welfare. However, his manner as he spoke of the ship was peculiar.

“You are very good, doctor,” I said. “But, really, I believe even now the cabin could be aired, or cleaned out, or something. Why do you not care for the ship?”

“We are not superstitious in our profession, sir,” replied the doctor, “but the sea makes people so. I don’t want to prejudice you, and I don’t want to frighten you, but if you will take my advice you will move in here. I would as soon see you overboard,” he added earnestly, “as know that you or any other man was to sleep in 105.”

“Good gracious! Why?” I asked.

“Just because on the last three trips the people who have slept there actually have gone overboard,” he answered gravely.

The intelligence was startling and exceedingly unpleasant, I confess. I looked hard at the doctor to see whether he was making game of me, but he looked perfectly serious. I thanked him warmly for his offer, but told him I intended to be the exception to the rule by which everyone who slept in that particular state-room went overboard. He did not say much, but looked as grave as ever, and hinted that, before we got across, I should probably reconsider his proposal. In the course of time we went to breakfast, at which only an inconsiderable number of passengers assembled. I noticed that one or two of the officers who breakfasted with us looked grave. After breakfast I went into my state-room in order to get a book. The curtains of the upper berth were still closely drawn. Not a word was to be heard. My room-mate was probably still asleep.

As I came out I met the steward whose business it was to look after me. He whispered that the captain wanted to see me, and then scuttled away down the passage as if very anxious to avoid any questions. I went toward the captain’s cabin, and found him waiting for me.

“Sir,” said he, “I want to ask a favour of you.”

I answered that I would do anything to oblige him.

“Your room-mate has disappeared,” he said. “He is known to have turned in early last night. Did you notice anything extraordinary in his manner?”

The question coming, as it did, in exact confirmation of the fears the doctor had expressed half an hour earlier, staggered me.

“You don’t mean to say he has gone overboard?” I asked.

“I fear he has,” answered the captain.

“This is the most extraordinary thing——” I began.

“Why?” he asked.

“He is the fourth, then?” I explained. In answer to another question from the captain, I explained, without mentioning the doctor, that I had heard the story concerning 105. He seemed very much annoyed at hearing that I knew of it. I told him what had occurred in the night.

“What you say,” he replied, “coincides almost exactly with what was told me by the room-mates of two of the other three. They bolt out of bed and run down the passage. Two of them were seen to go overboard by the watch; we stopped and lowered boats, but they were not found. Nobody, however, saw or heard the man who was lost last night—if he is really lost. The steward, who is a superstitious fellow, perhaps, and expected something to go wrong, went to look for him this morning, and found his berth empty, but his clothes lying about, just as he had left them. The steward was the only man on board who knew him by sight, and he has been searching everywhere for him. He has disappeared! Now, sir, I want to beg you not to mention the circumstance to any of the passengers; I don’t want the ship to get a bad name, and nothing hangs about an ocean-goer like stories of suicides. You shall have your choice of any one of the officers’ cabins you like, including my own, for the rest of the passage. Is that a fair bargain?”

“Very,” said I; “and I am much obliged to you. But since I am alone, and have the state-room to myself, I would rather not move. If the steward will take out that unfortunate man’s things, I would as leave stay where I am. I will not say anything about the matter, and I think I can promise you that I will not follow my room-mate.”

The captain tried to dissuade me from my intention, but I preferred having a state-room alone to being the chum of any officer on board. I do not know whether I acted foolishly, but if I had taken his advice I should have had nothing more to tell; There would have remained the disagreeable coincidence of several suicides occurring among men who had slept in the same cabin, but that would have been all.

That was not the end of the matter, however, by any means. I obstinately made up my mind that I would not be disturbed by such tales, and I even went so far as to argue the question with the captain. There was something wrong about the state-room, I said. It was rather damp. The porthole had been left open last night. My room-mate might have been ill when he came on board, and he might have become delirious after he went to bed. He might even now be hiding somewhere on board, and might be found later. The place ought to be aired and the fastening of the port looked to. If the captain would give me leave, I would see that what I thought necessary was done immediately.

“Of course you have a right to stay where you are if you please,” he replied, rather petulantly; “but I wish you would turn out and let me lock the place up, and be done with it.”

I did not see it in the same light, and left the captain, after promising to be silent concerning the disappearance of my companion. The latter had had no acquaintances on board, and was not missed in the course of the day. Towards evening I met the doctor again, and he asked me whether I had changed my mind. I told him I had not.

“Then you will before long,” he said, very gravely.

III

We played whist in the evening, and I went to bed late. I will confess now that I felt a disagreeable sensation when I entered my state-room. I could not help thinking of the tall man I had seen on the previous night, who was now dead, drowned, tossing about in the long swell, two or three hundred miles astern. His face rose very distinctly before me as I undressed, and I even went so far as to draw back the curtains of the upper berth, as though to persuade myself that he was actually gone. I also bolted the door of the state-room. Suddenly I became aware that the porthole was open, and fastened back. This was more than I could stand. I hastily threw on my dressing-gown and went in search of Robert, the steward of my passage. I was very angry, I remember, and when I found him I dragged him roughly to the door of 105, and pushed him towards the open porthole.

“What the deuce do you mean, you scoundrel, by leaving that port open every night? Don’t you know it is against the regulations? Don’t you know that if the ship heeled and the water began to come in, ten men could not shut it? I will report you to the captain, you blackguard, for endangering the ship!”

I was exceedingly wroth. The man trembled and turned pale, and then began to shut the round glass plate with the heavy brass fittings.

“Why don’t you answer me?” I said roughly.

“If you please, sir,” faltered Robert, “there’s nobody on board as can keep this ’ere port shut at night. You can try it yourself, sir. I ain’t a-going to stop hany longer on board o’ this vessel, sir; I ain’t, indeed. But if I was you, sir, I’d just clear out and go and sleep with the surgeon, or something, I would. Look ’ere, sir, is that fastened what you may call securely, or not, sir? Try it, sir, see if it will move a hinch.”

I tried the port, and found it perfectly tight.

“Well, sir,” continued Robert triumphantly, “I wager my reputation as a A1 steward that in ‘arf an hour it will be open again; fastened back, too, sir, that’s the horful thing—fastened back!”

I examined the great screw and the looped nut that ran on it.

“If I find it open in the night, Robert, I will give you a sovereign. It is not possible. You may go.”

“Soverin’ did you say, sir? Very good, sir. Thank ye, sir. Good night, sir. Pleasant reepose, sir, and all manner of hinchantin’ dreams, sir.”

Robert scuttled away, delighted at being released. Of course, I thought he was trying to account for his negligence by a silly story, intended to frighten me, and I disbelieved him. The consequence was that he got his sovereign, and I spent a very peculiarly unpleasant night.

I went to bed, and five minutes after I had rolled myself up in my blankets the inexorable Robert extinguished the light that burned steadily behind the ground-glass pane near the door. I lay quite still in the dark trying to go to sleep, but I soon found that impossible. It had been some satisfaction to be angry with the steward, and the diversion had banished that unpleasant sensation I had at first experienced when I thought of the drowned man who had been my chum; but I was no longer sleepy, and I lay awake for some time, occasionally glancing at the porthole, which I could just see from where I lay, and which, in the darkness, looked like a faintly luminous soup-plate suspended in blackness. I believe I must have lain there for an hour, and, as I remember, I was just dozing into sleep when I was roused by a draught of cold air, and by distinctly feeling the spray of the sea blown upon my face. I started to my feet, and not having allowed in the dark for the motion of the ship, I was instantly thrown violently across the state-room upon the couch which was placed beneath the porthole. I recovered myself immediately, however, and climbed upon my knees. The porthole was again wide open and fastened back!

Now these things are facts. I was wide awake when I got up, and I should certainly have been waked by the fall had I still been dozing. Moreover, I bruised my elbows and knees badly, and the bruises were there on the following morning to testify to the fact, if I myself had doubted it. The porthole was wide open and fastened back—a thing so unaccountable that I remember very well feeling astonishment rather than fear when I discovered it. I at once closed the plate again, and screwed down the loop nut with all my strength. It was very dark in the state-room. I reflected that the port had certainly been opened within an hour after Robert had at first shut it in my presence, and I determined to watch it, and see whether it would open again. Those brass fittings are very heavy and by no means easy to move; I could not believe that the clump had been turned by the shaking of the screw. I stood peering out through the thick glass at the alternate white and grey streaks of the sea that foamed beneath the ship’s side. I must have remained there a quarter of an hour. Suddenly, as I stood, I distinctly heard something moving behind me in one of the berths, and a moment afterwards, just as I turned instinctively to look—though I could, of course, see nothing in the darkness—I heard a very faint groan. I sprang across the state-room, and tore the curtains of the upper berth aside, thrusting in my hands to discover if there were any one there. There was someone.

I remember that the sensation as I put my hands forward was as though I were plunging them into the air of a damp cellar, and from behind the curtains came a gust of wind that smelled horribly of stagnant sea-water. I laid hold of something that had the shape of a man’s arm, but was smooth, and wet, and icy cold. But suddenly, as I pulled, the creature sprang violently forward against me, a clammy, oozy mass, as it seemed to me, heavy and wet, yet endowed with a sort of supernatural strength. I reeled across the state-room, and in an instant the door opened and the thing rushed out. I had not had time to be frightened, and quickly recovering myself, I sprang through the door and gave chase at the top of my speed, but I was too late. Ten yards before me I could see—I am sure I saw it—a dark shadow moving in the dimly lighted passage, quickly as the shadow of a fast horse thrown before a dog-cart by the lamp on a dark night. But in a moment it had disappeared, and I found myself holding on to the polished rail that ran along the bulkhead where the passage turned towards the companion. My hair stood on end, and the cold perspiration rolled down my face. I am not ashamed of it in the least: I was very badly frightened.

Still I doubted my senses, and pulled myself together. It was absurd, I thought. The Welsh rare-bit I had eaten had disagreed with me. I had been in a nightmare. I made my way back to my state-room, and entered it with an effort. The whole place smelled of stagnant sea-water, as it had when I had waked on the previous evening. It required my utmost strength to go in, and grope among my things for a box of wax lights. As I lighted a railway reading lantern which I always carry in case I want to read after the lamps are out, I perceived that the porthole was again open, and a sort of creeping horror began to take possession of me which I never felt before, nor wish to feel again. But I got a light and proceeded to examine the upper berth, expecting to find it drenched with sea-water.

But I was disappointed. The bed had been slept in, and the smell of the sea was strong; but the bedding was as dry as a bone. I fancied that Robert had not had the courage to make the bed after the accident of the previous night—it had all been a hideous dream. I drew the curtains back as far as I could and examined the place very carefully. It was perfectly dry. But the porthole was open again. With a sort of dull bewilderment of horror I closed it and screwed it down, and thrusting my heavy stick through the brass loop, wrenched it with all my might, till the thick metal began to bend under the pressure. Then I hooked my reading lantern into the red velvet at the head of the couch, and sat down to recover my senses if I could. I sat there all night, unable to think of rest—hardly able to think at all. But the porthole remained closed, and I did not believe it would now open again without the application of a considerable force.

The morning dawned at last, and I dressed myself slowly, thinking over all that had happened in the night. It was a beautiful day and I went on deck, glad to get out into the early, pure sunshine, and to smell the breeze from the blue water, so different from the noisome, stagnant odour of my state-room. Instinctively I turned aft, towards the surgeon’s cabin. There he stood, with a pipe in his mouth, taking his morning airing precisely as on the preceding day.

“Good morning,” said he quietly, but looking at me with evident curiosity.

“Doctor, you were quite right,” said I. “There is something wrong about that place.”

“I thought you would change your mind,” he answered, rather triumphantly. “You have had a bad night, eh? Shall I make you a pick-me-up? I have a capital recipe.”

“No, thanks,” I cried. “But I would like to tell you what happened.”

I then tried to explain as clearly as possible precisely what had occurred, not omitting to state that I had been scared as I had never been scared in my whole life before. I dwelt particularly on the phenomenon of the porthole, which was a fact to which I could testify, even if the rest had been an illusion. I had closed it twice in the night, and the second time I had actually bent the brass in wrenching it with my stick. I believe I insisted a good deal on this point.

“You seem to think I am likely to doubt the story,” said the doctor, smiling at the detailed account of the state of the porthole. “I do not doubt it in the least. I renew my invitation to you. Bring your traps here, and take half my cabin.”

“Come and take half of mine for one night,” I said. “Help me to get at the bottom of this thing.”

“You will get to the bottom of something else if you try,” answered the doctor.

“What?” I asked.

“The bottom of the sea. I am going to leave this ship. It is not canny.”

“Then you will not help me to find out——”

“Not I,” said the doctor quickly. “It is my business to keep my wits about me—not to go fiddling about with ghosts and things.”

“Do you really believe it is a ghost?” I enquired, rather contemptuously. But as I spoke I remembered very well the horrible sensation of the supernatural which had got possession of me during the night. The doctor turned sharply on me.

“Have you any reasonable explanation of these things to offer?” he asked. “No; you have not. Well, you say you will find an explanation. I say that you won’t, sir, simply because there is not any.”

“But, my dear sir,” I retorted, “do you, a man of science, mean to tell me that such things cannot be explained?”

“I do,” he answered stoutly. “And, if they could, I would not be concerned in the explanation.”

I did not care to spend another night alone in the state-room, and yet I was obstinately determined to get at the root of the disturbances. I do not believe there are many men who would have slept there alone, after passing two such nights. But I made up my mind to try it, if I could not get any one to share a watch with me. The doctor was evidently not inclined for such an experiment. He said he was a surgeon, and that in case any accident occurred on board he must be always in readiness. He could not afford to have his nerves unsettled. Perhaps he was quite right, but I am inclined to think that his precaution was prompted by his inclination. On enquiry, he informed me that there was no one on board who would be likely to join me in my investigations, and after a little more conversation I left him. A little later I met the captain, and told him my story. I said that, if no one would spend the night with me, I would ask leave to have the light burning all night, and would try it alone.

“Look here,” said he, “I will tell you what I will do. I will share your watch myself, and we will see what happens. It is my belief that we can find out between us. There may be some fellow skulking on board, who steals a passage by frightening the passengers. It is just possible that there may be something queer in the carpentering of that berth.”

I suggested taking the ship’s carpenter below and examining the place; but I was overjoyed at the captain’s offer to spend the night with me. He accordingly sent for the workman and ordered him to do anything I required. We went below at once. I had all the bedding cleared out of the upper berth, and we examined the place thoroughly to see if there was a board loose anywhere, or a panel which could be opened or pushed aside. We tried the planks everywhere, tapped the flooring, unscrewed the fittings of the lower berth and took it to pieces—in short, there was not a square inch of the stateroom which was not searched and tested. Everything was in perfect order, and we put everything back in its place. As we were finishing our work, Robert came to the door and looked in.

“Well, sir—find anything, sir?” he asked, with a ghastly grin.

“You were right about the porthole, Robert,” I said, and I gave him the promised sovereign. The carpenter did his work silently and skilfully, following my directions. When he had done he spoke.

“I’m a plain man, sir,” he said. “But it’s my belief you had better just turn out your things, and let me run half a dozen four-inch screws through the door of this cabin. There’s no good never came o’ this cabin yet, sir, and that’s all about it. There’s been four lives lost out o’ here to my own remembrance, and that in four trips. Better give it up, sir—better give it up!”

“I will try it for one night more,” I said.

“Better give it up, sir—better give it up! It’s a precious bad job,” repeated the workman, putting his tools in his bag and leaving the cabin.

But my spirits had risen considerably at the prospect of having the captain’s company, and I made up my mind not to be prevented from going to the end of the strange business. I abstained from Welsh rare-bits and grog that evening, and did not even join in the customary game of whist. I wanted to be quite sure of my nerves, and my vanity made me anxious to make a good figure in the captain’s eyes.

IV

The captain was one of those splendidly tough and cheerful specimens of seafaring humanity whose combined courage, hardihood, and calmness in difficulty leads them naturally into high positions of trust. He was not the man to be led away by an idle tale, and the mere fact that he was willing to join me in the investigation was proof that he thought there was something seriously wrong, which could not be accounted for on ordinary theories, nor laughed down as a common superstition. To some extent, too, his reputation was at stake, as well as the reputation of the ship. It is no light thing to lose passengers overboard, and he knew it.

About ten o’clock that evening, as I was smoking a last cigar, he came up to me, and drew me aside from the beat of the other passengers who were patrolling the deck in the warm darkness.

“This is a serious matter, Mr. Brisbane,” he said. “We must make up our minds either way—to be disappointed or to have a pretty rough time of it. You see I cannot afford to laugh at the affair, and I will ask you to sign your name to a statement of whatever occurs. If nothing happens to-night we will try it again to-morrow and next day. Are you ready?” So we went below, and entered the state-room. As we went in I could see Robert the steward, who stood a little further down the passage, watching us, with his usual grin, as though certain that something dreadful was about to happen. The captain closed the door behind us and bolted it.

“Supposing we put your portmanteau before the door,” he suggested. “One of us can sit on it. Nothing can get out then. Is the port screwed down?”

I found it as I had left it in the morning. Indeed, without using a lever, as I had done, no one could have opened it. I drew back the curtains of the upper berth so that I could see well into it. By the captain’s advice I lighted my reading lantern, and placed it so that it shone upon the white sheets above. He insisted upon sitting on the portmanteau, declaring that he wished to be able to swear that he had sat before the door.

Then he requested me to search the state-room thoroughly, an operation very soon accomplished, as it consisted merely in looking beneath the lower berth and under the couch below the porthole. The spaces were quite empty.

“It is impossible for any human being to get in,” I said, “or for any human being to open the port.”

“Very good,” said the captain calmly. “If we see anything now, it must be either imagination or something supernatural.”

I sat down on the edge of the lower berth.

“The first time it happened,” said the captain, crossing his legs and leaning back against the door, “was in March. The passenger who slept here, in the upper berth, turned out to have been a lunatic—at all events, he was known to have been a little touched, and he had taken his passage without the knowledge of his friends. He rushed out in the middle of the night and threw himself overboard, before the officer who had the watch could stop him. We stopped and lowered a boat; it was a quiet night, just before that heavy weather came on; but we could not find him. Of course, his suicide was afterwards accounted for on the ground of his insanity.”

“I suppose that often happens?” I remarked, rather absently.

“Not often—no,” said the captain; “never before in my experience, though I have heard of it happening on board of other ships. Well, as I was saying, that occurred in March. On the very next trip—What are you looking at?” he asked, stopping suddenly in his narration.

I believe I gave no answer. My eyes were riveted upon the porthole. It seemed to me that the brass loop-nut was beginning to turn very slowly upon the screw—so slowly, however, that I was not sure it moved at all. I watched it intently, fixing its position in my mind, and trying to ascertain whether it changed. Seeing where I was looking, the captain looked, too.

“It moves!” he exclaimed, in a tone of conviction. “No, it does not,” he added, after a minute.

“If it were the jarring of the screw,” said I, “it would have opened during the day; but I found it this evening jammed tight as I left it this morning.”

I rose and tried the nut. It was certainly loosened, for by an effort I could move it with my hands.

“The queer thing,” said the captain, “is that the second man who was lost is supposed to have got through that very port. We had a terrible time over it. It was in the middle of the night, and the weather was very heavy; there was an alarm that one of the ports was open and the sea running in. I came below and found everything flooded, the water pouring in every time she rolled, and the whole port swinging from the top bolts—not the porthole in the middle. Well, we managed to shut it, but the water did some damage. Ever since that the place smells of sea-water from time to time. We supposed the passenger had thrown himself out, though the Lord only knows how he did it. The steward kept telling me that he cannot keep anything shut here. Upon my word—I can smell it now, cannot you?” he enquired, sniffing the air suspiciously.

“Yes—distinctly,” I said, and I shuddered as that same odour of stagnant sea-water grew stronger in the cabin. “Now, to smell like this, the place must be damp,” I continued, “and yet when I examined it with the carpenter this morning everything was perfectly dry. It is most extraordinary—hallo!”

My reading lantern, which had been placed in the upper berth, was suddenly extinguished. There was still a good deal of light from the pane of ground glass near the door, behind which loomed the regulation lamp. The ship rolled heavily, and the curtain of the upper berth swung far out into the state-room and back again. I rose quickly from my seat on the edge of the bed, and the captain at the same moment started to his feet with a loud cry of surprise. I had turned with the intention of taking down the lantern to examine it, when I heard his exclamation, and immediately afterwards his call for help. I sprang towards him. He was wrestling with all his might with the brass loop of the port. It seemed to turn against his hands in spite of all his efforts. I caught up my cane, a heavy oak stick I always used to carry, and thrust it through the ring and bore on it with all my strength. But the strong wood snapped suddenly and I fell upon the couch. When I rose again the port was wide open, and the captain was standing with his back against the door, pale to the lips.

“There is something in that berth!” he cried, in a strange voice, his eyes almost starting from his head. “Hold the door, while I look—it shall not escape us, whatever it is!”

But instead of taking his place, I sprang upon the lower bed, and seized something which lay in the upper berth.

It was something ghostly, horrible beyond words, and it moved in my grip. It was like the body of a man long drowned, and yet it moved, and had the strength of ten men living; but I gripped it with all my might—the slippery, oozy, horrible thing—the dead white eyes seemed to stare at me out of the dusk; the putrid odour of rank sea-water was about it, and its shiny hair hung in foul wet curls over its dead face. I wrestled with the dead thing; it thrust itself upon me and forced me back and nearly broke my arms; it wound its corpse’s arms about my neck, the living death, and overpowered me, so that I, at last, cried aloud and fell, and left my hold.

As I fell the thing sprang across me, and seemed to throw itself upon the captain. When I last saw him on his feet his face was white and his lips set. It seemed to me that he struck a violent blow at the dead being, and then he, too, fell forward upon his face, with an inarticulate cry of horror.

The thing paused an instant, seeming to hover over his prostrate body, and I could have screamed again for very fright, but I had no voice left. The thing vanished suddenly, and it seemed to my disturbed senses that it made its exit through the open port, though how that was possible, considering the smallness of the aperture, is more than any one can tell. I lay a long time upon the floor, and the captain lay beside me. At last I partially recovered my senses and moved, and instantly I knew that my arm was broken—the small bone of the left forearm near the wrist.

I got upon my feet somehow, and with my remaining hand I tried to raise the captain. He groaned and moved, and at last came to himself. He was not hurt, but he seemed badly stunned.

Well, do you want to hear any more? There is nothing more. That is the end of my story. The carpenter carried out his scheme of running half a dozen four-inch screws through the door of 105; and if ever you take a passage in the Kamtschatka, you may ask for a berth in that state-room. You will be told that it is engaged—yes—it is engaged by that dead thing.

I finished the trip in the surgeon’s cabin. He doctored my broken arm, and advised me not to “fiddle about with ghosts and things” any more. The captain was very silent, and never sailed again in that ship, though it is still running. And I will not sail in her either. It was a very disagreeable experience, and I was very badly frightened, which is a thing I do not like. That is all. That is how I saw a ghost—if it was a ghost. It was dead, anyhow.

The Monkey's Paw

Fri, 11 Oct 2019 09:43:57 -0600

This is a story whose fame precedes it, I believe. So much so that I think I’d be surprised to find someone that hasn’t heard of at least the basic premise of the story: someone is granted three wishes but finds that the wishes don’t quite work out the way they had intended.

This is not a new idea of course, but W.W. Jacobs manages to perfectly capture the horror of being granted these wishes and their unintended consequences. This theme shows up quite often in modern literature, movies, and television shows (to varying effect).

Drawing of W.W. Jacobs

For instance, the Stephen King story Pet Sematary touches upon the central themes of grief and making poor decisions when grieving. Although in typical King fashion it’s handled with a sledgehammer of horror (as opposed to it’s much more deft and effective handling here).

One of my personal favorite re-tellings of this theme is The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror II (Season 3, Episode 7). Lisa’s Nightmare segment (the first of three in this episode) has Homer buying a monkey’s paw and the family each wishing for things that end up back-firing on them (well, except for Maggie and her pacifier).

The turkey sandwich will be a little dry...

Of course, there’s a wonderful X-Files episode, Je Souhaite, that also broaches this theme with a genie and quite a few poor wish choices. At least it has a happy ending! If there’s anything to be learned here it’s to avoid the tired wish of “world peace” - it never plays out how you think it will.

This is a fairly short story and even if you know the basic idea I think you’ll find it quite creepy and chilling. If you’ve never read it before you’re in for a treat! Enjoy!

As before, I’ve created ebook versions for those that would prefer to use an e-reader:

epub (For iOS Books or other readers)
mobi (For Kindle)

The Monkey’s Paw

W.W. Jacobs

(1902)

I

Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of Laburnam Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly. Father and son were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas about the game involving radical changes, putting his king into such sharp and unnecessary perils that it even provoked comment from the white-haired old lady knitting placidly by the fire.

“Hark at the wind,” said Mr. White, who, having seen a fatal mistake after it was too late, was amiably desirous of preventing his son from seeing it.

“I’m listening,” said the latter, grimly surveying the board as he stretched out his hand. “Check.”

“I should hardly think that he’d come to-night,” said his father, with his hand poised over the board.

“Mate,” replied the son.

“That’s the worst of living so far out,” bawled Mr. White, with sudden and unlooked-for violence; “of all the beastly, slushy, out-of-the-way places to live in, this is the worst. Pathway’s a bog, and the road’s a torrent. I don’t know what people are thinking about. I suppose because only two houses in the road are let, they think it doesn’t matter.”

“Never mind, dear,” said his wife, soothingly; “perhaps you’ll win the next one.”

Mr. White looked up sharply, just in time to intercept a knowing glance between mother and son. The words died away on his lips, and he hid a guilty grin in his thin grey beard.

“There he is,” said Herbert White, as the gate banged to loudly and heavy footsteps came toward the door.

The old man rose with hospitable haste, and opening the door, was heard condoling with the new arrival. The new arrival also condoled with himself, so that Mrs. White said, “Tut, tut!” and coughed gently as her husband entered the room, followed by a tall, burly man, beady of eye and rubicund of visage.

“Sergeant-Major Morris,” he said, introducing him.

The sergeant-major shook hands, and taking the proffered seat by the fire, watched contentedly while his host got out whiskey and tumblers and stood a small copper kettle on the fire.

At the third glass his eyes got brighter, and he began to talk, the little family circle regarding with eager interest this visitor from distant parts, as he squared his broad shoulders in the chair and spoke of wild scenes and doughty deeds; of wars and plagues and strange peoples.

“Twenty-one years of it,” said Mr. White, nodding at his wife and son. “When he went away he was a slip of a youth in the warehouse. Now look at him.”

“He don’t look to have taken much harm,” said Mrs. White, politely.

“I’d like to go to India myself,” said the old man, “just to look round a bit, you know.”

“Better where you are,” said the sergeant-major, shaking his head. He put down the empty glass, and sighing softly, shook it again.

“I should like to see those old temples and fakirs and jugglers,” said the old man. “What was that you started telling me the other day about a monkey’s paw or something, Morris?”

“Nothing,” said the soldier, hastily. “Leastways nothing worth hearing.”

“Monkey’s paw?” said Mrs. White, curiously.

“Well, it’s just a bit of what you might call magic, perhaps,” said the sergeant-major, offhandedly.

His three listeners leaned forward eagerly. The visitor absent-mindedly put his empty glass to his lips and then set it down again. His host filled it for him.

“To look at,” said the sergeant-major, fumbling in his pocket, “it’s just an ordinary little paw, dried to a mummy.”

He took something out of his pocket and proffered it. Mrs. White drew back with a grimace, but her son, taking it, examined it curiously.

“And what is there special about it?” inquired Mr. White as he took it from his son, and having examined it, placed it upon the table.

“It had a spell put on it by an old fakir,” said the sergeant-major, “a very holy man. He wanted to show that fate ruled people’s lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow. He put a spell on it so that three separate men could each have three wishes from it.”

His manner was so impressive that his hearers were conscious that their light laughter jarred somewhat.

“Well, why don’t you have three, sir?” said Herbert White, cleverly.

The soldier regarded him in the way that middle age is wont to regard presumptuous youth. “I have,” he said, quietly, and his blotchy face whitened.

“And did you really have the three wishes granted?” asked Mrs. White.

“I did,” said the sergeant-major, and his glass tapped against his strong teeth.

“And has anybody else wished?” persisted the old lady.

“The first man had his three wishes. Yes,” was the reply; “I don’t know what the first two were, but the third was for death. That’s how I got the paw.”

His tones were so grave that a hush fell upon the group.

“If you’ve had your three wishes, it’s no good to you now, then, Morris,” said the old man at last. “What do you keep it for?”

The soldier shook his head. “Fancy, I suppose,” he said, slowly. “I did have some idea of selling it, but I don’t think I will. It has caused enough mischief already. Besides, people won’t buy. They think it’s a fairy tale; some of them, and those who do think anything of it want to try it first and pay me afterward.”

“If you could have another three wishes,” said the old man, eyeing him keenly, “would you have them?”

“I don’t know,” said the other. “I don’t know.”

He took the paw, and dangling it between his forefinger and thumb, suddenly threw it upon the fire. White, with a slight cry, stooped down and snatched it off.

“Better let it burn,” said the soldier, solemnly.

“If you don’t want it, Morris,” said the other, “give it to me.”

“I won’t,” said his friend, doggedly. “I threw it on the fire. If you keep it, don’t blame me for what happens. Pitch it on the fire again like a sensible man.”

The other shook his head and examined his new possession closely. “How do you do it?” he inquired.

“Hold it up in your right hand and wish aloud,” said the sergeant-major, “but I warn you of the consequences.”

“Sounds like the Arabian Nights,” said Mrs. White, as she rose and began to set the supper. “Don’t you think you might wish for four pairs of hands for me?”

Her husband drew the talisman from pocket, and then all three burst into laughter as the sergeant-major, with a look of alarm on his face, caught him by the arm.

“If you must wish,” he said, gruffly, “wish for something sensible.”

Mr. White dropped it back in his pocket, and placing chairs, motioned his friend to the table. In the business of supper the talisman was partly forgotten, and afterward the three sat listening in an enthralled fashion to a second instalment of the soldier’s adventures in India.

“If the tale about the monkey’s paw is not more truthful than those he has been telling us,” said Herbert, as the door closed behind their guest, just in time for him to catch the last train, “we sha’nt make much out of it.”

“Did you give him anything for it, father?” inquired Mrs. White, regarding her husband closely.

“A trifle,” said he, colouring slightly. “He didn’t want it, but I made him take it. And he pressed me again to throw it away.”

“Likely,” said Herbert, with pretended horror. “Why, we’re going to be rich, and famous and happy. Wish to be an emperor, father, to begin with; then you can’t be henpecked.”

He darted round the table, pursued by the maligned Mrs. White armed with an antimacassar.

Mr. White took the paw from his pocket and eyed it dubiously. “I don’t know what to wish for, and that’s a fact,” he said, slowly. “It seems to me I’ve got all I want.”

“If you only cleared the house, you’d be quite happy, wouldn’t you?” said Herbert, with his hand on his shoulder. “Well, wish for two hundred pounds, then; that ’ll just do it.”

His father, smiling shamefacedly at his own credulity, held up the talisman, as his son, with a solemn face, somewhat marred by a wink at his mother, sat down at the piano and struck a few impressive chords.

“I wish for two hundred pounds,” said the old man distinctly.

A fine crash from the piano greeted the words, interrupted by a shuddering cry from the old man. His wife and son ran toward him.

“It moved,” he cried, with a glance of disgust at the object as it lay on the floor.

“As I wished, it twisted in my hand like a snake.”

“Well, I don’t see the money,” said his son as he picked it up and placed it on the table, “and I bet I never shall.”

“It must have been your fancy, father,” said his wife, regarding him anxiously.

He shook his head. “Never mind, though; there’s no harm done, but it gave me a shock all the same.”

They sat down by the fire again while the two men finished their pipes. Outside, the wind was higher than ever, and the old man started nervously at the sound of a door banging upstairs. A silence unusual and depressing settled upon all three, which lasted until the old couple rose to retire for the night.

“I expect you’ll find the cash tied up in a big bag in the middle of your bed,” said Herbert, as he bade them good-night, “and something horrible squatting up on top of the wardrobe watching you as you pocket your ill-gotten gains.”

He sat alone in the darkness, gazing at the dying fire, and seeing faces in it. The last face was so horrible and so simian that he gazed at it in amazement. It got so vivid that, with a little uneasy laugh, he felt on the table for a glass containing a little water to throw over it. His hand grasped the monkey’s paw, and with a little shiver he wiped his hand on his coat and went up to bed.

II

In the brightness of the wintry sun next morning as it streamed over the breakfast table he laughed at his fears. There was an air of prosaic wholesomeness about the room which it had lacked on the previous night, and the dirty, shrivelled little paw was pitched on the sideboard with a carelessness which betokened no great belief in its virtues.

“I suppose all old soldiers are the same,” said Mrs. White. “The idea of our listening to such nonsense! How could wishes be granted in these days? And if they could, how could two hundred pounds hurt you, father?”

“Might drop on his head from the sky,” said the frivolous Herbert.

“Morris said the things happened so naturally,” said his father, “that you might if you so wished attribute it to coincidence.”

“Well, don’t break into the money before I come back,” said Herbert as he rose from the table. “I’m afraid it’ll turn you into a mean, avaricious man, and we shall have to disown you.”

His mother laughed, and following him to the door, watched him down the road; and returning to the breakfast table, was very happy at the expense of her husband’s credulity. All of which did not prevent her from scurrying to the door at the postman’s knock, nor prevent her from referring somewhat shortly to retired sergeant-majors of bibulous habits when she found that the post brought a tailor’s bill.

“Herbert will have some more of his funny remarks, I expect, when he comes home,” she said, as they sat at dinner.

“I dare say,” said Mr. White, pouring himself out some beer; “but for all that, the thing moved in my hand; that I’ll swear to.”

“You thought it did,” said the old lady soothingly.

“I say it did,” replied the other. “There was no thought about it; I had just—What’s the matter?”

His wife made no reply. She was watching the mysterious movements of a man outside, who, peering in an undecided fashion at the house, appeared to be trying to make up his mind to enter. In mental connection with the two hundred pounds, she noticed that the stranger was well dressed, and wore a silk hat of glossy newness. Three times he paused at the gate, and then walked on again. The fourth time he stood with his hand upon it, and then with sudden resolution flung it open and walked up the path. Mrs. White at the same moment placed her hands behind her, and hurriedly unfastening the strings of her apron, put that useful article of apparel beneath the cushion of her chair.

She brought the stranger, who seemed ill at ease, into the room. He gazed at her furtively, and listened in a preoccupied fashion as the old lady apologized for the appearance of the room, and her husband’s coat, a garment which he usually reserved for the garden. She then waited as patiently as her sex would permit, for him to broach his business, but he was at first strangely silent.

“I—was asked to call,” he said at last, and stooped and picked a piece of cotton from his trousers. “I come from ‘Maw and Meggins.’”

The old lady started. “Is anything the matter?” she asked, breathlessly. “Has anything happened to Herbert? What is it? What is it?”

Her husband interposed. “There, there, mother,” he said, hastily. “Sit down, and don’t jump to conclusions. You’ve not brought bad news, I’m sure, sir;” and he eyed the other wistfully.

“I’m sorry——” began the visitor.

“Is he hurt?” demanded the mother, wildly.

The visitor bowed in assent. “Badly hurt,” he said, quietly, “but he is not in any pain.”

“Oh, thank God!” said the old woman, clasping her hands. “Thank God for that! Thank——”

She broke off suddenly as the sinister meaning of the assurance dawned upon her and she saw the awful confirmation of her fears in the other’s averted face. She caught her breath, and turning to her slower-witted husband, laid her trembling old hand upon his. There was a long silence.

“He was caught in the machinery,” said the visitor at length in a low voice.

“Caught in the machinery,” repeated Mr. White, in a dazed fashion, “yes.”

He sat staring blankly out at the window, and taking his wife’s hand between his own, pressed it as he had been wont to do in their old courting-days nearly forty years before.

“He was the only one left to us,” he said, turning gently to the visitor. “It is hard.”

The other coughed, and rising, walked slowly to the window. “The firm wished me to convey their sincere sympathy with you in your great loss,” he said, without looking round. “I beg that you will understand I am only their servant and merely obeying orders.”

There was no reply; the old woman’s face was white, her eyes staring, and her breath inaudible; on the husband’s face was a look such as his friend the sergeant might have carried into his first action.

“I was to say that ‘Maw and Meggins’ disclaim all responsibility,” continued the other. “They admit no liability at all, but in consideration of your son’s services, they wish to present you with a certain sum as compensation.”

Mr. White dropped his wife’s hand, and rising to his feet, gazed with a look of horror at his visitor. His dry lips shaped the words, “How much?”

“Two hundred pounds,” was the answer.

Unconscious of his wife’s shriek, the old man smiled faintly, put out his hands like a sightless man, and dropped, a senseless heap, to the floor.

III

In the huge new cemetery, some two miles distant, the old people buried their dead, and came back to a house steeped in shadow and silence. It was all over so quickly that at first they could hardly realize it, and remained in a state of expectation as though of something else to happen—something else which was to lighten this load, too heavy for old hearts to bear.

But the days passed, and expectation gave place to resignation—the hopeless resignation of the old, sometimes miscalled, apathy. Sometimes they hardly exchanged a word, for now they had nothing to talk about, and their days were long to weariness.

It was about a week after that the old man, waking suddenly in the night, stretched out his hand and found himself alone. The room was in darkness, and the sound of subdued weeping came from the window. He raised himself in bed and listened.

“Come back,” he said, tenderly. “You will be cold.”

“It is colder for my son,” said the old woman, and wept afresh.

The sound of her sobs died away on his ears. The bed was warm, and his eyes heavy with sleep. He dozed fitfully, and then slept until a sudden wild cry from his wife awoke him with a start.

“The paw!” she cried wildly. “The monkey’s paw!”

He started up in alarm. “Where? Where is it? What’s the matter?”

She came stumbling across the room toward him. “I want it,” she said, quietly. “You’ve not destroyed it?”

“It’s in the parlour, on the bracket,” he replied, marvelling. “Why?”

She cried and laughed together, and bending over, kissed his cheek.

“I only just thought of it,” she said, hysterically. “Why didn’t I think of it before? Why didn’t you think of it?”

“Think of what?” he questioned.

“The other two wishes,” she replied, rapidly. “We’ve only had one.”

“Was not that enough?” he demanded, fiercely.

“No,” she cried, triumphantly; “we’ll have one more. Go down and get it quickly, and wish our boy alive again.”

The man sat up in bed and flung the bedclothes from his quaking limbs. “Good God, you are mad!” he cried, aghast.

“Get it,” she panted; “get it quickly, and wish——Oh, my boy, my boy!”

Her husband struck a match and lit the candle. “Get back to bed,” he said, unsteadily. “You don’t know what you are saying.”

“We had the first wish granted,” said the old woman, feverishly; “why not the second?”

“A coincidence,” stammered the old man.

“Go and get it and wish,” cried his wife, quivering with excitement.

The old man turned and regarded her, and his voice shook. “He has been dead ten days, and besides he—I would not tell you else, but—I could only recognize him by his clothing. If he was too terrible for you to see then, how now?”

“Bring him back,” cried the old woman, and dragged him toward the door. “Do you think I fear the child I have nursed?”

He went down in the darkness, and felt his way to the parlour, and then to the mantelpiece. The talisman was in its place, and a horrible fear that the unspoken wish might bring his mutilated son before him ere he could escape from the room seized upon him, and he caught his breath as he found that he had lost the direction of the door. His brow cold with sweat, he felt his way round the table, and groped along the wall until he found himself in the small passage with the unwholesome thing in his hand.

Even his wife’s face seemed changed as he entered the room. It was white and expectant, and to his fears seemed to have an unnatural look upon it. He was afraid of her.

“Wish!” she cried, in a strong voice.

“It is foolish and wicked,” he faltered.

“Wish!” repeated his wife.

He raised his hand. “I wish my son alive again.”

The talisman fell to the floor, and he regarded it fearfully. Then he sank trembling into a chair as the old woman, with burning eyes, walked to the window and raised the blind.

He sat until he was chilled with the cold, glancing occasionally at the figure of the old woman peering through the window. The candle-end, which had burned below the rim of the china candlestick, was throwing pulsating shadows on the ceiling and walls, until, with a flicker larger than the rest, it expired. The old man, with an unspeakable sense of relief at the failure of the talisman, crept back to his bed, and a minute or two afterward the old woman came silently and apathetically beside him.

Neither spoke, but lay silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time screwing up his courage, he took the box of matches, and striking one, went downstairs for a candle.

At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike another; and at the same moment a knock, so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, sounded on the front door.

The matches fell from his hand and spilled in the passage. He stood motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room, and closed the door behind him. A third knock sounded through the house.

“What’s that?” cried the old woman, starting up.

“A rat,” said the old man in shaking tones—“a rat. It passed me on the stairs.”

His wife sat up in bed listening. A loud knock resounded through the house.

“It’s Herbert!” she screamed. “It’s Herbert!”

She ran to the door, but her husband was before her, and catching her by the arm, held her tightly.

“What are you going to do?” he whispered hoarsely.

“It’s my boy; it’s Herbert!” she cried, struggling mechanically. “I forgot it was two miles away. What are you holding me for? Let go. I must open the door.”

“For God’s sake don’t let it in,” cried the old man, trembling.

“You’re afraid of your own son,” she cried, struggling. “Let me go. I’m coming, Herbert; I’m coming.”

There was another knock, and another. The old woman with a sudden wrench broke free and ran from the room. Her husband followed to the landing, and called after her appealingly as she hurried downstairs. He heard the chain rattle back and the bottom bolt drawn slowly and stiffly from the socket. Then the old woman’s voice, strained and panting.

“The bolt,” she cried, loudly. “Come down. I can’t reach it.”

But her husband was on his hands and knees groping wildly on the floor in search of the paw. If he could only find it before the thing outside got in. A perfect fusillade of knocks reverberated through the house, and he heard the scraping of a chair as his wife put it down in the passage against the door. He heard the creaking of the bolt as it came slowly back, and at the same moment he found the monkey’s paw, and frantically breathed his third and last wish.

The knocking ceased suddenly, although the echoes of it were still in the house. He heard the chair drawn back, and the door opened. A cold wind rushed up the staircase, and a long loud wail of disappointment and misery from his wife gave him courage to run down to her side, and then to the gate beyond. The street lamp flickering opposite shone on a quiet and deserted road.

On the Brighton Road

Sat, 05 Oct 2019 22:44:22 -0600

This is a quite short story by Richard Middleton that I love for its simplicity and brevity. In talking about the story here, I drop a couple of spoilers. If you’ve never read it before scroll down now. Do come back when you’re done, though.

This story delights in playing with words to dance around the question: who is really dead? We know it’s a ghost story, so there should be a ghostly manifestation of some sort. I’ll admit that on my first reading I understood that it’s the boy who’s a ghost, but that was as far as I really read into the text.

On subsequent readings I realized that there is clearly a case to be made for both characters being dead. The tramp waking in the snow and saying he was lucky to wake at all in this. Saying to himself “Am I glad or sorry that it was only sleep that took me … ?”

In particular the exchange where the tramp admits that he hasn’t been at it [being on the road] as long as the boy, who responds “No, I could tell that by the way you walk. You haven’t got tired yet. Perhaps you expect something at the other end?”.

The other end of the road or the other end of something else?

This story illustrates well an important point about short stories in general, and in particular short ghost stories. Words are at a premium. There’s no luxury of rambling on and on for several pages (as a novel might) and these form of stories benefit greatly from brevity - making sure that each word moves the story forward and is not extraneous. That they also still need to provide a chill or uneasiness speaks to the mastery of some authors in this space, and I believe this story is a fine example of that.

Read it once, then come back and carefully read it again. See if you appreciate a new dimension to the story.

Forever traveling the Brighton Road.

From the Internet Archive Flickr page

Richard Middleton is probably known best for “The Ghost Ship”: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11045

There is also a nice audiobook of “The Ghost Ship” that contains this particular story if you’d like to give it a listen. I had originally thought about recording my own version of the story as an audiobook, but the narrator in this version has a legitimate accent that works well.

As before, I’ve created ebook versions for those that would prefer to use an e-reader:

epub (For iOS Books or other readers)
mobi (For Kindle)

On the Brighton Road

Richard Middleton

(1912)

Slowly the sun had climbed up the hard white downs, till it broke with little of the mysterious ritual of dawn upon a sparkling world of snow. There had been a hard frost during the night, and the birds, who hopped about here and there with scant tolerance of life, left no trace of their passage on the silver pavements. In places the sheltered caverns of the hedges broke the monotony of the whiteness that had fallen upon the coloured earth, and overhead the sky melted from orange to deep blue, from deep blue to a blue so pale that it suggested a thin paper screen rather than illimitable space. Across the level fields there came a cold, silent wind which blew a fine dust of snow from the trees, but hardly stirred the crested hedges. Once above the skyline, the sun seemed to climb more quickly, and as it rose higher it began to give out a heat that blended with the keenness of the wind.

It may have been this strange alternation of heat and cold that disturbed the tramp in his dreams, for he struggled tor a moment with the snow that covered him, like a man who finds himself twisted uncomfortably in the bed-clothes, and then sat up with staring, questioning eyes. “Lord! I thought I was in bed,” he said to himself as he took in the vacant landscape, “and all the while I was out here.” He stretched his limbs, and, rising carefully to his feet, shook the snow off his body. As he did so the wind set him shivering, and he knew that his bed had been warm.

“Come, I feel pretty fit,” he thought. “I suppose I am lucky to wake at all in this. Or unlucky—it isn’t much of a business to come back to.” He looked up and saw the downs shining against the blue, like the Alps on a picture-postcard. “That means another forty miles or so, I suppose,” he continued grimly. “Lord knows what I did yesterday. Walked till I was done, and now I’m only about twelve miles from Brighton. Damn the snow, damn Brighton, damn everything!” The sun crept higher and higher, and he started walking patiently along the road with his back turned to the hills.

“Am I glad or sorry that it was only sleep that took me, glad or sorry, glad or sorry?” His thoughts seemed to arrange themselves in a metrical accompaniment to the steady thud of his footsteps, and he hardly sought an answer to his question. It was good enough to walk to.

Presently, when three milestones had loitered past, he overtook a boy who was stooping to light a cigarette. He wore no overcoat, and looked unspeakably fragile against the snow, “Are you on the road, guv’nor?” asked the boy huskily as he passed.

“I think I am,” the tramp said.

“Oh! then I’ll come a bit of the way with you if you don’t walk too fast. It’s bit lonesome walking this time of day.”

The tramp nodded his head, and the boy started limping along by his side.

“I’m eighteen,” he said casually. “I bet you thought I was younger.”

“Fifteen, I’d have said.”

“You’d have backed a loser. Eighteen last August, and I’ve been on the road six years. I ran away from home five times when I was a little ‘un, and the police took me back each time. Very good to me, the police was. Now I haven’t got a home to run away from.”

“Nor have I,” the tramp said calmly.

“Oh, I can see what you are,” the boy panted; “you’re a gentleman come down. It’s harder for you than for me.” The tramp glanced at the limping, feeble figure and lessened his pace.

“I haven’t been at it as long as you have,” he admitted.

“No, I could tell that by the way you walk. You haven’t got tired yet. Perhaps you expect something at the other end?”

The tramp reflected for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said bitterly, “I’m always expecting things.”

“You’ll grow out of that;” the boy commented. “It’s warmer in London, but it’s harder to come by grub. There isn’t much in it really.”

“Still, there’s the chance of meeting somebody there who will understand—”

“Country people are better,” the boy interrupted. “Last night I took a lease of a barn for nothing and slept with the cows, and this morning the farmer routed me out and gave me tea and toke because I was so little. Of course, I score there; but in London, soup on the Embankment at night, and all the rest of the time coppers moving you on.”

“I dropped by the roadside last night and slept where I fell. It’s a wonder I didn’t die,” the tramp said. The boy looked at him sharply.

“How did you know you didn’t?” he said.

“I don’t see it,” the tramp said, after a pause.

“I tell you,” the boy said hoarsely, “people like us can’t get away from this sort of thing if we want to. Always hungry and thirsty and dog-tired and walking all the while. And yet if anyone offers me a nice home and work my stomach feels sick. Do I look strong? I know I’m little for my age, but I’ve been knocking about like this for six years, and do you think I’m not dead? I was drowned bathing at Margate, and I was killed by a gypsy with a spike; he knocked my head and yet I’m walking along here now, walking to London to walk away from it again, because I can’t help it. Dead! I tell you we can’t get away if we want to.”

The boy broke off in a fit of coughing, and the tramp paused while he recovered.

“You’d better borrow my coat for a bit, Tommy,” he said, “your cough’s pretty bad.”

“You go to hell!” the boy said fiercely, puffing at his cigarette; “I’m all right. I was telling you about the road. You haven’t got down to it yet, but you’ll find out presently. We’re all dead, all of us who’re on it, and we’re all tired, yet somehow we can’t leave it. There’s nice smells in the summer, dust and hay and the wind smack in your face on a hot day—and it’s nice waking up in the wet grass on a fine morning. I don’t know, I don’t know——” he lurched forward suddenly, and the tramp caught him in his arms.

“I’m sick,” the boy whispered—“sick.”

The tramp looked up and down the road, but he could see no houses or any sign of help. Yet even as he supported the boy doubtfully in the middle of the road a motor car suddenly flashed in the middle distance, and came smoothly through the snow.

“What’s the trouble?” said the driver quietly as he pulled up. “I’m a doctor.” He looked at the boy keenly and listened to his strained breathing.

“Pneumonia,” he commented. “I’ll give him a lift to the infirmary, and you, too, if you like.”

The tramp thought of the workhouse and shook his head “I’d rather walk,” he said.

The boy winked faintly as they lifted him into the car.

“I’ll meet you beyond Reigate,” he murmured to the tramp. “You’ll see.” And the car vanished along the white road.

All the morning the tramp splashed through the thawing snow, but at midday he begged some bread at a cottage door and crept into a lonely barn to eat it. It was warm in there, and after his meal he fell asleep among the hay. It was dark when he woke, and started trudging once more through the slushy roads.

Two miles beyond Reigate a figure, a fragile figure, slipped out of the darkness to meet him.

“On the road, guv’nor?” said a husky voice. “Then I’ll come a bit of the way with you if you don’t walk too fast. It’s a bit lonesome walking this time of day.”

“But the pneumonia!” cried the tramp, aghast.

“I died at Crawley this morning,” said the boy.

The Red Room

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 10:38:32 -0600

A little too late I realized that it might be fun to do a daily post of my favorite short ghost stories through October (to honor my favorite month and holiday!). Last year I shared one of my personal favorite stories, “Smee” by A.M. Burrage.

I will do my best to try and get a few good stories out this October. I feel like I could probably at least get one good story every week until Halloween!

Many of these stories are ones I first encountered in what I consider to be the definitive book on the subject: The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories edited by Michael Cox and R.A. Gilbert. Their introduction is wonderful to read and really provides a fantastic overview of the rich literary history of the ghost story. As they note in the opening paragraph of their introduction:

“Whatever we do with the dead they will not go away. Whether we entomb and isolate them or scatter their ashes, they remain as ghosts in our memories and faced with their continuing presence we have no option but to learn to live with them. Our most effective way of accommodating them is, perhaps, to encapsulate them in stories, either as the vengeful or grateful dead of folklore, as the dull prosaic phantoms of psychical research, or as the less predictable revenants of fiction.” Michael Cox and Robert Gilbert, Introduction - The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories

I am certain to be including other stories from this collection as this particular book has greatly influenced and guided my love of short ghost stories.

This particular story comes from H.G. Wells (he of The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, and plenty other pieces of fantastic fiction).

It concerns an unnamed protagonist spending the night in a haunted room of Lorraine Castle. The first part of the (relatively short) story focuses on the protagonist meeting the caretakers and helps to set the mood of the location and introduce us to the pragmatic narrator.

Things start to get much more interesting once the narrator actually enters the room itself. It’s interesting that he only actually spends 13 paragraphs in the room (did I mention it was a very short story?) as he learns the actual nature of what haunts the room.

It’s a metaphysical lesson about our basest instincts.

Or as H.P. Lovecraft would note 31 years after this story was published:

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927)

This story is a classic and certainly not to be missed by anyone that loves a good ghost story.

I’ve also created ebook versions for those that would prefer to read them in their own e-readers:

[epub](The Red Room - H.G. Wells.epub) (For iOS Books or other readers)
[mobi](The Red Room - H.G. Wells.mobi) (For Kindle)

The Red Room

H.G. Wells

(1896)

‘I can assure you,’ said I, ’that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.’ And I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand.

‘It is your own choosing,’ said the man with the withered arm, and glanced at me askance.

‘Eight-and-twenty years,’ said I, ‘I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet.’

The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open. ‘Ah,’ she broke in: ‘and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There’s a many things to see, when one’s still but eight-and-twenty.’ She swayed her head slowly from side to side. ‘A many things to see and sorrow for.’

I half suspected the old people were trying to enhance the spiritual terrors of their house by their droning insistence. I put down my empty glass on the table and looked about the room, and caught a glimpse of myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible sturdiness, in the queer old mirror at the end of the room. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if I see anything tonight, I shall be so much the wiser. For I come to the business with an open mind.’

‘It’s your own choosing,’ said the man with the withered arm once more.

I heard the sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the passage outside, and the door creaked on its hinges as a second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He supported himself by a single crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth. He made straight for an armchair on the opposite side of the table, sat down clumsily, and began to cough. The man with the withered arm gave this newcomer a short glance of positive dislike; the old woman took no notice of his arrival, but remained with her eyes fixed steadily on the fire.

‘I said—it’s your own choosing,’ said the man with the withered arm, when the coughing had ceased for a while.

‘It’s my own choosing,’ I answered.

The man with the shade became aware of my presence for the first time, and threw his head back for a moment and sideways, to see me. I caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and bright and inflamed. Then he began to cough and splutter again.

‘Why don’t you drink?’ said the man with the withered arm, pushing the beer towards him. The man with the shade poured out a glassful with a shaky arm that splashed half as much again on the deal table. A monstrous shadow of him crouched upon the wall and mocked his action as he poured and drank. I must confess I had scarce expected these grotesque custodians. There is to my mind something inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human qualities seem to drop from old people insensibly day by day. The three of them made me feel uncomfortable, with their gaunt silences, their bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness to me and to one another.

‘If,’ said I, ‘you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will make myself comfortable there.’

The old man with the cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it startled me, and shot another glance of his red eyes at me from under the shade; but no one answered me. I waited a minute, glancing from one to the other.

‘If,’ I said a little louder, ‘if you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will relieve you from the task of entertaining me.’

‘There’s a candle on the slab outside the door,’ said the man with the withered arm, looking at my feet as he addressed me. ‘But if you go to the red room tonight—’

(‘This night of all nights!’ said the old woman.)

‘You go alone.’

‘Very well,’ I answered. ‘And which way do I go?’

‘You go along the passage for a bit,’ said he, ‘until you come to a door, and through that is a spiral staircase, and half-way up that is a landing and another door covered with baize. Go through that and down the long corridor to the end, and the red room is on your left up the steps.’

‘Have I got that right?’ I said, and repeated his directions. He corrected me in one particular.

‘And are you really going?’ said the man with the shade, looking at me again for the third time, with that queer, unnatural tilting of the face.

(‘This night of all nights!’ said the old woman.)

‘It is what I came for,’ I said, and moved towards the door. As I did so, the old man with the shade rose and staggered round the table, so as to be closer to the others and to the fire. At the door I turned and looked at them, and saw they were all close together, dark against the firelight, staring at me over their shoulders, with an intent expression on their ancient faces.

‘Good night,’ I said, setting the door open.

‘It’s your own choosing,’ said the man with the withered arm.

I left the door wide open until the candle was well alight, and then I shut them in and walked down the chilly, echoing passage.

I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in whose charge her ladyship had left the castle, and the deep-toned, old-fashioned furniture of the housekeeper’s room in which they forgathered, affected me in spite of my efforts to keep myself at a matter of fact phase. They seemed to belong to another age, an older age, an age when things spiritual were different from this of ours, less certain; an age when omens and witches were credible, and ghosts beyond denying. Their very existence was spectral; the cut of their clothing, fashions born in dead brains. The ornaments and conveniences of the room about them were ghostly—the thoughts of vanished men, which still haunted rather than participated in the world of today. But with an effort I sent such thoughts to the right-about. The long, draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver. The echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and one fled before me into the darkness overhead. I came to the landing and stopped there for a moment, listening to a rustling that I fancied I heard; then, satisfied of the absolute silence, I pushed open the baize-covered door and stood in the corridor.

The effect was scarcely what I expected, for the moonlight coming in by the great window on the grand staircase picked out everything in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination. Everything was in its place; the house might have been deserted on the yesterday instead of eighteen months ago. There were candles in the sockets of the sconces, and whatever dust had gathered on the carpets or upon the polished flooring was distributed so evenly as to be invisible in the moonlight. I was about to advance, and stopped abruptly. A bronze group stood upon the landing, hidden from me by the corner of the wall, but its shadow fell with marvellous distinctness upon the white panelling and gave me the impression of some one crouching to waylay me. I stood rigid for half a minute perhaps. Then, with my hand in the pocket that held my revolver, I advanced, only to discover a Ganymede and Eagle glistening in the moonlight. That incident for a time restored my nerve, and a porcelain Chinaman on a buhl table, whose head rocked silently as I passed him, scarcely startled me.

The door to the red room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy corner. I moved my candle from side to side, in order to see clearly the nature of the recess in which I stood before opening the door. Here it was, thought I, that my predecessor was found, and the memory of that story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. I glanced over my shoulder at the Ganymede in the moonlight, and opened the door of the red room rather hastily, with my face half-turned to the pallid silence of the landing.

I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found in the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft, surveying the scene of my vigil, the great red room of Lorraine Castle, in which the young duke had died. Or, rather, in which he had begun his dying, for he had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps I had just ascended. That had been the end of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to conquer the ghostly tradition of the place, and never, I thought, had apoplexy better served the ends of superstition. And there were other and older stories that clung to the room, back to the half-credible beginning of it all, the tale of a timid wife and the tragic end that came to her husband’s jest of frightening her. And looking around that large sombre room, with its shadowy window bays, its recesses and alcoves, one could well understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its germinating darkness. My candle was a little tongue of light in its vastness, that failed to pierce the opposite end of the room, and left an ocean of mystery and suggestion beyond its island of light.

I resolved to make a systematic examination of the place at once, and dispel the fanciful suggestions of its obscurity before they obtained a hold upon me. After satisfying myself of the fastening of the door, I began to walk about the room, peering round each article of furniture, tucking up the valances of the bed, and opening its curtains wide. I pulled up the blinds and examined the fastenings of the several windows before closing the shutters, leant forward and looked up the blackness of the wide chimney, and tapped the dark oak panelling for any secret opening. There were two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconces bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were more candles in china candlesticks. All these I lit one after the other. The fire was laid, an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper—and I lit it, to keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it was burning well, I stood round with my back to it and regarded the room again. I had pulled up a chintz-covered armchair and a table, to form a kind of barricade before me, and on this lay my revolver ready to hand. My precise examination had done me good, but I still found the remoter darkness of the place, and its perfect stillness, too stimulating for the imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire was no sort of comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove at the end in particular had that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking, living thing, that comes so easily in silence and solitude. At last, to reassure myself, I walked with a candle into it, and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there. I stood that candle upon the floor of the alcove, and left it in that position.

By this time I was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although to my reason there was no adequate cause for the condition. My mind, however, was perfectly clear. I postulated quite unreservedly that nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time I began to string some rhymes together, Ingoldsby fashion, of the original legend of the place. A few I spoke aloud, but the echoes were not pleasant. For the same reason I also abandoned, after a time, a conversation with myself upon the impossibility of ghosts and haunting. My mind reverted to the three old and distorted people downstairs, and I tried to keep it upon that topic. The sombre reds and blacks of the room troubled me; even with seven candles the place was merely dim. The one in the alcove flared in a draught, and the fire’s flickering kept the shadows and penumbra perpetually shifting and stirring. Casting about for a remedy, I recalled the candles I had seen in the passage, and, with a slight effort, walked out into the moonlight, carrying a candle and leaving the door open, and presently returned with as many as ten. These I put in various knick-knacks of china with which the room was sparsely adorned, lit and placed where the shadows had lain deepest, some on the floor, some in the window recesses, until at last my seventeen candles were so arranged that not an inch of the room but had the direct light of at least one of them. It occurred to me that when the ghost came, I could warn him not to trip over them. The room was now quite brightly illuminated. There was something very cheery and reassuring in these little streaming flames, and snuffing them gave me an occupation, and afforded a helpful sense of the passage of time.

Even with that, however, the brooding expectation of the vigil weighed heavily upon me. It was after midnight that the candle in the alcove suddenly went out, and the black shadow sprang back to its place there. I did not see the candle go out; I simply turned and saw that the darkness was there, as one might start and see the unexpected presence of a stranger. ‘By Jove!’ said I aloud; ’that draught’s a strong one!’ and taking the matches from the table, I walked across the room in a leisurely manner to relight the corner again. My first match would not strike, and as I succeeded with the second, something seemed to blink on the wall before me. I turned my head involuntarily, and saw that the two candles on the little table by the fireplace were extinguished. I rose at once to my feet.

‘Odd!’ I said. ‘Did I do that myself in a flash of absent-mindedness?’

I walked back, relit one, and as I did so, I saw the candle in the right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost immediately its companion followed it. There was no mistake about it. The flame vanished, as if the wicks had been suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb, leaving the wick neither glowing nor smoking, but black. While I stood gaping, the candle at the foot of the bed went out, and the shadows seemed to take another step towards me.

‘This won’t do!’ said I, and first one and then another candle on the mantelshelf followed.

‘What’s up?’ I cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice somehow. At that the candle on the wardrobe went out, and the one I had relit in the alcove followed.

‘Steady on!’ I said. “These candles are wanted,’ speaking with a half-hysterical facetiousness, and scratching away at a match the while for the mantel candlesticks. My hands trembled so much that twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox. As the mantel emerged from darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the window were eclipsed. But with the same match I also relit the larger mirror candles, and those on the floor near the doorway, so that for the moment I seemed to gain on the extinctions. But then in a volley there vanished four lights at once in different corners of the room, and I struck another match in quivering haste, and stood hesitating whither to take it.

As I stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two candles on the table. With a cry of terror, I dashed at the alcove, then into the corner, and then into the window, relighting three, as two more vanished by the fireplace; then, perceiving a better way, I dropped the matches on the iron-bound deedbox in the corner, and caught up the bedroom candlestick. With this I avoided the delay of striking matches; but for all that the steady process of extinction went on, and the shadows I feared and fought against returned, and crept in upon me, first a step gained on this side of me and then on that. It was like a ragged storm-cloud sweeping out the stars. Now and then one returned for a minute, and was lost again. I was now almost frantic with the horror of the coming darkness, and my self-possession deserted me. I leaped panting and dishevelled from candle to candle in a vain struggle against that remorseless advance.

I bruised myself on the thigh against the table, I sent a chair headlong, I stumbled and fell and whisked the cloth from the table in my fall. My candle rolled away from me, and I snatched another as I rose. Abruptly this was blown out, as I swung it off the table, by the wind of my sudden movement, and immediately the two remaining candles followed. But there was light still in the room, a red light that staved off the shadows from me. The fire! Of course I could still thrust my candle between the bars and relight it!

I turned to where the flames were still dancing between the glowing coals, and splashing red reflections upon the furniture, made two steps towards the grate, and incontinently the flames dwindled and vanished, the glow vanished, the reflections rushed together and vanished, and as I thrust the candle between the bars darkness closed upon me like the shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace, sealed my vision, and crushed the last vestiges of reason from my brain. The candle fell from my hand. I flung out my arms in a vain effort to thrust that ponderous blackness away from me, and, lifting up my voice, screamed with all my might—once, twice, thrice. Then I think I must have staggered to my feet. I know I thought suddenly of the moonlit corridor, and, with my head bowed and my arms over my face, made a run for the door.

But I had forgotten the exact position of the door, and struck myself heavily against the corner of the bed. I staggered back, turned, and was either struck or struck myself against some other bulky furniture. I have a vague memory of battering myself thus, to and fro in the darkness, of a cramped struggle, and of my own wild crying as I darted to and fro, of a heavy blow at last upon my forehead, a horrible sensation of falling that lasted an age, of my last frantic effort to keep my footing, and then I remember no more.

I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the man with the withered arm was watching my face. I looked about me, trying to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not recollect. I rolled my eyes into the corner, and saw the old woman, no longer abstracted, pouring out some drops of medicine from a little blue phial into a glass. ‘Where am I?’ I asked; ‘I seem to remember you, and yet I cannot remember who you are.’

They told me then, and I heard of the haunted red room as one who hears a tale. ‘We found you at dawn,’ said he, ‘and there was blood on your forehead and lips.’

It was very slowly I recovered my memory of my experience. You believe now,’ said the old man, ’that the room is haunted?’ He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one who grieves for a broken friend.

‘Yes,’ said I; ’the room is haunted.’

‘And you have seen it. And we, who have lived here all our lives, have never set eyes upon it. Because we have never dared … Tell us, is it truly the old earl who——’

‘No,’ said I; ‘it is not.’

‘I told you so,’ said the old lady, with the glass in her hand. ‘It is his poor young countess who was frightened——’

‘It is not,’ I said. ‘There is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of countess in that room, there is no ghost there at all; but worse, far worse——’

‘Well?’ they said.

‘The worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal man,’ said I; ‘and that is, in all its nakedness—Fear! Fear that will not have light nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor, it fought against me in the room——’

I stopped abruptly. There was an interval of silence. My hand went up to my bandages.

Then the man with the shade sighed and spoke. ‘That is it,’ said he. ‘I knew that was it. A power of darkness. To put such a curse upon a woman! It lurks there always. You can feel it even in the daytime, even of a bright summer’s day, in the hangings, in the curtains, keeping behind you however you face about. In the dusk it creeps along the corridor and follows you, so that you dare not turn. There is Fear in that room of hers—black Fear, and there will be—so long as this house of sin endures.’

Setting up jrnl for Journaling

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 14:14:18 -0500

There’s no shortage of posts and news items that tout the benefits of keeping a journal. It seems like everyone loves to tell you about the positive effects it will have on your psyche, mental-health, sex life, and the happiness of your pets.

I’m not sure about all of those but I can see how keeping a journal can help in one very important way: it gets you writing. I am not a professional author (or even an amateur) but this seems like a Good Thing^TM in general.

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.” Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Writing down your thoughts seems like it helps to make so many abstract ideas more concrete. Being able to review the words and getting a bigger picture of the thought process should surely help to organize and arrange things in a way that makes sense (or in other surprising ways perhaps not considered at first).

I can always use help in the writing department, so I’ve decided to start keeping a journal as well. The problem is that I like to keep things as simple and computer-agnostic as possible. So I thought I’d document my approach and rationale to setting up a journaling system that can suit the way I computer.

Requirements

I tend to prefer solutions that are OS/computer-agnostic. I currently use Ubuntu at home on my Nextcloud server and my personal laptop (I still seriously love my old 2011(!) MacBook Air) while I’m forced into Windows on my work desktop and laptop. My phone is still an iPhone.

I’m all over the place in the OS world. So one of my very first requirements is that the system can work for me no matter which OS I happen to be on. This also means that I’d like the format to be as agnostic and portable as possible too. Databases are neat, but overkill for something as simple as a text journal, so I’d like to see the files stored as plain text files.

I had previously written about setting up Nextcloud to be my online data storage and syncing solution. So my second requirement would be the ability to sync using Nextcloud.

I spend much of my day with a secure shell into my home server. One of the first things I’ll install in Windows is Cygwin to give me access to all of the tools I am accustomed to using (POSIX). So it’s fair to say that I’d love an interface that I can use from within my bash terminal.

Even better if I can use Vim!

Focused and accessible. Any journaling approach for me should be as simple and accessible as possible and focus on just journaling. Anything that gets in the way will only distract me from my purpose here, which is to capture my thoughts and notes every day. This is particularly true of web-based applications where it’s really easy for me to jump down another rabbit hole of distraction. Too many options and buttons and menus to play in and I’m liable to lose myself just fiddling around.

It should go without saying but it should also be Free Software.

In summary, I’d love if a solution:

is OS-agnostic
uses plain text files
uses Nextcloud for syncing
is accessible through terminal/bash
can use Vim
is focused, simple, and accessible

Free/Open Source Options

I came across a few different options for F/OSS journaling. This opensource.com article listed three neat looking Linux options: RedNotebook, Lifeograph, and Almanah Diary.

They all look neat and fancy but they don’t quite meet my requirements.

The Joplin terminal interface.

One option that I have played with a little previously is Joplin. It’s an incredibly robust note taking application that is packed with features (including a terminal interface). I may revisit it later but the complexity almost makes it too much for simple journaling.

Enter `jrnl`

I may have found what I’m looking for with jrnl. It’s a Python based utility so installation is pretty easy with pip install jrnl.

It stores the journal as a single text file (you can also have multiple journals for difference purposes if you want). I can just drop the file in my Nextcloud directory for syncing. As a plain text file I can also modify it directly from within the Nextcloud app as well (for iOS).

I can access the journal with a little more functionality from the terminal jrnl and creating a new entry or editing older entries are done through Vim (you can set jrnl to use any external editor you want).

It follows the Unix philosophy of “do one thing and do it well”.

The journal file itself looks quite simple and straightforward:

2019-09-02 09:00 Hot Sunday
Day was hot so the house was really hot when we got home (AC turned up while we were out).

2019-09-14 09:00 Doors
Installed the new door at the @bayhouse.
Had dinner with the Jones!

Worked on @LGW website a little.
Mostly formatting and some taxonomy stuff.

2019-09-15 23:30 It was a lazy Sunday
Swung in hammocks and read "The Shining" more.
Picked up dinner at Publix.

The docs do a better job explaining the options (there’s only a few).

Creating a new entry is as easy as:

$ jrnl This is a new entry
$ jrnl yesterday: This was a good day
$ jrnl

It has smart date parsing so you can pass it things like “yesterday” or “last monday”. The last version with just jrnl will open Vim and let me just start writing into a temporary file. When I save and quit it will write it into the journal.txt file in the appropriate location for me.

There’s plenty of options for listing/searching/displaying the journal including date and keyword filters. There’s also options for exporting the journal as json, Markdown, or text.

Vim `jrnl` Syntax Highlight

One small thing that I wanted was Vim syntax highlighting in my journal.txt file. The journal file format is pretty simple. There’s a date on a new line that is followed by a title for that entry. This is followed by further text for the entry until you find another new date. The only other unique token in the file is the use of “@” tags (@LGW, @movie, etc…).

I created a simple syntax highlighting file for Vim:

if exists("b:current_syntax")
    finish
endif

syntax match jtag "@.\{-}\w\+"
syntax match jyear /\d\{4}-\d\d-\d\d \d\d:\d\d/

syntax region entryLine start=/\d\{4}-\d\d-\d\d \d\d:\d\d/ end=/$/ contains=jyear

highlight def link jtag Constant
highlight def link jyear Identifier
highlight def entryLine ctermfg=250 guifg=Gray

let b:current_syntax = "jrnl"

You can simply drop the above into a syntax file (usually located somewhere like ~/.vim/syntax/jrnl.vim).

Modeline Tip

I have modeline set on my Vim, so it will automatically try to read a modeline within the first/last 5 lines of the file. The problem is the file journal.txt gets modified every time a new entry is added. To fix this I created an entry for long ago that has my modeline in it.
As long as I don’t create an entry older than my birth Vim should still pick up the modeline:

1974-02-01 09:00 Setting vim options
# vim: ft=jrnl

The Hard Part

Honestly, the hardest part of this is building the habit and discipline to consistently write/journal every day if possible. At least now I have a very low-friction way to do this on any of my computers.

New RawTherapee Website

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 12:10:49 -0600

Just over a year ago I started a redesign and rebuild effort for my friends over at https://www.rawtherapee.com. Then life happened.

After a long hiatus I was finally able to spend some time working on it and we finally launched it just a few days ago!

For those not familiar with the project, RawTherapee is a wonderful tool for developing raw photographs. It’s one of the first Free Software raw processing tools I used (prior to that it was the classic UFRaw project as a pre-cursor to bringing the image into GIMP).

I’ve been lucky enough to be friends with the project for years now. We migrated their old forums to discuss.pixls.us way back in October 2015 and I get to chat with them almost daily. They are an incredibly awesome group of people!

Like the work I did for my other favorite raw processing project, darktable, I really wanted to build them a new site to update their old one and make managing it easier. The old site was not responsive either, so it rendered horribly on tablet or phone screens.

Top: The earliest version of what was the previous design from May 2011.
Bottom: The last version before the new design. (via the Wayback Machine)

Providing these types of services is one of the primary reasons for starting the pixls.us community in the first place. We provide infrastructure and management for these projects so the developers don’t need to worry about it and can focus their efforts on improving their projects.

I just hate that it took so long to build them something!

New Design

Originally we were looking at some static left-column navigation layouts and had actually made a little headway before I got sidetracked (it was only a year!).

Then in June 2019 community member mariuszdaniel posted about a redesign he had mocked up. The team liked it and with a good reference design to start from Mica and I were able to start working on it again in earnest.

The result!

This time we were asked to use a library of some sort and Mica leaned towards using Bootstrap 4. This was a bit of a departure for me as I don’t normally tend to use libraries but I have to say it wasn’t so bad at all.

Ever since I worked on a mock-up for the 2019 Libre Graphics Meeting I’ve had an affinity for bolder headings with fonts like League Spartan. And I felt like it was a good fit for this use case. The team didn’t want to clutter up the site with too much stuff so the sparseness lends itself well to bolder heading/nav elements.

League Spartan in action on my design mock-up for LGM/2019

Hugo

Anyone that’s been hanging around me knows I’m a big proponent of Static Site Generators (SSG). Blame darix. These are systems that will take a directory of content and compile the whole thing into a website for you. The advantage is the minimal requirements to actually serve the website - just a webserver. No need for any scripting or programming languages on the server (or a database). This reduces the attack surface on the server and speeds up browsing (it also scales much better than a database-backed scripted website).

We had previously used Hugo for compiling the digiKam website so we had a familiarity with it. Honestly, the experience was so nice site that it was a natural decision to use it again here. (Hugo is also insanely fast.)

One of my personal favorite things about Hugo is the design decision to mimic the hierarchy of the source content for creating the website. Directories under content/ in Hugo become major sections, and content lives underneath them. They talk about this in their docs under Content Organization and I dig it. :)

I dig it so much that it should be trivially easy to port this website away from Node.js and metalsmith into Hugo, which is probably going to be a quick weekend project for me to play with soon! Well, I’ve actually got a couple of other projects to keep me busy for a bit first (stay tuned!) but it’s definitely on my radar.

Blackjack Limits

Fri, 03 May 2019 22:52:32 -0600

Blackjack. It’s one of the most even odds game you’ll find in a casino short of flipping a coin. Assuming the house rules are favorable, the house edge when playing perfect blackjack strategy is as low as 0.5% (you’ll lose ½ cents for every dollar you bet).

Not the best National Lampoon Vacation movie…

I’m sure it’s common knowledge to much more experienced gamblers out there but it was neat when I finally caught on to one of the reasons for having a Maximum Bet set on a blackjack table. You’d think that a casino would want to let someone bet as much money as they’d like to lose on a table game, right?

To those not familiar, when looking at a blackjack table in a casino you can always find the minimum and maximum bets allowed. These will usually be in a range such as $10 minimum and $1,000 maximum (10/1000). So why would the casino want to limit how much they’re willing to let you lose?

Well, because of an old 18^th century French system of betting that gives you a nice advantage (provided you’re rich enough) called the Martingale System.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume we’re basically talking about a 50/50 chance of you winning a hand. The basic idea behind the Martingale system is that every time you lose a hand, you double your previous bet. In this way, once you eventually win, you’ll gain back all of your previous losses, plus a winning from the original bet. I actually used a modified version of this for fun at the casinos where you double your previous bet and add the initial bet to it. In this way, once you finally win your hand you’ll not only win back all of your losses, but you’ll also win the initial bet amount for each of the hands you lost as well.

Let me illustrate. Assuming you lose hands, your bets would look like this (assuming an initial bet of $10):

$10
$30 (double previous bet: $20, add initial: $10)
$70 (double previous: $60, add initial: $10)
$150
$310
$630
$1270
…

Which is tantalizing in theory, because if we were tossing a coin we know that eventually it would have to come up a win. Right? At that point we’d win all our money back and be richer by N bets x $10!

Well, yes, and that is why there’s a maximum bet limit on tables - so that you can’t walk in with an infinite bankroll and just eventually win all the time. You’ll notice that if we use the example I mentioned earlier of $10/$1,000 as the min/max, that you could only lose up to six hands before you wouldn’t be able to recover your losses anymore!

You’d also have to bring $630 + $310 + $150 + $70 + $30 + $10 = $1,190 to the table to play with.

So the real question is - how likely are you to lose six straight bets? Probably more likely than you’d be comfortable with but basically in 100 bets, there’s about a 54.6% chance that a run of 6 losses will occur.

I know from past experience that this is way too often for my blood. :)

So it turns out that casinos will usually have their min/max bet ratio set to keep it around not more than six doubling bets. (Otherwise, I’d be making a fortune and long since retired on my own private island!)

Displaying a Big HTML Table

Thu, 21 Feb 2019 14:42:41 -0600

tl;dr - To speed up loading a large HTML table on the client, start with the table CSS set to display: none;. Once the document is ready, set it back to display: table;. This reduced my client-side render time from 60 seconds to 6 seconds on a table with ~400,000 cells.

I recently had a need to build a large-ish HTML table of data (5,000+ rows and ~75 columns) and display it on a page.

The data was coming from a MySQL table and I was using PHP to feed the data out to the page. The actual query was quick and the PHP ran as fast as you might expect (pretty snappy).

The problem was the rendering on the client side.

I actually decided to use the wonderful DataTables project for easy manipulation of the table (it’s been quite nice to use - definitely check it out). Once loaded it’s extremely snappy! The problem was that before we could really do anything with DataTables I needed to load up the actual table to be used.

PHP buffered the output fine and with a little examination of the traffic I realized that the data was being delivered timely enough. It turned out that the big slowdown was the re-flow of the table as data was being parsed in the client.

There was advice out there to make the table have a fixed layout in order to speed up rendering.

.fixed-table {
    table-layout: fixed;
}

This is supposed to help by keeping the column width calculations fixed rather than requiring all of the table data first, then calculating the columns. This is what the default table-layout: auto; is supposed to do.

The problem: I wasn’t really seeing any improvement in rendering times. For reference, my 300,000 cell table was taking approximately 60 seconds to fully render. Even with the table-layout: fixed; (and setting values for column widths manually).

I hunted around for possible solution for a while until I found an innocuous comment on Stack Overflow that reminded me that any DOM elements set with display: none; are not in the render tree for the browser. So we could have the browser calculate sizes for the table outside of the render tree, then push the final results to the screen once we’re done.

I set the table to display: none; initially and once the document was ready I set it back to display: table; (relying on JavaScript to do this).

The page now loads in about 6 seconds (approximately 10X faster)!

Libre Graphics Meeting 2019 Website

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 13:58:14 -0600

I’m really looking forward to the upcoming Libre Graphics Meeting in Saarbrücken, Germany next year!

For those unfamiliar with the meeting, it’s an annual gathering of Free/Libre software projects and artists. There’s an amazing community of users, developers, and hackers that attend every year to talk about all sorts of cool topics like fonts, photography, painting, performance, and many other things that start with the letter “p” (printing? pontificating? pixls?).

The "pixls" is a bit of a joke, but in reality I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll get a chance to assemble quite a few pixls.us nerds there. Friends from both darktable, RawTherapee, and many more actually live in or near Saarbrücken and I am super excited to see them!

Wanting to help the organizers, out I took a stab at designing a website for them. They use Wordpress for the site, so I had to figure out theming in Wordpress, but I had some fun doing it.

In the end they didn’t use what I cooked up, but I personally really liked it. Rather than let it languish in obscurity, I figured I would at least share it here:

Libre Graphics 2019 Website Theme

I’m a huge fan of The League of Moveable Type’s fonts, and their League Spartan is an awesome, bold, loud font that demands attention (like me?).

I made some decent progress on the overall design before I realized it wasn’t going to be used, so there’s still some rough edges that needed to be finished. I also generated a static version of the site I had setup on my host (no need for yet another Wordpress site hanging around the internet).

This is one of those cases where I kind of liked the overall course the design was taking and will keep it in mind to cannibalize for future projects.

Tact Filters

Wed, 14 Nov 2018 16:08:55 -0600

Being a part of a community of smart folks means that inevitably there will be personality clashes. I was reminded of this recently, and found myself needing to remember to be empathetic.

Thomas Watson Sr, discussing the early IBM motto, "THINK". (wiki)

darix was kind enough to link me this wonderful post from Jeff Bigler over twenty years ago that is still quite relevant today:

Tact Filters

Jeff Bigler

All people have a “tact filter”, which applies tact in one direction to everything that passes through it. Most “normal people” have the tact filter positioned to apply tact in the outgoing direction. Thus whatever normal people say gets the appropriate amount of tact applied to it before they say it. This is because when they were growing up, their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all!”

“Nerds,” on the other hand, have their tact filter positioned to apply tact in the incoming direction. Thus, whatever anyone says to them gets the appropriate amount of tact added when they hear it. This is because when nerds were growing up, they continually got picked on, and their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, “They’re just saying those mean things because they’re jealous. They don’t really mean it.”

When normal people talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they say, and no one’s feelings get hurt. When nerds talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they hear, and no one’s feelings get hurt. However, when normal people talk to nerds, the nerds often get frustrated because the normal people seem to be dodging the real issues and not saying what they really mean. Worse yet, when nerds talk to normal people, the normal people’s feelings often get hurt because the nerds don’t apply tact, assuming the normal person will take their blunt statements and apply whatever tact is necessary.

So, nerds need to understand that normal people have to apply tact to everything they say; they become really uncomfortable if they can’t do this. Normal people need to understand that despite the fact that nerds are usually tactless, things they say are almost never meant personally and shouldn’t be taken that way. Both types of people need to be extra patient when dealing with someone whose tact filter is backwards relative to their own.

Copyright © 1996, 2006 by Jeff Bigler.
Permission is granted to redistribute this text in its entirety, provided that this copyright notice and either the URL for the page (http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html) or a link to it is included. All other rights reserved.

The Exorcist

Wed, 07 Nov 2018 10:36:34 -0600

Demon: What an excellent day for an exorcism.

Fr Karras: You would like that?

Demon: Intensely.

Fr Karras: But wouldn’t that drive you out of Regan?

Demon: It would bring us together.

Fr Karras: You and Regan?

Demon: You and us.

The most chilling exchange in the movie. Particularly if you’re familiar with how it ends.

The lede image to this post is the inspiration for the scene of Fr. Merrin arriving at the house, René Magritte - The Empire of Light, II:

Smee

Sun, 28 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Unless you know me well personally, you may not realize that I’m a nerd for ghost stories. Big time.

That particular topic is for another time, though. This post is to celebrate the spooky season with one of my favorite ghost stories, Smee by A.M. Burrage.

Set during a Christmas Eve, it’s a delightful look at an innocent game of hide-and-seek called “Smee” (a portmanteau of “It’s” and “Me”) that includes an unexpected player for the evening. As with the best short ghost stories, the supernatural is casual and softly haunting; not as vulgar jump scares or “gotcha!” moments of cheap thrills. (The best of this post-facto type of uneasiness is likely Afterward by Edith Wharton.)

Smee

A.M. Burrage

‘No,’ said Jackson, with a deprecatory smile, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset your game. I shan’t be doing that because you’ll have plenty without me. But I’m not playing any games of hide-and-seek.’

It was Christmas Eve, and we were a party of fourteen with just the proper leavening of youth. We had dined well; it was the season for childish games, and we were all in the mood for playing them—all, that is, except Jackson. When somebody suggested hide-and-seek there was rapturous and almost unanimous approval. His was the one dissentient voice.

It was not like Jackson to spoil sport or refuse to do as others wanted. Somebody asked him if he were feeling seedy.

‘No,’ he answered, ‘I feel perfectly fit, thanks. But,’ he added with a smile which softened without retracting the flat refusal, ‘I’m not playing hide-and-seek.’

One of us asked him why not. He hesitated for some seconds before replying.

‘I sometimes go and stay at a house where a girl was killed through playing hide-and-seek in the dark. She didn’t know the house very well. There was a servants’ staircase with a door to it. When she was pursued she opened the door and jumped into what she must have thought was one of the bedrooms—and she broke her neck at the bottom of the stairs.’

We all looked concerned, and Mrs Fernley said:

‘How awful! And you were there when it happened?’

Jackson shook his head very gravely. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I was there when something else happened. Something worse.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought anything could be worse.’

‘This was,’ said Jackson, and shuddered visibly. ‘Or so it seemed to me.’

I think he wanted to tell the story and was angling for encouragement. A few requests which may have seemed to him to lack urgency, he affected to ignore and went off at a tangent.

‘I wonder if any of you have played a game called “Smee”. It’s a great improvement on the ordinary game of hide-and-seek. The name derives from the ungrammatical colloquialism, “It’s me.” You might care to play if you’re going to play a game of that sort. Let me tell you the rules.

‘Every player is presented with a sheet of paper. All the sheets are blank except one, on which is written “Smee”. Nobody knows who is “Smee” except “Smee” himself—or herself, as the case may be. The lights are then turned out and “Smee” slips from the room and goes off to hide, and after an interval the other players go off in search, without knowing whom they are actually in search of. One player meeting another challenges with the word “Smee” and the other player, if not the one concerned, answers “Smee”.

‘The real “Smee” makes no answer when challenged, and the second player remains quietly by him. Presently they will be discovered by a third player, who, having challenged and received no answer, will link up with the first two. This goes on until all the players have formed a chain, and the last to join is marked down for a forfeit. It’s a good noisy, romping game, and in a big house it often takes a long time to complete the chain. You might care to try it; and I’ll pay my forfeit and smoke one of Tim’s excellent cigars here by the fire until you get tired of it.’

I remarked that it sounded a good game and asked Jackson if he had played it himself. ‘Yes,’ he answered; ‘I played it in the house I was telling you about.’

‘And she was there? The girl who broke—’

‘No, no,’ Mrs Fernley interrupted. ‘He told us he wasn’t there when it happened.’

Jackson considered. ‘I don’t know if she was there or not. I’m afraid she was. I know that there were thirteen of us and there ought only to have been twelve. And I’ll swear that I didn’t know her name, or I think I should have gone clean off my head when I heard that whisper in the dark. No, you don’t catch me playing that game, or any other like it, any more. It spoiled my nerve quite a while, and I can’t afford to take long holidays. Besides, it saves a lot of trouble and inconvenience to own up at once to being a coward.’

Tim Vouce, the best of hosts, smiled around at us, and in that smile there was a meaning which is sometimes vulgarly expressed by the slow closing of an eye. ‘There’s a story coming,’ he announced.

‘There’s certainly a story of sorts,’ said Jackson, ‘but whether it’s coming or not—’ He paused and shrugged his shoulders.

‘Well, you’re going to pay a forfeit instead of playing?’

‘Please. But have a heart and let me down lightly. It’s not just a sheer cussedness on my part.’

‘Payment in advance,’ said Tim, ‘insures honesty and promotes good feeling. You are therefore sentenced to tell the story here and now.’

And here follows Jackson’s story, unrevised by me and passed on without comment to a wider public:

Some of you, I know, have run across the Sangstons. Christopher Sangston and his wife, I mean. They’re distant connections of mine—at least, Violet Sangston is. About eight years ago they bought a house between the North and South Downs on the Surrey and Sussex border, and five years ago they invited me to come and spend Christmas with them.

It was a fairly old house—I couldn’t say exactly of what period—and it certainly deserved the epithet ‘rambling’. It wasn’t a particularly big house, but the original architect, whoever he may have been, had not concerned himself with economising in space, and at first you could get lost in it quite easily.

Well, I went down for that Christmas, assured by Violet’s letter that I knew most of my fellow-guests and that the two or three who might be strangers to me were all ’lambs’. Unfortunately, I’m one of the world’s workers, and couldn’t get away until Christmas Eve, although the other members of the party had assembled on the preceding day. Even then I had to cut it rather fine to be there for dinner on my first night. They were all dressing when I arrived and I had to go straight to my room and waste no time. I may even have kept dinner waiting a bit, for I was last down, and it was announced within a minute of my entering the drawing-room. There was just time to say ‘hullo’ to everybody I knew, to be briefly introduced to the two or three I didn’t know, and then I had to give my arm to Mrs Gorman.

I mention this as the reason why I didn’t catch the name of a tall, dark, handsome girl I hadn’t met before. Everything was rather hurried and I am always bad at catching people’s names. She looked cold and clever and rather forbidding, the sort of girl who gives the impression of knowing all about men and the more she knows of them the less she likes them. I felt that I wasn’t going to hit it off with this particular ’lamb’ of Violet’s, but she looked interesting all the same, and I wondered who she was. I didn’t ask, because I was pretty sure of hearing somebody address her by name before very long.

Unluckily, though, I was a long way off her at table, and as Mrs Gorman was at the top of her form that night I soon forgot to worry about who she might be. Mrs Gorman is one of the most amusing women I know, an outrageous but quite innocent flirt, with a very sprightly wit which isn’t always unkind. She can think half a dozen moves ahead in conversation just as an expert can in a game of chess. We were soon sparring, or, rather, I was ‘covering’ against the ropes, and I quite forgot to ask her in an undertone the name of the cold, proud beauty. The lady on the other side of me was a stranger, or had been until a few minutes since, and I didn’t think of seeking information in that quarter.

There was a round dozen of us, including the Sangstons themselves, and we were all young or trying to be. The Sangstons themselves were the oldest members of the party and their son Reggie, in his last year at Marlborough, must have been the youngest. When there was talk of playing games after dinner it was he who suggested ‘Smee’. He told us how to play it just as I’ve described it to you.

His father chipped in as soon as we all understood what was going to be required of us. ‘If there are any games of that sort going on in the house,’ he said, ‘for goodness’ sake be careful of the back stairs on the first-floor landing. There’s a door to them and I’ve often meant to take it down. In the dark anybody who doesn’t know the house very well might think they were walking into a room. A girl actually did break her neck on those stairs about ten years ago when the Ainsties lived here.’

I asked how it happened.

‘Oh,’ said Sangston, ’there was a party here one Christmas time and they were playing hide-and-seek as you propose doing. This girl was one of the hiders. She heard somebody coming, ran along the passage to get away, and opened the door of what she thought was a bedroom, evidently with the intention of hiding behind it while her pursuer went past. Unfortunately it was the door leading to the back stairs, and that staircase is as straight and almost as steep as the shaft of a pit. She was dead when they picked her up.’

We all promised for our own sakes to be careful. Mrs Gorman said that she was sure nothing could happen to her, since she was insured by three different firms, and her next-of-kin was a brother whose consistent ill-luck was a byword in the family. You see, none of us had known the unfortunate girl, and as the tragedy was ten years old there was no need to pull long faces about it.

Well, we started the game almost immediately after dinner. The men allowed themselves only five minutes before joining the ladies, and then young Reggie Sangston went round and assured himself that the lights were out all over the house except in the servants’ quarters and in the drawing-room where we were assembled. We then got busy with twelve sheets of paper which he twisted into pellets and shook up between his hands before passing them round. Eleven of them were blank, and ‘Smee’ was written on the twelfth. The person drawing the latter was the one who had to hide. I looked and saw that mine was a blank. A moment later out went the electric lights, and in the darkness I heard somebody get up and creep to the door.

After a minute or so somebody gave a signal and we made a rush for the door. I for one hadn’t the least idea which of the party was ‘Smee’. For five or ten minutes we were all rushing up and down passages and in and out rooms challenging one another and answering, ‘Smee?—Smee!’

After a bit the alarums and excursions died down, and I guessed that ‘Smee’ was found. Eventually I found a chain of people all sitting still and holding their breath on some narrow stairs leading up to a row of attics. I hastily joined it, having challenged and been answered with silence, and presently two more stragglers arrived, each racing the other to avoid being last. Sangston was one of them, indeed it was he who was marked down for a forfeit, and after a little while he remarked in an undertone, ‘I think we’re all here now, aren’t we?’

He struck a match, looked up the shaft of the staircase, and began to count. It wasn’t hard, although we just about filled the staircase, for we were sitting each a step or two above the next, and all our heads were visible.

‘…nine, ten, eleven, twelve—thirteen’ he concluded, and then laughed. ‘Dash it all, that’s one too many!’

The match had burned out and he struck another and began to count. He got as far as twelve, and then uttered an exclamation.

‘There are thirteen people here!’ he exclaimed. ‘I haven’t counted myself yet.’

‘Oh, nonsense!’ I laughed. ‘You probably began with yourself, and now you want to count yourself twice.’

Out came his son’s electric torch, giving a brighter and steadier light and we all began to count. Of course we numbered twelve.

Sangston laughed.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I could have sworn I counted thirteen twice.’

From halfway up the stairs came Violet Sangston’s voice with a little nervous trill in it. ‘I thought there was somebody sitting two steps above me. Have you moved up. Captain Ransome?’

Ransome said that he hadn’t: he also said that he thought there was somebody sitting between Violet and himself. Just for a moment there was an uncomfortable Something in the air, a little cold ripple which touched us all. For that little moment it seemed to all of us, I think, that something odd and unpleasant had happened and was liable to happen again. Then we laughed at ourselves and at one another and were comfortable once more. There were only twelve of us, and there could only have been twelve of us, and there was no argument about it. Still laughing we trooped back to the drawing-room to begin again.

This time I was ‘Smee’, and Violet Sangston ran me to earth while I was still looking for a hiding-place. That round didn’t last long, and we were a chain of twelve within two or three minutes. Afterwards there was a short interval. Violet wanted a wrap fetched for her, and her husband went up to get it from her room. He was no sooner gone than Reggie pulled me by the sleeve. I saw that he was looking pale and sick.

‘Quick!’ he whispered, ‘while father’s out of the way. Take me into the smoke room and give me a brandy or a whisky or something.’

Outside the room I asked him what was the matter, but he didn’t answer at first, and I thought it better to dose him first and question him afterward. So I mixed him a pretty dark-complexioned brandy and soda which he drank at a gulp and then began to puff as if he had been running.

‘I’ve had rather a turn,’ he said to me with a sheepish grin.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I don’t know. You were “Smee” just now, weren’t you? Well, of course I didn’t know who “Smee” was, and while mother and the others ran into the west wing and found you, I turned east. There’s a deep clothes cupboard in my bedroom — I’d marked it down as a good place to hide when it was my turn, and I had an idea that “Smee” might be there. I opened the door in the dark, felt round, and touched somebody’s hand. “Smee?” I whispered, and not getting any answer I thought I had found “Smee”.’

‘Well, I don’t know how it was, but an odd creepy feeling came over me, I can’t describe it, but I felt that something was wrong. So I turned on my electric torch and there was nobody there. Now, I swear I touched a hand, and I was filling up the doorway of the cupboard at the time, so nobody could get out and past me.’ He puffed again. ‘What do you make of it?’ he asked.

‘You imagined that you had touched a hand,’ I answered, naturally enough.

He uttered a short laugh. ‘Of course I knew you were going to say that,’ he said. ‘I must have imagined it, mustn’t I?’ He paused and swallowed. ‘I mean, it couldn’t have been anything else but imagination, could it?’

I assured him that it couldn’t, meaning what I said, and he accepted this, but rather with the philosophy of one who knows he is right but doesn’t expect to be believed. We returned together to the drawing-room where, by that time, they were all waiting for us and ready to start again.

It may have been my imagination—although I’m almost sure it wasn’t—but it seemed to me that all enthusiasm for the game had suddenly melted like a white frost in strong sunlight. If anybody had suggested another game I’m sure we should all have been grateful and abandoned ‘Smee’. Only nobody did. Nobody seemed to like to. I for one, and I can speak for some of the others too, was oppressed with the feeling that there was something wrong. I couldn’t have said what I thought was wrong, indeed I didn’t think about it at all, but somehow all the sparkle had gone out of the fun, and hovering over my mind like a shadow was the warning of some sixth sense which told me that there was an influence in the house which was neither sane, sound nor healthy. Why did I feel like that? Because Sangston had counted thirteen of us instead of twelve, and his son had thought he had touched somebody in an empty cupboard. No, there was more in it than just that. One would have laughed at such things in the ordinary way, and it was just that feeling of something being wrong which stopped me from laughing.

Well, we started again, and when we went in pursuit of the unknown ‘Smee’, we were as noisy as ever, but it seemed to me that most of us were acting. Frankly, for no reason other than the one I’ve given you, we’d stopped enjoying the game. I had an instinct to hunt with the main pack, but after a few minutes, during which no ‘Smee’ had been found, my instinct to play winning games and be first if possible, set me searching on my own account. And on the first floor of the west wing following the wall which was actually the shell of the house, I blundered against a pair of human knees.

I put out my hand and touched a soft, heavy curtain. Then I knew where I was. There were tall, deeply-recessed windows with seats along the landing, and curtains over the recesses to the ground. Somebody was sitting in a corner of this window-seat behind the curtain. Aha, I had caught ‘Smee’! So I drew the curtain aside, stepped in, and touched the bare arm of a woman.

It was a dark night outside, and, moreover, the window was not only curtained but a blind hung down to where the bottom panes joined up with the frame. Between the curtain and the window it was as dark as the plague of Egypt. I could not have seen my hand held six inches before my face, much less the woman sitting in the corner.

‘Smee?’ I whispered.

I had no answer. ‘Smee’ when challenged does not answer. So I sat beside her, first in the field, to await the others. Then, having settled myself I leaned over to her and whispered:

‘Who is it? What’s your name, “Smee”?’

And out of the darkness beside me the whisper came back: ‘Brenda Ford.’

I didn’t know the name, but because I didn’t know it I guessed at once who she was. The tall, pale, dark girl was the only person in the house I didn’t know by name. Ergo my companion was the tall, pale, dark girl. It seemed rather intriguing to be there with her, shut in between a heavy curtain and a window, and I rather wondered whether she was enjoying the game we were all playing. Somehow she hadn’t seemed to me to be one of the romping sort. I muttered one or two commonplace questions to her and had no answer.

‘Smee’ is a game of silence. ‘Smee’ and the person or persons who have found ‘Smee’ are supposed to keep quiet to make it hard for the others. But there was nobody else about, and it occurred to me that she was playing the game a little too much to the letter. I spoke again and got no answer, and then I began to be annoyed. She was of that cold, ‘superior’ type which affects to despise men; she didn’t like me; and she was sheltering behind the rules of a game for children to be dis-courteous. Well, if she didn’t like sitting there with me, I certainly didn’t want to be sitting there with her! I half turned from her and began to hope that we should both be discovered without much more delay.

Having discovered that I didn’t like being there alone with her, it was queer how soon I found myself hating it, and that for a reason very different from the one which had at first whetted my annoyance. The girl I had met for the first time before dinner, and seen diagonally across the table, had a sort of cold charm about her which had attracted while it had half angered me. For the girl who was with me, imprisoned in the opaque darkness between the curtain and the window, I felt no attraction at all. It was so very much the reverse that I should have wondered at myself if, after the first shock of the discovery that she had suddenly become repellent to me, I had had room in my mind for anything besides the consciousness that her close presence was an increasing horror to me.

It came upon me just as quickly as I’ve uttered the words. My flesh suddenly shrank from her as you see a strip of gelatine shrink and wither before the heat of a fire. That feeling of something being wrong had come back to me, but multiplied to an extent which turned foreboding into actual terror. I firmly believe that I should have got up and run if I had not felt that at my first movement she would have divined my intention and compelled me to stay, by some means of which I could not bear to think. The memory of having touched her bare arm made me wince and draw in my lips. I prayed that somebody else would come along soon.

My prayer was answered. Light footfalls sounded on the landing. Somebody on the other side of the curtain brushed again my knees. The curtain was drawn aside and a woman’s hand, fumbling in the darkness, presently rested on my shoulder. ‘Smee?’ whispered a voice which I instantly recognised as Mrs Gorman’s.

Of course she received no answer. She came and settled down beside me with a rustle, and I can’t describe the sense of relief she brought me.

‘It’s Tony, isn’t it?’ she whispered.

‘Yes,’ I whispered back.

‘You’re not “Smee” are you?’

‘No, she’s on my other side.’

She reached a hand across me, and I heard one of her nails scratch the surface of a woman’s silk gown.

‘Hullo, “Smee”! How are you? Who are you? Oh, is it against the rules to talk? Never mind, Tony, we’ll break the rules. Do you know, Tony, this game is beginning to irk me a little. I hope they’re not going to run it to death by playing it all the evening. I’d like to play some game where we can all be together in the same room with a nice bright fire.’

‘Same here,’ I agreed fervently.

‘Can’t you suggest something when we go down? There’s something rather uncanny in this particular amusement. I can’t quite shed the delusion that there’s somebody in this game who oughtn’t to be in at all.’

That was just how I had been feeling, but I didn’t say so. But for my part the worst of my qualms were now gone; the arrival of Mrs Gorman had dissipated them. We sat on talking, wondering from time to time when the rest of the party would arrive.

I don’t know how long elapsed before we heard a clatter of feet on the landing and young Reggie’s voice shouting, ‘Hullo! Hullo, there! Anybody there?’

‘Yes,’ I answered.

‘Mrs Gorman with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, you’re a nice pair! You’ve both forfeited. We’ve all been waiting you for hours.’

‘Why, you haven’t found “Smee” yet,’ I objected.

‘You haven’t, you mean. I happen to have been “Smee” myself.’

‘But “Smee’s” here with us,’ I cried.

‘Yes,’ agreed Mrs Gorman.

The curtain was stripped aside and in a moment we were blinking into the eye of Reggie’s electric torch. I looked at Mrs Gorman and then on my other side. Between me and the wall there was an empty space on the window seat. I stood up at once and wished I hadn’t, for I found myself sick and dizzy.

‘There was somebody there,’ I maintained, ‘because I touched her.’

‘So did I,’ said Mrs Gorman in a voice which had lost its steadiness. ‘And I don’t see how she could have got up and gone without our knowing it.’

Reggie uttered a queer, shaken laugh. He, too, had had an unpleasant experience that evening. ‘Somebody’s been playing the goat,’ he remarked. ‘Coming down?’

We were not very popular when we arrived in the drawing-room. Reggie rather tactlessly gave it out that he had found us sitting on a window-seat behind the curtain. I taxed the tall, dark girl with having pretended to be ‘Smee’ and afterwards slipping away. She denied it. After which we settled down and played other games. ‘Smee’ was done with for the evening, and I for one was glad of it.

Some long while later, during an interval, Sangston told me, if I wanted a drink, to go into the smoke room and help myself. I went, and he presently followed me. I could see that he was rather peeved with me, and the reason came out during the following minute or two. It seemed that, in his opinion, if I must sit out and flirt with Mrs Gorman—in circumstances which would have been considered highly compromising in his young days—I needn’t do it during a round game and keep everybody waiting for us.

‘But there was somebody else there,’ I protested, ‘somebody pretending to be “Smee”. I believe it was that tall, dark girl. Miss Ford, although she denied it. She even whispered her name to me.’

Sangston stared at me and nearly dropped his glass.

‘Miss Who? he shouted.

‘Brenda Ford—she told me her name was.’

Sangston put down his glass and laid a hand on my shoulder.

‘Look here, old man,’ he said, ‘I don’t mind a joke, but don’t let it go too far. We don’t want all the women in the house getting hysterical. Brenda Ford is the name of the girl who broke her neck on the stairs playing hide-and-seek here ten years ago.’

Good Design

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

With deference to Dieter Rams (and courtesy of Vitsoe), his 10 principles for good design. This list is worth revisiting every now and then.

Good design is innovative

The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.

Good design makes a product useful

A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic criteria. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could detract from it.

Good design is aesthetic

The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our person and our well-being. But only well-executed objects can be beautiful.

Good design makes a product understandable

It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory.

Good design is unobtrusive

Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.

Good design is honest

It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.

Good design is long-lasting

It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.

Good design is thorough down to the last detail

Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the user.

Good design is environmentally-friendly

Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.

Good design is as little design as possible

Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials.

Back to purity, back to simplicity.

These principles are available licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 from Vitsoe.

Ubuntu SSH Ads (motd)

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 11:54:42 -0500

Much to the chagrin of my friend darix, I run an Ubuntu server at home for various things like Nextcloud and Plex. (Chagrin because it’s not openSUSE… yet.) I had installed the previous Long Term Support (LTS) version, 16.04 because I just need the thing to run and be solid. The time had come for a new LTS release and I figured I might as well sit down and get upgraded to 18.04.

Mostly you hear from people when things go wrong, and this time I thought it’d be nice to say something from a positive view. I upgraded over SSH and everything went super smoothly. Awesome! There was one small hiccup with SSH not being enabled when I rebooted the first time but it was quickly sorted out.

The funnier part was some weird news updates being shown in my Message of the Day (motd) when I logged into the machine. (update: user @Qwxlea@tuxspace.net on Mastodon found this LWN article about it by Jake Edge back in 2017.) I think I’ve seen a few people calling them “ads”, but really what happens is the motd scripts pull news from a URL to show you. Here’s what mine looked like:

Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-32-generic x86_64)

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2       913G  745G  122G  86% /

 * Read about Ubuntu updates for L1 Terminal Fault Vulnerabilities
   (L1TF).

   - https://ubu.one/L1TF

 * Check out 6 great IDEs now available on Ubuntu. There may even be
   something worthwhile there for those crazy EMACS fans ;)

   - https://bit.ly/6-cool-IDEs

 * Canonical Livepatch is available for installation.
   - Reduce system reboots and improve kernel security. Activate at:
     https://ubuntu.com/livepatch

0 packages can be updated.
0 updates are security updates.

The issue some folks have is with the first couple of bullet points (and a bit.ly link? Really?).

Taking a look in /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news and right at the top of the file Dustin was kind enough to tell us he insisted on transparency for this:

##############################################################################
# This program could be rewritten in C or Golang for faster performance.
# Or it could be rewritten in Python or another higher level language
# for more modularity.
# However, I've insisted on shell here for transparency!
#                                                                     - Dustin
##############################################################################

Remove the News

Also at the top of that file is the clue on fixing this for your installation. The key is to modify the file /etc/default/motd-news and change ENABLED=1 to ENABLED=0:

# Enable/disable the dynamic MOTD news service
# This is a useful way to provide dynamic, informative
# information pertinent to the users and administrators
# of the local system
ENABLED=0

Et voilà!

Goodbye Google Analytics

Sun, 27 May 2018 21:39:16 -0600

I was outlining some ideas for an article I want to write concerning online privacy and connections to the recent Facebook fiasco. Part of the outline had me talking about the “middleman” layer that many big services like Facebook and Google created through their free offerings like ads, webfonts, comments, and social sharing options. I started mentioning this in a post from last year. I won’t go into that detail here (yet), but something that really struck home for me was the use of Google Analytics.

For those not in the know, Google Analytics is a way to track users on a website for reporting and insights. We used to do this manually by analyzing the logs from the webserver. Then Google made it trivially easy to get great looking reports of the data automatically by simply including a small piece of JavaScript in our pages. It can even show this data in real time. Which is, as my friend Alex Prokoudine points out: “just jerking off” (*at least for small projects like this blog).

What this really boils down to is (and I’ll cover this in more depth in the article I alluded to): I’ve given Google direct access to all of my users and their browsing habits on my site.

Ok Faust, simply add this tiny snippet of JavaScript and you'll get all of these wonderful analytics! Easy-peasy!

It’s insidious because it’s dead-simple to set up, and it gives you a nice little jolt of satisfaction watching your traffic flowing in (trickling, in my case). Mesmerizing. Cunning. Dirty.

This is not exactly news to many, but I figured it might be for a few people. If it helps raise awareness in even one person of what’s really going on then I’d say this post has done its job. I’d rather not give Google a hand tracking users across the entire web.

I’m done with Google Analytics.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

There is a Free Software option for user analytics that we use over on PIXLS.US called Matomo (previously, Piwik) that I will continue to use here. This means that I control all of the data and don’t allow any middleman to see what you’re up to (well, me and one of the pixls sysadmins, andabata, who runs the service for us). I will also start manually analyzing my server logs offline when I need more accurate statistics to look at.

Stay tuned for something a little more in-depth where I ramble on more about tracking and the sneaky middle layer of snooping that these services have built up in the name of convenience and apathy.

Switching Themes

Sat, 19 May 2018 21:52:54 -0600

I got the bug recently to finally do something that’s been annoying me for some time: set up a dark theme for this website that is user selectable and that will persist.

Normally I prefer the white background (default) that I originally designed but I understand that some prefer a dark background. When it’s in the evening and I want to write/edit a new post (like I’m doing right now) so do I. When it’s daytime, though, I prefer to be back on the white background.

The Dark (Style)

Creating a dark version of the site is relatively easy. I originally styled things sparingly here to keep it light and simple.

The Dark by Lemony Snicket - I love reading this book to my kids (you should hear me do the voice for the dark).

With plenty of thanks to past-Pat for being proactive there aren’t many rules to change to make a dark theme work. Here they are:

body, hr:after {
    background-color: #222;
    color: #ccc;
}

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {
    color: #eee;
}

code, pre {
    background-color: #111;
}

That’s pretty much it. I set the body background-color and color to dark versions (the hr:after is for the new horizontal rules I added a few days ago).

The headings are slightly brighter than the body text (just like how they’re slightly darker in the light theme) and the code blocks use a darker background. The link text colors were tweaked from looking at the Solarized color scheme by Ethan Schoonover so they were already on the path to being used in either light or dark versions and didn’t need modification.

I went with a more neutral dark gray background vs. the slightly blue-tinted Solarized background because I didn’t want the background to clash with any photos I share.

Applying the Styles

The application of these styles was pretty straightforward. I had all of the main styles for the site load first (in the document <head>), where I set the dark theme as part of my default styles. Immediately after these default styles, I added a new <style> element that actually set the colors to the light theme version.

I did it this way because later I will talk about the JavaScript I use to switch the styles as well as add persistence for whatever a visitor chooses. This way if a user has JavaScript disabled they will get the light theme by default.

The pseudo code for my styles now looks like this:

<head>
<style>
	... default styles for everything
	{dark theme rules}
</style>

<style id='lightcss'>
	{light theme rules}
</style>

This will make sense a little later.

Inverting Colors

As an aside, while looking around at others works to see if I was missing something, I came across an awesome method for creating a dark version of a website. It’s in the blog post A Theme Switcher over on the Inclusive Components site and it’s an elegant use of the invert filter.

The post is well worth a read, but the general gist is to use the invert filter to invert all of the colors on a site. They explicitly give a background color to the :root html element, and then trickle it down to all other elements on the page through the * selector (so you don’t end up with white text on a white background). A little selector magic to avoid images and videos and you have a very tersely implemented theme inversion!

Here is the final CSS they used:

:root { 
   background-color: #fefefe;
   filter: invert(100%);
}

* { 
   background-color: inherit;
}

img:not([src*=".svg"]), video {  
   filter: invert(100%);
}

Wonderful! I almost went this route as well, but my colors are not quite set to be how I’d like them as straight inversions. I will keep this in my bag of tricks for later though!

Theme Switching

I now needed a way to allow visitors to use this new theme. A small bit of JavaScript at the end of my pages takes care of enabling/disabling the default light theme colors:

    document.getElementById('theme').addEventListener("click", function() {
        light = document.getElementById('lightcss');
        if( light.disabled == true ){
            light.disabled = false;
            localStorage.removeItem("theme");
        }else{
            light.disabled = true;
            localStorage.setItem("theme", "dark");
        }
    });

I attach an event listener to a link on the page (see the “Theme” button in my header). Targeting the lightcss style element, we can toggle it through the disabled attribute. This might seem odd if you’ve done this before.

Normally you’d probably consider setting the dark/light rules and applying them to a class. Then you’d toggle them by adding/removing the classes. While this works great, it tends to be slightly problematic when used for applying stored user preferences…

The Persistence of Memory

You’ll notice in the previous JavaScript snippet the lines that set/remove a localStorage parameter theme. This allows me to remember what theme the user wants.

Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali.

Another small piece of JavaScript in the <head> allows me to check for the setting:

if( localStorage.getItem('theme') == 'dark' ){
	document.getElementById("lightcss").disabled = true;
}

This could be done with cookies as well but many folks might have them turned off for security reasons.

This helps get around the problem of using a class to switch styles. If the setting is for the dark theme, it needs to be applied before the page has a chance to load (and show a flash of the white theme). Using the disabled attribute we can set (well, unset) these styles before the page has a chance to render.

Give It a Try

Whew! That was a mouthful. Well, go ahead and give it a try if you’d like! In my header under my name and main site links you should now find a “THEME” link that will swap things around for you. Let me know if anything seems wonky.

Installing Adobe Digital Editions on Linux with WINE

Sat, 12 May 2018 01:09:03 -0600

This post is a little more esoteric, but in the spirit of helping others from the future we’re gonna dive into this.

I'll stop posting relevant xkcd comics when Randall stops making relevant xkcd comics...

I picked up an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite over a year ago, and I have been tearing through books at an alarming rate. In the course of finding more books to read I did what I’ve always done for as long as I can remember: visit my local library.

Side note: Please, please, please support your local libraries. It’s like supporting net-neutrality in meatspace!

I immediately ran into a bit of a disconnect between my rapidly advancing digital life and the reality of digital books.

The problem lies in how we can borrow and checkout digital books. Currently, there are mainly two big systems in place for digital library lending, Bibliotheca’s CloudLibrary and Rakuten Overdrive. As is often the case in modern computing, anything not Apple or Microsoft is relegated to the rubbish bin. As a Linux user, this is not ideal for me.

Neither of these software solutions have a Linux option.

Wine Is Not an Emulator

Luckily for Linux users, there’s the project to run Windows applications on various POSIX-compliant operating systems: Wine.

I won’t go into using CloudLibrary, as it’s not the focus of this post. It actually installs just fine all on it’s own in Wine so it’s a non-issue.

Overdrive is the real problem here. Rather, it’s use of Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) as the means for checking out books. (The actual interface for Overdrive at the library is a website.) For other purposes that I won’t go into here right now, I need to be able to use an older version of ADE. Specifically ADE 2.0.1.

I spent some time researching if the application would work over at the App Database for Wine. The instructions there didn’t really work for me, but there were some other posts in places like the MobileRead wiki where I was able to gain some more insights as well. Overall it took a good few hours of searching and playing to finally arrive at a working installation of ADE 2.0.1 with Wine on Linux.

If you’re still reading this far I can only assume that you need to get this installed as well. Let’s do it!

Installing

I have successfully installed ADE 2.0.1 on a fresh installation of Ubuntu 18.04. You’ll need to be comfortable in your shell to do this, no graphical installer for these steps (sorry).

To start, you’ll need a couple of downloads for later:

Adobe Digital Editions 2.0.1 Windows installer (5.7 MB)
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Full Package (231.5 MB)
Yes, the full download package because using the smaller web installer caused my installation to hang.

I just downloaded these directly into my home directory for easy reference later.

You’ll also need to install Wine. I just went ahead and used the package from my distro: wine-3.0 (Ubuntu 3.0-1ubuntu1). You’ll also want a helper script for setting things up automatically in Wine called winetricks, and I also needed cabextract to be able to extract files from a Windows .cab file.

In my case I just did:

$ sudo apt install wine-stable winetricks cabextract

Wine installs everything into it’s own directories that you tell it to (referred to as a prefix). You can easily tell it which prefix to use by setting this in your shell before you run a command. In my examples below I will be installing ADE into it’s own prefix in my home directory called ~/.adewine.

Set up a new 32-bit prefix with Wine.
You need to setup a fresh install into it’s own prefix, and tell Wine to make it a 32-bit environment:
```
$ WINEPREFIX=~/.adewine WINEARCH=win32 winecfg  
```
You can also tell Wine to use this prefix for all subsequent commands:
```
$ export WINEPREFIX=~/.adewine
```
Now you need to install corefonts and windowscodecs:
```
$ winetricks -q corefonts && winetricks -q windowscodecs
```
At this point, I originally found some errors where Wine wasn’t picking up the windowscodecs.dll being installed. I was seeing a bunch of errors like:
```
000d:err:module:import_dll Library windowscodecs.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\windows\\system32\\winemenubuilder.exe") not found
```
I found that I could fix this by manually copying them to the correct location:
1. Extract all the files from ~/.cache/winetricks/windowscodecs/wic_x86_enu.exe
```
$ cd ~/.cache/winetricks/windowscodecs/
$ cabextract -d tmp wic_x86_enu.exe
```
2. Copy windowscodecs.dll and windowscodecsext.dll into ~/.adewine/drive_c/windows/system32/:
```
$ cd tmp/
$ cp windowscodecs* ~/.adewine/drive_c/windows/system32/
$ cd ~/
```
Install the Full .NET 3.5SP1 installer you downloaded previously:
```
$ wine dotnetfx35.exe
```
Finally, you can install Adobe Digital Editions 2.0.1 normally:
```
$ wine ADE_2.0_Installer.exe
```

Et voilà!

That’s it! If there were no errors you should now be able to run Adobe Digital Editions 2.0.1:

$ WINEPREFIX=~/.adewine wine .adewine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Adobe/Adobe\ Digital\ Editions\ 2.0/DigitalEditions.exe

Update (Oct 2018)

Reader Frei pointed out some results he got from using Manjaro/Arch (rolling release 10/2018):

err:winediag:gnutls_initialize failed to load libgnutls, no support for encryption

So he installed lib32-gnutls before to get it working.

He also had a problem with getting the manual download of dotnet working (it didn’t complete), so he managed to get things installed with:

winetricks -q dotnet35sp1

If—

Fri, 11 May 2018 15:43:31 -0600

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winning
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss
And lose, and start again at your beginning
And never breathe a word about your loss
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you
If all men count with you, but none too much
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling
Rewards and Fairies, 1910

Password Management

Wed, 09 May 2018 13:17:24 -0600

The virtue of being forgetful

I suck at passwords. To be fair, so does everyone else. Everyone else being bad at passwords doesn’t help me, though. It only increases my awareness every time I hear about the latest data-breach, password leak, or programming error.

The thing is, I know what I should be doing, but the one-two punch of laziness and procrastination constantly seem to beat me into submission.

Relevant xkcd. Yes, I know it's old. Yes, it's still perfectly valid: math is math.

I know I should be:

using a password of good complexity and high entropy.
using a completely different password for each login.
expiring passwords occasionally.

The problem is that doing those things is hard. I rely on muscle-memory helping me with passwords that I have to use multiple times every day. I have trouble remembering my anniversary date, much less the complex password for a website I log into once per quarter (October 25^th in case my wife is reading). I can measure some of my password ages in years.

An even scarier relevant xkcd...

Sure, I can abuse the “Forgot Password?” button on any of the myriad of sites I might visit and forget about, but that wreaks havoc when I have accounts tied to apps. Particularly mobile/phone apps.

Luckily, there is a solution.

Password Managers

I avoided using a password manager for a long time. I’m not really sure why. Partially out of paranoia and FUD, and probably a bit of worry in giving up control over so many logins. The trick was to realize that I’d be able to replace all of my usernames+passwords with a single master password.

I had a couple of convenience factors that I needed to be available before I could make the switch, though:

Ubiquity
I need a client across any OS I might be using, including my phone
Integration
As much as possible, integrate with my browser or at least be easy to get my passwords
Free Software - because duh

There are several well-regarded options for password managers out there, including popular ones like LastPass and 1Password but they’re not Free Software.

KeePassXC

After a big of digging I finally heard enough good comments about KeePassXC that I figured it was worth a shot. After about two months of using it, my main thought is: why on earth did I wait so long to do this?

The project is Free Software (GPL) and was forked from KeePassX due to stalled response from its single maintainer.

It keeps your passwords in a local encrypted file (AES, Twofish, ChaCha20). They’ve got clients for all the major OS and there’s an iOS app (MiniKeePass (iTunes), also GPL). There’s also a browser extension that communicates with the client allowing access to passwords right in the browser, securely. If the URL is listed with my database entry, it prompts to fill in the username/password for me when I visit the site.

It’s now trivially easy for me to make all of my passwords quite complex (or at least with a nice high entropy of at least 90bits or more). If I’m really concerned about possibly having to manually enter the password somewhere else, I can make arbitrarily long and random passphrases as well (i.e., cold riverbank outcome shrubbery display stoplight upfront).

What’s great is that thanks to my new Nextcloud server, I keep the password file there to sync with all of my machines (even my iPhone). It’s also wild to see just how many logins/passwords you accumulate in your digital life (I’m up to about 65 unique entries at the moment - and most of those would have been variations or the same password not too long ago!).

KeePassXC Browser Integration

The most important part of making this a frictionless adoption is having integration with your browser. Luckily the KeePassXC team have created browser extensions for both Chrome and Firefox to make it trivially easy to use. With the extension installed you can just visit a site and if you have an entry for it in KeePassXC it will prompt you to automatically fill in the username and password.

Ugh, your video doesn't support the video tag. :(

There’s a Chrome extension as well as a Firefox extension available. They both allow for encrypted message passing between the browser and the KeyPassXC application. This is similar to having the browser remember passwords for you but with the benefit of being cross-browser compatible if you need that sort of thing as well as allowing you to store arbitrary passwords for things not related to a web login.

The extension also offers to add usernames/passwords for you if it’s for a site that is not currently in the database, which is a nice touch.

Easy on the Brain

Ultimately what this means is that my cognizant load can be reduced by quite a bit. I only need to remember one good passphrase/password. In the case of my phone, I can even let biometrics manage that for me. All while my actual passwords can be much more complex and safer.

If you want to take a huge burden off your digital life while making your world more secure at the same time, I’d highly recommend checking out a password manager (seriously, KeePassXC has been great but go with whatever you’re comfortable with).

Addendum

It was pointed out to me after publishing this by @older@mastodon.host on Mastodon that KeePassXC is one of the tools that the EFF recommends for Surveillance Self Defense (this entire site is well worth a read).

Nextcloud

Tue, 08 May 2018 08:16:31 -0600

I finally got around to setting up my own Nextcloud!

I’ve been a file-syncing service user for a long time. There’s just so much convenience in services like Dropbox and Google Drive. File syncing and access across all of my computers and devices is awesome. The ability to automatically backup all of my phone photos to the account is also awesome.

However… Only having 7GB of available space is not awesome. Relying on a third party to control and protect my data is not awesome. Between space and privacy, I certainly didn’t want to take advantage of automatic photo syncing (particularly with all of the associated metadata and geodata for each image). The theory is great, but the implementation leaves a little to be desired, especially if you care about privacy (which I’ve written about previously).

Uses

My normal uses for a file-syncing service are pretty typical, I think. I’m a big fan of being able to continue computing how I want no matter which machine I happen to be on (work, home, laptop, etc…).

I’ll use it as a temporary file sharing location for quick and easy access (for myself between computers as well as for others). This is particularly helpful when collaborating on something or sharing quick mockups or images with friends and family.

I use Calibre to manage my ebook library, so I keep the entire folder structure there. This gives me access to the library from any other computer, particularly handy when I just need to add more books or transfer them to my devices.

I also finally switched to using a password manager, KeePassXC. It keeps your passwords in an encrypted file, and to maximize its usefulness I need access to the password file on all of my devices, so I’ve been keeping the file on my old Dropbox account.

Really, my main two complaints about using an existing service like Dropbox or Google Drive is storage space and privacy. Luckily, rolling my own service using Nextcloud on my own server solves both of those problems while keeping all of the other advantages.

Enter Nextcloud

I already have a server (Ubuntu 16.04) at home I use for Plex. There’s not a huge load on this server usually, so I figured I’d go ahead and add Nextcloud to the mix.

This was way simpler than you might think (though less simple than using the snap). I basically followed the excellent guide from Jason Bayton on installing Nextcloud with:

Redis (in-memory data structure store)
APCu (PHP caching extension)
SSL (via Let’s Encrypt)
all on Apache.

As Jason writes in the beginning of his page, after completing the guide I had:

A newly installed Nextcloud server
PHP caching provided by APCu and Redis for a notable speed increase when navigating even the largest thumbnail-heavy folders
Pretty links that remove /index.php from the URL
SSL-enabled with default self-signed certificates and all non-HTTPS traffic redirected

The project has a client for all major operating systems including my phone (iOS), and appears to have feature parity for the most part (or at least the parts I’m most interested in, anyway). Including the all-important phone-photos automatic upload. Selective sync is one of those features that’s a must-have for me (no need to sync all of those phone photos to all of my other clients).

The web interface is quite nice, and pretty snappy once the caches are built (even when trying to view directories of images in a ‘gallery-style’).

There’s a pretty nice app store available for different ways to extend your installation. One of my favorites is the Notes app that provides a nice, distraction-free writing interface that’s markdown aware.

Overall the setup was a breeze (and, dare I say it, fun?). That’s one less intrusion into my digital life, and one more way for me to take back a little control…

Libre Graphics World

Wed, 31 Jan 2018 09:05:02 -0600

Writing is hard. Just look at the post dates for my own blog posts to see what I mean. It takes discipline and hard work to put together any sort of non-trivial writing. If the topic is about a community as diverse and loosely collected as Free Software projects then the effort is exponential. Most Free Software projects don’t have a media/public relations person to interact with.

Today I wanted to talk briefly about both a writer and a PR person: Alexandre Prokoudine and what he’s doing over at Libre Graphics World.

Alex is the main PR person for GIMP and he’s also the guy I turn to when I need or want to publish something for the project. This is just one hat he wears (there’s many others), but those aren’t the reason I’m writing about him today.

Today I’m referring to his work as a journalist. Alex created Libre Graphics World back in 2009 to cover the rather diverse ecosystem of Free Software for creative professionals. The value in reporting at LGW is the time and research spent not only digging out the most interesting bits of news, but also taking the time to interview people in the projects. The reporting is nicely in-depth and explores various aspects of issues beyond simply copying the changelogs (see his recent article on the recent fork of Valentina, Seamly2D as an example of the depth and background provided in his articles or his awesome review of features for the GIMP 2.9.2 release).

I think this type of reporting and community highlights is extremely important to a healthy Free Software ecosystem. Especially one that focuses on projects for creatives and that spans so many genres.

Alex recently stopped running ads on the site and has now switched over to using Patreon to fund his activities. I think this is a great time to head over to his Patreon page and throw a few dollars a month to help him do what he does! Every little bit helps!

darktable

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 11:47:31 -0600

Happy New Year!

Way back in May of 2017 I made my first commit to start a new project for some friends of mine. Seven months later and we were finally able to publicly push the results: a new website for the awesome folks at darktable! (I already published a post about this on the darktable blog.)

For comparison, the old website is on the Wayback Machine.

Why?

I think the first question for approaching projects like this should always be: why?^* What is the impetus for wanting to re-design the existing site? For the darktable folks, there were a few reasons I felt compelled to address.

^* Because I want to is a perfectly valid answer, but I find that a well defined reason will help focus efforts better.

Responsiveness

The old site used a theme that wasn’t built for responsiveness. As such, it wasn’t adaptable for mobile (or tablet) users. It did scale a bit, but the results were a bit odd in places and didn’t flow well in others.

Mobile, tablet, bigger tablet (or desktop)

This re-design allowed us an opportunity to build the site from mobile-first ideas, be adaptable to various screen sizes, and to look nice while doing it. We could have tried to adapt the existing site theme to work well in responsive situations, but some of the other reasons (see static below) pointed to a complete teardown and rebuild as being a better option.

Static Site

I’ve been a pretty big advocate for simplifying things online in general, and one of the more common ways to do this is to avoid dynamically generating websites if you don’t need to. This is actually most of the time in my opinion.

Generate your site content once and serve it up as static html files (and assets) from the webserver. This severely restricts the attack vectors for potential problems later. Usually the only place you need to worry is if there’s a problem in the webserver (Apache/Lightspeed/Nginx, if you’re using IIS then the problem might be that you’re using IIS…).

This also has the side benefit of making things much faster for you and your visitors. There’s no waiting for db queries and heavy scripting on the server - just HTTP requests and responses. Old school cool.

Images

darktable is an amazing piece of Free Software for processing photographs. So I felt that photographs needed to really be showcased on the website. There were some images on the old site, but they were either slivers or small thumbnails. This is an advanced photo processor - show off all those awesome images!

Most of the posts have much larger and bolder placement of lede images to help fancy-up the place.

A selection of blog post ledes from darktable.org

I took it a little further and used the lede images as full-viewport background images at reduced brightness.

As a small, semi-nerdy Easter egg in design I made the aspect ratio of the lede images 2.39:1. The founder of darktable, johannes hanika, comes from a background in cinema, and I wanted to pay homage to that a little bit.

Modernity

This is quite a bit more subjective, but I felt many other parts of the site could use a facelift to leverage more modern practices in layout, type, and white space. We were able to use some prettier fonts like Open Sans as well as bump the font sizes (variable depending on device), line heights, and white space. All to hopefully increase legibility and provide a more pleasant experience overall.

Comments

Back in April 2017 houz had to disable commenting on the site. They had over 21,000 messages in the spam queue, and another 2,600 waiting for review. This was simply too much for the team to deal with.

There’s an entire thesis worth of investigating how bad comments have gotten on the internet in general. Unfortunately this also removes serious and thoughtful discussions or exchanges that could be happening (thanks a bunch you trolls…).

One of the reasons I originally set up the Discourse forum for pixls.us was to a) give everyone a place to interact and engage for Free Software photography, and b) to serve as a back-end for comments on the main website. The folks at Discourse have done an amazing job bringing back a little bit of order from the chaos.

This was nice because it gave us two important things in my opinion:

We can manage the comments and user accounts, not some third-party network looking to make a buck by selling user data (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Disqus, etc…).
We can actively combat spam problems in a single place, with more dedicated people available to help. On the bright side, Discourse already has robust tools to deal with spam and we’ve been lucky so far.

Not long after setting it up originally, the developers pushed the ability to use the forum as embedded comments in more than one site. This meant we could now use discuss.pixls.us as the commenting back-end for multiple sites. We first tested this by integrating it for comments on the digiKam website and things went quite well. From there it was a no-brainer to use it as the commenting system for darktable as well, so we created a darktable category on pixls just for them.

Thanks

Finally, I want to say a great big Thank You! to the darktable team in general for taking the time create and maintain such an awesome piece of software. Also, a big hug to Tobias Ellinghaus (houz) for putting up with me and doing so much to get the new site migrated and running (he’s responsible for migrating all of the old posts into a markdown format for the new build system).

Mastodon (Toot! Toot!)

Thu, 16 Nov 2017 16:02:16 -0600

So, I’m on Mastodon. Well, I’ve been on Mastodon for a while now, but thought I’d talk about it briefly here.

On most modern social networks, you are the product. Your habits, friends, and interests are all consolidated, packaged, and sold to anyone willing to pay a few bucks to rent your attention (whether you like it or not). If not you directly, then your habits, likes, dislikes, age, gender, sexual orientation, and the same information for all of the people you may know (including ones you may never had connected on that network).

It’s ridiculous what information you’re giving away for advertisers and marketers to exploit.

Mastodon

Born of frustration with Twitter and some functionality changes in their platform, Mastodon was created.

It’s a Free Software (AGPL), federated, micro-blogging service that is very similar in functionality to Twitter, but very different in it’s philosophical (and feature) approach.

Federated means that Mastodon is actually made up of many different servers (instances) all talking to each other to share what’s happening on their instance with the rest of the federation. People join these servers and are then able to interact with everyone on all of the other servers as well. You don’t have to be on the same server as someone else to follow and interact with someone.

There are no ads, no central server or authority (outside of the admins running your instance), and for a change you are not the product. The act of writing posts is referred to as a Toot, which is unfortunate in my opinion (not really any less odd than a Tweet I suppose).

Some neat features:

500 character limit (280 on Twitter)
Each toot has it’s own privacy setting
You can mark images as NSFW to hide them by default
You can generally mark a toot as hidden by default
Direct messages to users
Did I mention that you’re not the product?

Mastodon has been seeing some explosive growth earlier this year as Twitter rolled out changes and algorithms that frustrated many users.

Jumping Ship

Is it going to last? I have no idea. If it gets a nice large number of new users that are vocal enough to the general public it may start seeing a nice influx of new users eager to escape the banality of Twitter and the opaque algorithms and ad-selling business going on behind the scenes.

Neat, I can embed toots!

In the meantime, there’s all kinds of interesting folks already there from the Free Software world. I’m normally mingling with designers and artists, so if you decide to join up, I’m on the flagship instance: https://mastodon.social/about.

No matter which instance you join up on, you should be able to find me at @patdavid@mastodon.social.

Cryptography

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 21:16:27 -0600

I updated some old GPG keys last year after using the same 1024-bit RSA key from 2004. (Honestly, I was just impressed that I managed to dig up the private key in order to revoke it.) I had set the new subkeys to expire every year, and while renewing them I took another look around to see if GPG/encryption had gotten any easier.

As usual, relevant xkcd.

It hadn’t.

On the other hand, there was some neat new stuff being built to use your signing key as a means to verify social accounts in addition to making your public key available (and related to those accounts).

Keybase.io

Keybase.io was set up make encryption key lookup (keyserver) and (social) identity verification easier.

As a quick and dirty refresher, public-key cryptography means that I have a pair of cryptographic keys, private and public. My public key is made, well, public so that anyone can see it. This means anyone can encrypt a message or file using my public key that cannot be decrypted without using my private key to do so.

It also means that I can sign things with my private key and anyone can verify that I did so.

At it’s simplest Keybase.io can act as a simple keyserver, that is a central place to see the public keys of other users. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been running a keyserver for a long time already, for instance. The MIT keyserver functionality is decidedly limited, only allowing uploading, downloading, and revocation of keys. Verification that the keys belong to the correct person is usually left to the user (getting wild at a key signing part-ay).

Keybase.io goes a little bit further by allowing a user to sign a verification that can get posted to various social media accounts. In effect this allows you to prove that a social account is controlled by you, via your private key.

For instance, if you visit my profile page there:
https://keybase.io/patdavid
You’ll find my various social accounts have all been signed by me using my private key.

For reference, my key fingerprint is:
66D1 7CA6 8088 4874 946D 18BD 67C7 6219 89E9 57AC
(I’ve added this to my About Page as well.)

Conveniently, you can also encrypt a message to me using my public key right on the site (using the PGP Encrypt button). This gives you a neat little messagebox to enter a message to me:

After hitting the Encrypt button, you get your message ready to email, text, message, whatever to me and I’m the only one who will be able to read what you wrote:

This is also easily done if you already have your own keys and GPG installed on your machine but it’s nice to have it here available so simply. I’m also going to put my full public key on it’s own page here at /about/GPG.txt.

They go even further and allow you to upload your private key to Keybase.io as well, but I’m a little more neurotic about holding onto that key and keeping it safe.

So if you want to invest the time to learn a little about the subject, it’ll be worth it. Of course, you may feel a little like I do sometimes (last relevant xkcd, I promise):

My Muse

Fri, 14 Jul 2017 15:15:44 -0500

My wife needed a headshot recently for a work related thing. So I broke out some old and simple equipment to do a quick impromptu shoot for her. This is one of the outtakes from that shoot (she didn’t like how her hair looked in this shot so it wasn’t used).

Dot. (On Flickr) ƒ/6.3 50mm ¹⁄₂₅₀ ISO200

Ages ago I had made a DIY softbox that has worked so well that it’s pretty much my go-to for smaller modifiers. (“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”) To keep things soft I try to push it in as close as possible without interfering with the shot (you can see the edge of my softbox in the image straight out of RT below).

In this case, I had two Yongnuo YN560 speedlights. The one in the softbox was around 3/4 power and the softbox is about 24 inches away (camera right). The other was about 1/4 power camera left, about 24-30 inches away.

The original image out of RawTherapee.

I have a few more examples of intermediate stages on my post on PIXLS.US.

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include some other images I’ve shot over the years, so here’s a small sampling of my favorite model…

Styling Discourse Embeds

Sat, 13 May 2017 22:18:38 -0600

Comments were something that I wanted to include on posts from the beginning for PIXLS.US. My problem was how to include comments in a way that would lessen exposing visitors to third party tracking, that would let users control and keep their comments if they wanted, and that would integrate nicely into the community in some way.

Luckily all of those requirements were nicely met by integrating the modern forum software Discourse.

Overall it’s been a fantastic success, I think.

Mechanics

The way this works is to specify what domains you want to embed on and include a snippet of JavaScript on each page. This is visible at the bottom of any blog or article page on PIXLS.US. Then an embedded iframe gets loaded with the page that includes a topic from the forum (the entire conversation).

The Discourse Admin view for embedding.

This all works fantastic with on caveat: there is only one set of styles that could be applied to the embedded iframe. You can specify styling for the embed within Discourse, but there was no means for targeting the styling based on a different host.

This is particularly problematic when the host site designs are very different. For instance, we are using Discourse for comments on both PIXLS.US and digiKam.org, but PIXLS is a white background site while digiKam uses a dark background.

The Fix

After initially reaching out, I had attempted an initial clumsy fix that worked but was a bit hack-ish, so it was rejected (rightfully so). My second attempt finally got things working correctly (disclaimer: I had never touched any Ruby code before this).

I added the ability to specify a class name for each of the embedded hosts. This class name would then be added to the <html> element of each embedded iframe, allowing styling rules to be built that could target them.

<div id="discourse-comments">
  <iframe ...>
    <html class='digiKam'>
      <head>...</head>
      <body>...</body>

In Use

Using this is quite simple now. On the site under admin/customize/themes/ a component of the default theme is an Embed Style. Editing this style and the Embedded CSS will allow you to target CSS styling rules based on the added class name above:

If you want to target a specific site in general, simply prefix your CSS selectors with html.CLASSNAME (like the digikam entries above). This gives us a convenient base to build all descendant selectors we may need.

Atomic Publishing a Static Website

Tue, 11 Apr 2017 13:55:08 -0600

Yes, yes - Static Site Generators are all the rage these days. It seems like there’s (multiple!) options for every language out there (including homegrown options from back in the day).

There’s a bunch of benefits to using them and once you get past thinking you need a “dynamic” site they make perfect sense. I use Metalsmith (NodeJS) for this site and pixls.us. I used Pelican (Python) for gimp.org, and I just got my feet wet with Hugo (Go) for the new digiKam website.

Whichever system you use, the build system normally ends with your website built into a directory. To publish the site you need only transfer that directory of files to your web server. In my case I use rsync to only transfer files (or parts of files) that have changed.

Care should be taken with how the site is updated on the server, though.

Atomicity

The web server has one task: serve requests for files from a directory.

If you simply transfer your files into this directory on the server, there’s a chance that when someone makes a request for a file that it won’t have been uploaded yet, or it might reference a file that no longer exists. This can happen if your transfer takes a little time to do.

One option to mitigate this may be to upload the files to the server in a temporary directory, then simply move them into place. This will be way better than simply transferring into the web directory, but there is still a chance during the move operation for files to be out of sync (particularly for large websites).

We need the operation to be atomic. That is, we want the new site directory to appear to be updated instantaneously to the web server.

Setup

It’s possible to do this but it does require a (just a) little bit of work. I’ll explain the way I do my deployments as an example.

I have my web server serving files from a symlink , public_html. This symlink points to a directory named website-YYYYMMDD/ where the actual files are located.

/home/webserver/
 ├── public_html → website-20170311/
 └── website-20170311/

Updating

Now, I have updated my website and generated a new directory of updated files. I need to get them on the server to update the website!

I want to take advantage of the delta-transfer capabilities of rsync so I need to have a directory on the server to compare it against. As I already mentioned, I don’t want to do this against the live directory, so I will create a copy of it.

Unfortunately, if the site is large it may be prohibitive to create a complete second copy on the server. Luckily for me, the copy command has two options that are really useful here, -a, --archive and -l, --link.

The --archive option will recursively copy all of the SOURCE.

The --link option will create hard links for all of the files (not directories).

This is awesome, because not only does it minimize actual disk usage (you’re really just creating a new link to the same inode) but it’s also really, really fast.

So now there’s a (hard link) copy of the site directory with a new name (website-20170401 in my example):

/home/webserver/
 ├── public_html → website-20170311/
 ├── website-20170311/
 └── website-20170401/

Now I can rsync to the newly copied directory on the server.

“But wait!” you’ll say, “If you change a hard linked file, it will update everywhere!”

This is true. Normally, if you modify a file that is hard linked then all other files that point to that same inode will see the update. Except that rsync will actually unlink the file for you before overwriting the data (please test this on your own system). (If there’s no change then nothing is done.)

Now I have a directory on my web server that contains all of my new changes and updates. To make the new changes live on the website I just need to point the symlink public_html to the new directory.

This can be accomplished atomically by creating a new symlink pointing to the new directory and then renaming it over the old symlink. (Using ln -snf newlink currentlink actually does an unlink, then creates a new link - so not atomic…)

So first we create a new symlink pointing to the new directory:

$ ln -s website-20170401 public_html-tmp

Then moving the new symlink over the old symlink is a rename, which is atomic:

$ mv -Tf public_html-tmp public_html

The web server will now be serving files from the new location and without any hiccups along the way.

In Summary

Assuming your web server is serving from a symlink public_html, and assuming your symlink points to your current site directory (website-20170311) like:

/home/webserver/
 ├── public_html → /website-20170311/
 └── website-20170311/

To update the site atomically:

Copy the current site directory to a new directory (with hard links).

$ cp -al website-20170311 website-20170401

/home/webserver/
 ├── public_html → /website-20170311/
 ├── website-20170311/
 └── website-20170401/

rsync your new site build to the new directory.
```
$ rsync -PSauv local_dir/ website-20170401/
```
Create a temporary symlink to the new directory.
```
$ ln -s website-20170401 public_html-tmp
```
Rename the new symlink over the old one.
```
mv -Tf public_html-tmp public_html
```

Other Uses

Astute readers may notice that leveraging this hard link copy of a filesystem along with rsync is actually similar to how incremental backups can be done without exploding disk space requirements.

Mike Rubel covers something like this in an old post of his.

The Wonderful Art of Pascal Campion

Wed, 05 Apr 2017 14:58:36 -0600

I’ve always had a sensitivity to light. I don’t mean in a Mogwai sort of way, but rather I’ve always felt aware of the feeling and mood that light plays around me.

Gremlins was for kids?!

I think this manifests in my photography when I favor single strong light sources for my subjects. Particularly Rembrandt and side lighting. This also manifests in my seething hatred for overhead fluorescent lighting and a general dislike for direct mid-day sunlight…

This is one of the reasons I am absolutely in love with the art of Pascal Campion. Allow me to (ahem) illustrate why…

Pascal is a French-American artist that currently lives in California. The biography on his Facebook page lists more about him:

Pascal Campion is a prolific French-American illustrator and visual development artist whose clients include: DreamWorks Animation, Paramount Pictures, Disney Feature, Disney Toons, Cartoon Network, Hulu, and PBS. Working in the animation industry for over 15 years, currently he is the Art Director for the Netflix/Warner Bros “Green Eggs and Ham” series. Feature work includes Visual Development of “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” and “The Penguins of Madagascar.” Pascal also has worked with Marvel Comics since 2013 and has steadily posted over 3,000 images of personal work to his “Sketches of the Day” project since 2005.

He is now a resident of Los Angeles, CA is currently an Art Director for the Netflix/WB project “Green Eggs and Ham”.

I actually follow him on his Google+ account where I am always delighted when he posts new sketches.

His images are just wonderful little moments and views into his imagination, but my favorite part by far is his command of the lighting in his scenes and the feelings they invoke. It’s particularly pleasing to me for night/dusk scenes as this is my favorite time of day by far.

Dear diary… I think I’m in love. by Pascal Campion

3.5 seconds..( Feels like) by Pascal Campion

It’s not just his use of colors that makes these so wonderful, but how the light interacts with his subjects. The slivers of incandescence from rooms raking across subjects or the soft glow of a candle in a scene do wonders. It makes them instantly relatable to me - a scene I would like to step into.

Ordinary People by Pascal Campion

Blackout. by Pascal Campion

You bring the drinks, I’ll bring my guitar by Pascal Campion

He manages to conjure up the dog days of summer out in the country…

Knowing it. by Pascal Campion

The good days. by Pascal Campion

I guess this is good night… by Pascal Campion

Just as easily as he can transport me to a rainy city evening:

Downpour by Pascal Campion

From here you can see the whole world … by Pascal Campion

Or a glimpse of a fire escape conversation in a huge city:

Little talks. by Pascal Campion

Edges by Pascal Campion

Can you tell I’m a fan? It was nigh impossible for me to choose sample images from his posts - they are all just so wonderful!

I highly encourage you to check out his work on his blogger page, tumblr, or Facebook. He’s posted over 3,000 images to his “Sketches of the Day” project since 2005! He is also selling prints on his website in case you love his work as much as I do. Although it appears to be a smaller selection of his body of work.

Pascal Campion (via his Facebook page)

Support GIMP at LGM 2017

Tue, 28 Mar 2017 08:29:25 -0600

The Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) is the annual meeting for creatives from across the Free/Libre project spectrum. I’ve written about the previous meetings I was able to attend in Leipzig (2014) as well as London (2016). It’s an amazing opportunity to meet with other Free/Libre Software users and projects.

I won’t be able to make it out to this year’s LGM (I seem to be on a sort of biennial schedule), but most of the GIMP team will be there! So I have a favor to ask…

Please, go and donate to gimp@gnome.org to help offset the costs of attending the conference! Every little bit helps (especially considering most of the team lives in Europe, so the travel costs are a bit higher for them this year).

This year, the meeting is being held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil! (At the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro.) It’s happening in conjunction with the IX edition of the GNUGraf meeting.

This is an important meeting in the Free/Libre art world as it’s one of the few times (only for some projects) for these artists and contributors to meet face-to-face.

This is particularly true of the GIMP team. It’s the only chance I personally have had to meet the other team members in real life, and I must say that it really does give a very positive feedback to participating in the project. Getting to meet everyone and spend time with them helps to understand the dynamic and reinforces friendship amongst the contributors.

It’s also a great opportunity to be silly and have fun…

Liam

pippin x5
(Yes, the same pippin responsible for [GEGL][])

GIMP meeting at LGM/London (with some darktable folks thrown in for good measure)

There’s also GIMP hackathons and internal meetings that take place here. This is an opportunity to help accelerate GIMP development, so what are you waiting for?!

Head over and donate to GIMP!

Bus Factor

Sat, 11 Mar 2017 11:52:24 -0600

The Bus Factor for a project is usually defined as the minimum number of team members that would have to disappear (get hit by a bus) for a project to stall due to lack of knowledgeable people. A low Bus Factor means that the loss of just a small number of people can stall out a project, while a high factor means there is some resiliency in the project.

This was how PIXLS.US was very early on with only myself writing for the site (Bus Factor of 1). As soon as possible I tried to find others to help and also made sure the code was available on a public repository (along with being licensed liberally using Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0).

In the case of PIXLS.US for example, we aren’t doing too bad…

For the server that runs our forums, both darix and myself have access, and for the main code repository on Github we have paperdigits, David Tschumperlé, and Morgan_Hardwood. We have quite a few folks doing administration and moderation on the forums also. This way the project can continue without me (not that I’m going anywhere).

This is in stark contrast to another community not long ago.

Whither gimpforums.com?

Unfortunately, a good example of this problem and it’s ramifications can be found on gimpforums.com. This was a GIMP related forum that was around for quite some time. Back in September of 2016, the underlying forum software started showing MySQL errors, and the situation hasn’t changed since. Despite everyone’s best efforts to reach out to the owner of both the domain and the webserver (and most importantly: the database), there was no response. Nada, nothing, zilch.

Just like that many years worth of posts, interactions, tutorials, and information are all gone (over 40,000 posts). All because this site had a single point of failure.

This can (did) have a devastating effect on communities. It’s also yet another example of why you should focus your efforts in places that don’t have these types of resiliency issues. Make sure that the communities you are spending time creating content for are healthy and don’t show these types of weaknesses (low Bus Factor).

Arise, gimp-forum.net!

In response to the death of gimpforums.com, prominent members of the old forum got together and created a new site: gimp-forum.net. With many different folks responsible for administration duties on the new forum, the resiliency of the site is already higher than the old gimpforums.com. One of these grey beards also happens to be a mod on discuss.pixls.us as well, @Ofnuts (and an all-around helpful person).

If you are looking for a new forum and community about GIMP to participate in, this is a great place to consider!

Speaking of Participation

Undoubtedly one of the casualties of the sudden demise of a forum like this is the content that people have created over the years. Please, if you are considering taking the time to write tutorials for something in GIMP, consider licensing it freely (CC BY-SA or better) and letting me know about it so I can include it with the other tutorials on the actual GIMP website. This is a fantastic way to participate and give back to the greater GIMP community while also ensuring that your hard work will live on.

Your Privacy

Thu, 09 Mar 2017 09:30:37 -0600

When we built the new website for www.gimp.org we moved from a homegrown build system to using Pelican, a Python based Static Site Generator. That migration deserves its own post over on the GIMP website to talk about the process and the specific things we did to support the new site design, but we did use the migration as an opportunity to step up the security of the site substantially. (This was mostly due to the efforts and prodding of Michael Schumacher.)

Security matters to me as well, so when I migrated this to a new site I also implemented many of the same ideas. I’m not quite Content Security Policy (CSP) ready like the GIMP website is, but it’s in my plans!

Why It Matters

Unbeknownst to many folks, your web browsing habits can betray quite a lot of information about you to places you may not even have realized. Assets can be called from many different places across the web, and those assets log information about requests. Depending on the asset, they may be connecting much more than what you originally asked for.

Perhaps you have a Facebook account. When you log onto Facebook in your browser the site will set a cookie that can uniquely identify you (for your convenience of course). This is not uncommon for many sites that need to persist data between browser sessions.

What makes this insidious is when Facebook starts having ads included all over the web (including the FB “pixel”), or the inclusion of various interaction widgets such as FB comments or “Like” buttons that are called from Facebook servers. When those things are included, they can generate tracking information back to Facebook about you and your interactions on these other web pages. Now Facebook knows you like whatever weird thing it is that you’re browsing (no judgement, but eww).

It’s not just Facebook, either. Remember that any external asset being requested in a page is likely being logged. As such, I’ve tried to minimize how this might affect any readers here.

No Ads

I used Google AdSense on the old site. This was awesome for a while because the little bit I earned from those ads helped me to pay for the server infrastructure for PIXLS.US in the beginning. I considered keeping the ads here but I figured people would have a better, and safer, experience if I didn’t.

An awful example from photographyblog.com: over half of the visible page is used for three different ads. :(

I don’t like them, you don’t like them, so why bother? If you like what I’m doing and want to send a thanks, you can do it directly to me at paypal.me/patdavid. (If you’d like to support PIXLS.US directly, the community would appreciate it!)

Speaking of Google

Removing Google AdWords made sense in terms of user experience and privacy. Doing the same for Google Fonts is a little harder, as this was a nice way for designers to add more beautiful typography to their websites.

Unfortunately, as I said above:

Any external asset being requested in a page is likely being logged (or worse).

In lieu of telling Google that you’re visiting my website by having your browser request a font from them when you visit here, I am hosting the font files myself. (If you’re curious, it’s all Libre Baskerville.)

This one is also a little hard, if only because it’s so easy to use and try to take advantage of. I am referring to the little JavaScript widgets that help (encourage?) users to share the post on social media channels. These are also insidious, but I also tend to find them a little obtrusive and obnoxious (especially when they obscure the website in some way; this is really bad on mobile sites sometimes).

If you’re not lazy, it turns out you can do most of the same thing by taking the time to program links properly during the static generation of the site. This is what it looks like on https://www.gimp.org, at the bottom of news items:

I haven’t created these links yet for this site, but it’s on my to-do list and will probably look just like the above.

Google Analytics

Admittedly, this is one place where I am still including a piece of external JavaScript. This is so I can analyze traffic to the site.

I may still change this in the future and simply rely on analyzing the Apache server logs offline, or I may switch to using a self-hosted solution like Piwik. For the time being, please know that I am including a link to Google Analytics. If you don’t want to let me log your visits with Analytics, then the easiest method to avoid it is to use something like an ad blocker.

I personally use uBlock Origin.

Another good option is to use a project from the Electronic Frontier Foundation called Privacy Badger (I use this as well).

HTTPS

I’ve set the entire site to use HTTPS with a Let’s Encrypt certificate. I had already done this for PIXLS.US, so this was a no-brainer. We’re now keeping the connection between my server here and your browser private and secure! (Look for the little green lock icon in your browser address bar.)

Not all of the pages are fully HTTPS compliant yet. I hosted most of the images on my old blog with Google, so I still need to work through old posts and download the images to serve from my server.

David Revoy (of Pepper & Carrot fame) also recently fought against using CDN libraries on the Pepper & Carrot site. Of course, being a talented artist, his transition ended up with the creation of an awesome Cat Avatar Generator (to replace Gravatar) and his own font as well!

The quest to free Pepper & Carrot Website Problem by David Revoy (CC BY 4.0)

Community

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Jehan Pagès recently published his interview with GIMP maintainer, mitch. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s a fun interview with a very colorful person. I highly recommend checking it out!

Mitch at LGM/London last year.

Some of the responses in various places online were pretty normal for GIMP news (eg: full of vitriol), but there was one comment that questioned the inclusiveness of the project that I took exception with personally.

Yes I’m biased. I’m part of the project, and these are people I’m around daily (on IRC at least). Before I could be biased, though, I had to have an experience to build that bias with, and that’s what I want to talk about here.

The Few, The Weird, The GIMP Team

Jehan mentions this in the opening to his interview and it’s worth repeating:

Some people think there’s a huge company behind GIMP. This is not the case. GIMP has always been developed by a handful of random people scattered around the world. Most of them are volunteers and none of them work on it full-time.

I feel that often people don’t seem to realize just how few people there are working on GIMP most of the time. Seriously. For instance, here are the ones that were able to make it out to LGM/London:

GIMPers in London!
Clockwise from top-left: Michael, Ville, Simon, Øyvind, João, Liam, and Jehan.

This is not very many people to be working on a project as large as GIMP (even considering the other occasional contributors)!

It wasn’t that long ago that I showed up on the IRC channel myself and lurked around for a bit. If you spend some time there you might begin to realize a couple of things that I also learned:

These are real, actual people behind the project. People just like you or me.
Each of these people really care about the project that they’re choosing to spend their time on.

The first point is important because sometimes people tend to forget that there are human beings at the other end of a rant or tirade. Technically, this is a good point to remember for just about all interactions online, but it’s particularly important here because of the second thing: they care.

This means that even if they make decisions that might upset you (or your workflow) - chances are that they’ve made those decisions with the best interest of the project in mind. This means that when someone takes the time to answer you on IRC, the mailing list, or even other forums somewhere, they are doing it because they genuinely want to help others be able to use GIMP.

Think about that for a moment. These are people who choose to spend their free time helping others in some way to be able to use a Free Software project. I have watched some members spend quite a bit of time trying to help people sort out problems that could probably have been resolved by reading the manual or following one of the tutorials.

Note that this doesn’t just pertain to the actual GIMP team members. There are plenty of folks from various forums and other online communities that also go out of their way to help.

Getting Weirder

So when I first started hanging around to get to know folks, my personal experience was not one of exclusion, but rather the opposite. I was just starting to get my feet wet with building and updating some small parts of the website. They had someone now to help work on a part of the project, and as mitch mentions in his interview, the general attitude^* is:

If you do it right, then you’ll be in charge of the part you are doing right. It always works like that. mitch

When I first started getting bold enough to make changes and updates to the (old) website, there was talk of getting out the chains and collars so I couldn’t get away.

Does this sound like a project that is not inclusive?

^* If you do it right. They reserve the right to ridicule you if you don’t, of course. :)

Addendum

There are more ways to contribute and help a project like GIMP than being able to code. I highly encourage everyone to see if they can find a little bit of time to help in one of the many, many other ways such as

Writing tutorials
Raising awareness about the project in a positive way with others
Writing documentation
Testing features and bughunting
Creating and sharing images made with or using GIMP
and more!

Drop by the IRC channel and say hi!

Rebuilding patdavid.net as a Static Site

Wed, 01 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

It’s About Time

For almost a decade I had been using blogger to host my personal website. That just didn’t seem to make sense any more, and I wanted an opportunity to fiddle with things a bit. I thought it might be fun to put some constraints on designing a new site for myself while migrating to something better.

I’m leaving these images of P!nk that I used during my initial design and styling because I like them. If I have to keep looking at temp images while fixing CSS rules, they might as well be ones I enjoy looking at. (And I enjoy looking at them because they remind me of my wife - not the other way around…)

Large image (should be bigger than column). This caption will continue, though, to test the formatting of the style for this figcaption element and make sure it wraps as expected… P!nk by Ruven Afanador.

This is a caption for an image that should be smaller than the total column width (on a dektop at least). I’m going to make this caption longer so it will wrap hopefully… P!nk by Bryan Adams (Yes, that Bryan Adams).

Minimal Styling

One of the constraints that I thought would be fun is to minimize (somewhat) the amount of CSS I use to style the site. I managed to get the total amount of CSS in my stylesheet down to about 165 lines (unoptimized/minified). I still need to add some font declarations to the sheet, but not too bad overall I think.

I’ll probably re-visit it and tweak things to see if I can minimize it further, but it’s working fairly well at the moment. It’s also fully responsive to screen size, which is nice!

Metalsmith (again)

For the choice of a static-site generator I defaulted to what I was already using for a couple of other sites I have been working on, pixls.us and acer.disl.org. That would be Metalsmith again. It’s a relatively simple system that basically considers everything to be a plugin. It uses Node.js, which is nice because I’m already doing some javascript programming anyway for various web-thingies.

Although, I did already use Pelican for https://www.gimp.org - so I suppose I’m due to try something completely different to keep mixing things up. Jekyll maybe? :)

Old Blogger Posts

Speaking of Jekyll - I still had the problem of what to do with all of the legacy posts I had on blogger. Luckily I was able to export all of my posts using the Google/Blogger tool - which left me with a giant XML file. I was going to parse this myself to try and extract the posts out of it, but my friend Mica pointed me to Jekyll’s importer tool. Luckily it made short work of translating the XML into individual post files that I could then masssage to work with my build system.

got an export .xml file.
use Jekyll translator to create directory (_posts) full of posts
- Included frontmatter specific to blogger (thankfully)
- Particularly helpful: included original blogger url
have to fix a couple of things in each post
- layout: changed to ‘post.hbt’
- dates have to have single quotes removed from them
- author tag changed to my (short) name ‘Pat David’
- strip leading http://blog.patdavid.net/ from blogger_orig_url

Here is a sample of one of the translated posts frontmatter yaml:

---
layout: post.hbt
title: 5 minute portrait - Coworker Emily
date: '2010-08-27T13:13:00.059-05:00'
author: Pat David
tags:
- Flickr
- photography
- lighting
modified_time: '2010-08-27T15:23:59.964-05:00'
thumbnail: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4079/4931974051_cec72589cd_t.jpg
blogger_id: tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3707428309210287756.post-7334479767144192384
blogger_orig_url: http://blog.patdavid.net/2010/08/5-minute-portrait-coworker-emily.html
---

Luckily there wasn’t much to deal with as far as the posts overall went. This wasn’t quite so true of the actual post data - from the looks of things I must have been completely spacing out when I wrote some of them.

I still need to do a few things before I can fully switch this site away from blogger though.

Still To-Do

There’s still a few things I need to do…

Scrape all images out of blogger/Google to local
I want to get all of the linked images in all of my old posts saved locally.
Twitter metadata
Add the appropriate metadata so that Twitter cards will work
Open Graph/Schema metadata
This is the metadata for enriching posts on FB/Google+ (different than Twitter - because why not!).
Metalsmith more plugin
This plugin will let me truncate posts on aggregate pages (like the front page).
Archive page
I still need a good page for an archived list of posts (styled).
HTTP 301 redirects for a few pages
There’s still a few pages that will probably need a redirect to the proper location.
All posts
blog.patdavid.net/yyyy/mm/title.html
getting around in gimp
blog.patdavid.net/p/getting-around-in-gimp.html
archive
blog.patdavid.net/p/archive.html
Fix or modify any last permalinks
This is to simply move things like /p/archive.html to something like /archive/ instead (permalinks).
This is something that could use a 301 redirect as indicated above.
Set up RSS feeds
There’s a plugin for it, or I can just re-purpose what I did for pixls
Finish mobile styling for navigation
The links in the header are not good touch targets on mobile, so I’ll have to fix them.

Average Book Covers and a New (official) GIMP Website (maybe)

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 10:34:00 -0500

A little while back I had a big streak of averaging anything I could get my hands on. I am still working on a couple of larger averaging projects (here’s a small sneak peek - guess the movie?):

I’m trying out visualizing a movie by mean averaging all of the cuts. Turns out movies have way more than I thought - so it might be a while until I finish this one… :)

On the other hand, here’s something neat that is recently finished…

JungleBook: Simple Kindle Ebook Cover Analysis

Jason van Gumster just posted this morning about a neat project he’d been toying with that is along similar lines of the Netflix Top 50 Covers by Genre, but takes it to a deeper level. He’s written code to average the top 50 ebook covers on Amazon by genre:

By itself this is really pretty (to me - not sure if anyone else likes these things as much as I do) but Jason takes it further by providing some analysis and commentary on the resulting images in the context of ebook sales and popularity (visually) to people.

I highly recommend you visit Jason’s post and read the whole post (it’s not too long). It’s really neat!

The GIMP Website

I had this note on my to-do list for ages to tinker with the GIMP website. I finally got off my butt and started a couple of weeks ago. I did a quick mockup to get a feel for the overall direction I wanted to head:

I’ve been hacking at it for a couple of weeks now and I kind of like how it’s turning out. I’m still in the process of migrating old site content and making sure that legacy URI’s aren’t going to change. It may end up being a new site for GIMP. It also may not, so please don’t hold your breath… :)

Here’s where I am at the moment for a front page:

Yes, that image is a link. The link will lead you to the page as I build it: http://static.gimp.org. See? It’s like a prize for people who bother to read to the end! Feel free to hit me up with ideas or if you want to donate any artwork for the new page while I build it. I can’t promise that I’ll use anything anyone sends me, but if I do I will be sure to properly attribute! (Please consider a permissive license if you decide to send me something).

What's New, Some New Tutorials, and PIXLS!

Tue, 07 Jul 2015 12:30:00 -0500

What’s been going on?! A bunch!

In case you’ve not noticed around here, I’ve been transitioning tutorials and photography related stuff over to PIXLS.US.

I built that site from scratch, so it’s taken a bit of my time… I’ve also been slowly porting some of my older tutorials that I thought would still be useful over there. I’ve also been convincing all sorts of awesome folks from the community to help out by writing/recording tutorials for everyone, and we’ve already got quite a few nice ones over there:

So just a gentle reminder that the tutorials have all mostly moved to PIXLS.US. Head over there for the newest versions and brand-new material, like the latest post from the creator of PhotoFlow, Andrea Ferrero on Panorama Exposure Blending with Hugin and PhotoFlow!

Also, don’t forget to come by the forums and join the community at: discuss.pixls.us

That’s not to say I’ve abandoned this blog, just that I’ve been busy trying to kickstart a community over there! I’m also accepting submissions and/or ideas for new articles. Feel free to email me!

PIXLS.US Now Live!

Fri, 08 May 2015 13:01:00 -0500

I checked the first post I had made on PIXLS.US while I was building it, and it appears it was around the end of August, 2014. I had probably been working on it for at least a few weeks before that. Basically, it’s almost been about 10 months since I started this crazy idea.

Finally, we are “officially” launched and live. Phew!

Help!

I don’t normally ask for things from folks who read what I write here. I’m going to make an exception this time. I spent a lot of time building the infrastructure for what I hope will be an awesome community for free-software photographers.

So naturally, I want to see it succeed. If you have a moment and don’t mind, please consider sharing news of the launch! The more people that know about it, the better for everyone! We can’t build a community if folks don’t know it’s there! :) (Of course, come by and join us yourselves as well!).

I’ll be porting more of my old tutorials over as well as writing new material there (and hopefully getting other talented folks to write as well).

Thank You!

Also, I want to take a moment to recognize and thank all of you who either donated or clicked on an ad. Those funds are what helped me pay for the server space to host the site as well as the forums, and will keep ads off the site. I’m basically just rolling any donations back into hosting the site and hopefully finding a way to pay folks for writing in the future. Thank you all!

An Update about G'MIC on OpenSource.graphics

Tue, 21 Apr 2015 09:48:00 -0500

David Tschumperlé has a blog over at OpenSource.graphics and it appears that after releasing G’MIC 1.6.2.0 he had some time to write down and share some thoughts about the last 10 months of working on G’MIC.

He covers a lot of ground in this post (as you can imagine for not having reported anything in a long time while working hard on the project). He talks about some neat new functionality and filters added like color curves in others colorspaces, comics colorization, color transfer (from one image to another), website for film emulation (yay!), foreground extraction, engrave, triangulation, and much more.

Interactive Foreground Extraction

Engrave Filter

A short table of contents for the post:

The G’MIC Project : Context and Presentation
New G’MIC features for color processing
An algorithm for foreground/background extraction
Some new artistic filters
A quick view of the other improvements
Perspectives and Conclusions

David may not write as often as I think he should but when he does - he certainly does! :) Head over and check out the latest news on an awesome image processing framework!

Discourse Forum on PIXLS.US

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 15:30:00 -0500

After a bunch of hard work by someone not me (darix), there’s finally a neat solution for commenting on PIXLS.US. An awesome side effect is that we get a great forum along with it.

Discourse

On the advice from the same guy that convinced me to build PIXLS using a static site generator (see above), I ended up looking into, and finally going with, a Discourse forum.

The actual forum location will be at: discuss.pixls.us

What is extra neat about the way this forum works, though, is the embedding. For every post on the pixls.us blog (or an article), the forum will pickup on the post and will automatically create topics on the forum that coincide with the posts. Some small embedding code on the website allows these topic replies to show up at the end of a post similar to comments.

For instance, see the end of this blog post to see the embedding in action!

Come on by!

I personally really like this new forum software, both for the easy embedding, but also the fact that we own the data ourselves and are not having to farm it out through a third party service. I have enabled third party oauth logins if anyone is ok with using them (but are not required to - normal registration with email through us is fine of course).

I like the idea of being able to lower the barrier to participating in a community/forum, and the ability to auth against google or twitter for creating an account significantly lowers that friction I think.

Some Thanks are in Order

It’s important to me to point out that being able to host PIXLS.US and now the forum is entirely due to the generosity of folks visiting my blog here. All those cool froods that take a minute to click an ad help offset the server costs, and the ridiculously generous folks that donate money (you know who you are) are amazing.

As such, their generosity means I can afford to bootstrap the site and forums for a little while (without having to dip into the wife goodwill fund…).

What does this mean to the average user? Thanks to the folks that follow ads here or donate, PIXLS.US and the forum is ad-free. Woohoo!

Skin Retouching with Wavelets on PIXLS.US

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 15:15:00 -0500

Anyone who has been reading here for a little bit knows that I tend to spend most of my skin retouching time with wavelet scales. I’ve written about it originally here, then revisited it as part of an Open Source Portrait tutorial, and even touched upon the theme one more time (sorry about that - I couldn’t resist the “touching” pun).

Because I haven’t possibly beat this horse dead enough yet, I have now also compiled all of those thoughts into a new post over on PIXLS.US that is now pretty much done:

PIXLS.US: Skin Retouching with Wavelet Decompose

Of course, we get another view of the always lovely Mairi before & after (from an older tutorial that some may recognize):

As well as the lovely Nikki before & after:

Even if you’ve read the other material before this might be worth re-visiting.

Don’t forget, Ian Hex has an awesome tutorial on using luminosity masks in darktable, as well as the port of my old digital B&W article! These can all be found at the moment on the Articles page of the site.

The Other Blog

Don’t forget that I also have a blog I’m starting up over on PIXLS.US that documents what I’m up to as I build the site and news about new articles and posts as they get published! You can follow the blog on the site here:

PIXLS.US: Blog

There’s also an RSS feed there if you use a feed reader (RSS).

Write For PIXLS

I am also entertaining ideas from folks who might like to publish a tutorial or article for the site. If you might be interested feel free to contact me with your idea! Spread the love! :)

Film Emulation in RawTherapee

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 14:21:00 -0500

This is old news but I just realized that I hadn’t really addressed it before. The previous work I had done on Film Emulation with G’MIC in GIMP (here and here) are also now available in RawTherapee directly! You’ll want to visit this page on the RawTherapee wiki to see how it works, and to download the film emulation collection to use.

This is handy for those that may work purely in RawTherapee or that don’t want to jump into GIMP just to do some color toning. It’s a pretty big collection of emulations, so hopefully you’ll be able to find something that you like. Here’s the list of what I think is in the package (there may be more there now):

Fuji 160C, 400H, 800Z
Fuji Ilford HP5
Kodak Portra 160, 400, 800
Kodak TMAX 3200
Kodak Tri-X 400
Fuji Neopan 1600
Fuji Superia 100, 400, 800, 1600
Fuji Ilford Delta 3200
Kodak Portra 160 NC, 160 VC, 400 NC, 400 UC, 400 VC
Polaroid PX-70
Polaroid PX100UV
Polaroid PX-680
Polaroid Time Zero (Expired)
Fuji FP-100c
Fuji FP-3000b
Polaroid 665
Polaroid 669
Polaroid 690
Fuji Neopan 1600
Fuji Superia 100/400/800/1600
Ilford Delta 3200
Kodak Portra 160 NC/VC
Kodak Portra 400 NC/UC/VC
Fuji 160C
Fuji 400H
Fuji 800Z
Ilford HP5
Kodak Portra 160/400/800
Kodak TMax 3200
Kodak Tri-X 400
Polaroid PX-70
Polaroid PX100UV
Polaroid PX-680
Polaroid Time Zero (Expired)
Fuji FP-100c
Fuji FP-3000b
Polaroid 665
Polaroid 669
Polaroid 690
Agfa Precisa 100
Fuji Astia 100F
Fuji FP 100C
Fuji Provia 100F
Fuji Provia 400F
Fuji Provia 400X
Fuji Sensia 100
Fuji Superia 200 XPRO
Fuji Velvia 50
Generic Fuji Astia 100
Generic Fuji Provia 100
Generic Fuji Velvia 100
Generic Kodachrome 64
Generic Kodak Ektachrome 100 VS
Kodak E-100 GX Ektachrome 100
Kodak Ektachrome 100 VS
Kodak Elite Chrome 200
Kodak Elite Chrome 400
Kodak Elite ExtraColor 100
Kodak Kodachrome 200
Kodak Kodachrome 25
Kodak Kodachrome 64
Lomography X-Pro Slide 200
Polaroid 669
Polaroid 690
Polaroid Polachrome
Agfa Ultra Color 100
Agfa Vista 200
Fuji Superia 200
Fuji Superia HG 1600
Fuji Superia Reala 100
Fuji Superia X-Tra 800
Kodak Elite 100 XPRO
Kodak Elite Color 200
Kodak Elite Color 400
Kodak Portra 160 NC
Kodak Portra 160 VC
Lomography Redscale 100
Agfa APX 100
Agfa APX 25
Fuji Neopan 1600
Fuji Neopan Acros 100
Ilford Delta 100
Ilford Delta 3200
Ilford Delta 400
Ilford FP4 Plus 125
Ilford HP5 Plus 400
Ilford HPS 800
Ilford Pan F Plus 50
Ilford XP2
Kodak BW 400 CN
Kodak HIE (HS Infra)
Kodak T-Max 100
Kodak T-Max 3200
Kodak T-Max 400
Kodak Tri-X 400
Polaroid 664
Polaroid 667
Polaroid 672
Rollei IR 400
Rollei Ortho 25
Rollei Retro 100 Tonal
Rollei Retro 80s

Have fun with these, and don’t forget to show off your results if you get a chance! It’s always neat to see what folks do with these! :)

Luminosity Masking in darktable (Ian Hex)

Mon, 02 Mar 2015 10:11:00 -0600

Photographer Ian Hex was kind enough to be a guest writer over on PIXLS.US with a fantastic tutorial on creating and using Luminosity Masks in the raw processing software darktable.

You can find the new tutorial over on PIXLS.US:

PIXLS.US: Luminosity Masking in darktable

I had previously looked at a couple of amazing shots from Ian over on the PIXLS.US blog, when I introduced him as a guest writer. I thought it might be nice to re-post some of his work here…

The Reverence of St. Peter by Ian Hex (cc-by-sa-nc)

Fire of Whitby Abbey by Ian Hex (cc-by-sa-nc)

Wonder of Variety by Ian Hex (cc-by-sa-nc)

Ian has many more amazing images from Britain of breathtaking beauty over on his site, Lightsweep. Be sure to check them out!

PIXLS.US Update

I have also written an update on the status of the site over on the PIXLS.US blog. TL;DR: It’s still coming along! :)

Mairi Trois

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 16:59:00 -0600

Mairi Troisième

Readers who’ve been here for a little while might recognize my friend Mairi, who has modeled for me before. This time I had a brief opportunity for her to sit for me again for a few shots before she jet-setted her way over to Italy for a while.

I was specifically looking to produce the lede image you see above, Mairi Troisième. In particular, I was chasing some chiaroscuro portrait lighting that I had in mind for a while and I was quite happy with the final result!

Of course, I also had a large new light modifier, so bigger shots were fun to play with as well:

Mairi Color (in Black) ƒ/6.3 1/200s ISO200

Mairi B&W ƒ/8.0 1/200s ISO200

Those two shots were done using a big Photek Softlighter II ^[amazon] that I treated myself to late last year. (I believe the speedlight was firing @3/4 power for these shots).

It wasn’t all serious, there were some funny moments as well…

My Eyes Are Up Here ƒ/7.1 1/200s ISO200

Of course, I like to work up close to a subject personally. I think it gives a nicer sense of intimacy to an image.

More Mairi Experiments ƒ/11.0 1/200s ISO200

Mairi Trois ƒ/8.0 1/200s ISO200

Culminating at one of my favorites from the shoot, this nice chiaroscuro image up close:

Mairi (Closer) ƒ/10.0 1/200s ISO200

It’s always a pleasure to get a chance to shoot with Mairi. She’s a natural in front of the camera, and has these huge expressive eyes that are always a draw.

Later this week, an update on PIXLS.US!

Wikipedia #Edit2014 Video

Thu, 18 Dec 2014 12:02:00 -0600

About a two months ago I was approached by Victor Grigas, a video producer for the Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit that supports Wikipedia), about using some of the techniques I had previously discussed to create 2.5D parallax video images from single photographs. The intention was to use these 2.5D videos as part of their first ever “Year in Review” video:

For reference, this was my previous result using F/OSS to create the 2.5D parallax effect with still images:

For the Wikipedia video, Victor asked if I could use some images from Wiki Loves Monuments (apparently the worlds largest photo competition according to the Guiness World Records). How could I say no? (Disclaimer: I donate every year during their funding drives).

So I agreed, and after a short wait for the finalists from the competition to be chosen, was sent these two awesome images to turn into 2.5D parallax videos:

"Wat Phra That Khao Noi" by K.Phothiwijit - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

"Faisal Mosque Photography by Ali Mujtaba 12" by Alimujtaba79 (Ali Mujtaba) - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

After a bit of slicing and dicing, I ended up with these short segments that ended up in the final video. As before, I did the main plane separations in GIMP manually. I divided the planes to best accommodate the anticipated camera movement through the scene (simple dolly pans). Once I had the planes separated, it was a simple process to bring them into Blender and offset the planes as the camera tracked across the scene:

This was a fun project to work on, and I want to thank the Wikimedia Foundation for giving me a chance to play with some gorgeous images and hopefully to help out in my own small way with the final outcome!

Also, Victor does a nice interview with the Wikimedia blog about producing the overall video. Great work everyone!

David Tschumperlé and OpenSource.graphics

Fri, 05 Dec 2014 16:07:00 -0600

Some of you may be familiar with G’MIC, the rather extensive image processing language created by David Tschumperlé that has a very popular plug-in for GIMP.

If you’re a fan, here’s a nice little treat for you. David has started a blog about image processing with open source software:

http://opensource.graphics

If you’d like a front seat to some of the more technically interesting things going on behind the scenes at G’MIC, this would be a good blog to follow I think. He’s already come out of the gate with a neat 3D colorcube investigation of some images (seen above, Mairi).

The 2015 Libre Calendar

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 15:18:00 -0600

So Jehan Pages contacted me a little while ago about participating in a project to produce a “Libre Calendar”. Once he described the idea, it was an easy choice to join up and help out!

Through his non-profit LILA in France, he has assembled 6 artists to produce works specifically for this calendar (Disclaimer: I’m one of the artists):

Aryeom Han

Henri Hebeisen

Gustavo Deveze

Brian Beck

The proceeds from the calendar will be split evenly between the artists, the LILA non-profit, and various F/OSS projects that the artists used (GIMP, Blender, Inkscape, etc…). The full list is on the site. (Second disclaimer: I’m deferring any of my proceeds to the projects).

This is a really nice way to donate a bit to the various projects and get a neat gift for it.

Head over to the site to see some sample images from the artists, and consider buying a calendar! Jehan is looking to meet a minimum order before moving forward (around 100 I believe).

Woodcut/Hedcut(ish) Effect

Thu, 18 Sep 2014 15:50:00 -0500

Rolf as a woodcut/hedcut

I was working on the About page over on PIXLS.US the other night. I was including some headshots of myself and one of Rolf Steinort when I got pulled off onto yet another tangent (this happens often to me).

This time I was thinking of those awesome hand-painted(!) portraits used by the Wall Street Journal by the artist Randy Glass.

Of course, the problem was that I had neither the time or skill to hand paint a portrait in this style.

What I did have was a rudimentary understanding of a general effect that I thought would look neat. So I started playing around. I finally got to something that I thought looked neat (see lede image), but I didn’t take very good notes while I was playing.

This meant that I had to go back and re-trace my steps and settings a couple of times before I could describe exactly what it was I did.

So after some trial and error, here is what I did to create the effect you see.

Desaturate

Starting with your base image, desaturate using a method you like. I’m going to use an old favorite of mine, Mairi:

The base image, desaturated.

Duplicate this layer, and on the duplicate run the G’MIC filter, “Graphic Novel” by Photocomix.

Filters → G’MIC

Artistic → Graphic Novel

Check the box to “Skip this step” for “Apply Local Normalization”, and adjust the “Pencil amplitude” to taste (I ended up at about 66). This gives me this result:

After running G’MIC/Graphic Novel

I then adjusted the opacity to taste on the G’MIC layer, reducing it to about 75%. Then create a new layer from visible (Right-click layer, “New from visible”).

Here is what I have so far:

On this new new layer (should be called “Visible” by default), run the GIMP filter:

Filters → Artistic → Engrave

If you don’t have the filter, you can find the .scm at the registry here.

The only settings I change are the “Line width”, which I set to about 1/100 of the image height, and make sure the “Line type” is set to “Black on bottom”. Oh, and I set the “Blur radius” to 1.

This leaves me with a top layer looking like this:

After running Engrave

(If you want to see something cool, step back a few feet from your monitor and look at this image - the Engrave plugin is neat).

Now on this layer, I will run the G’MIC deformation filter “random” to give some variety to the lines:

G’MIC → Deformations → Random

I used an amplitude of about 2.35 in my image. We are looking to just add some random waviness to the engrave lines. Adjust to taste.

I ended up with:

Results after applying G’MIC/Random deformation to the engrave layer.

At this point I will apply a layer mask to the layer. I will then copy the starting desaturated layer and paste it into the layer mask.

I added a layer mask to the engraved layer (Right-click the layer, “Add layer mask…” - initialize it to white). I then selected the lowest layer, copied it (Ctrl/Cmd + C), selected the layer mask and pasted (Ctrl/Cmd + V). Once pasted, anchor the selection to apply it to the mask.

This is what it looks like with the layer mask applied:

The engrave layer with the mask applied

At this point I will use a brush and paint over the background with black to mask more of the effect, particularly from the background and edges of her face and hair. Once I’m done, I’m left with this:

After cleaning up the edges of the mask with black

I’ll now set the layer blending mode to “Darken Only”, and create a new layer from visible again.

Add a layer mask to the new visible layer (should be the top layer), copy the layer mask from the layer below it (the engrave layer), and paste it into the top layer mask:

Now adjust the levels of the top layer (not the mask!), by selecting it, and opening the levels dialog:

Colors → Levels…

Adjust to taste. In my image I pulled the white point down to about 175.

At this point, my image looks like this:

After adjusting levels to brighten up the face a bit

At this point, create a new layer from visible again.

Now make sure that your background color is white.

On this new layer, I’ll run a strange filter that I’ve never used before:

Filters → Distorts → Erase Every Other Row…

In the dialog, I’ll set it to use “Columns”, and “Fill with BG”. Once it’s done running, set the layer mode to “Overlay”. This leaves me with this:

After running ‘Erase Every Other Row…’

At this point, all that’s left is to do any touchups you may want to do. I like to paint with white and a low opacity in a similar way to dodging an image. That is, I’ll paint white with a soft brush on areas of highlights to accentuate them.

Here is my final result after doing this:

I’d recommend playing with each of the steps to suit your images. On some images, it helps to modify the parameters of the “Graphic Novel” filter to get a good effect. After you’ve tried it a couple of times through you should get a good feel for how the different steps change the final outcome.

As always, have fun and share your results! :)

Summary

There seems to be many steps, but it’s not so bad once you’ve done it. In a nutshell:

Desaturate the image, and create a duplicate of the layer.
Run G'MIC/Graphic Novel filter, skip local normalization. Set layer opacity to about 40-60% (experiment).
Create new layer from visible.

Run Filters → Artistic → Engrave (not Filters → Distorts → Engrave!).

Set the Line Height ~ 1/100 of image height, black on bottom

On the same engrave layer, run G'MIC → Deformation → Random

Set amplitude to taste

Change layer mode to "Darken only"
Add a layer mask, use the original desaturated layer for the mask

Create new layer from visible

Add a layer mask, using the original desaturated layer for mask again (or the mask from previous layer)
Adjust levels of layer to brighten it up a bit

Create (another) new layer from visible

Set background color to white
Run Filters → Distorts → Erase Every Other Row...

Set to columns, and fill with BG color

Set layer blend mode to "Overlay"

Something Wicked This Way Comes…

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 16:49:00 -0500

I’ve been working on something, and I figured that I should share it with anyone who actually reads the stuff I publish here.

I originally started writing here as a small attempt at bringing tutorials for doing high-quality photography using F/OSS to everyone. So far, it’s been amazing and I’ve really loved meeting and getting to know many like-minded folks.

I’m not leaving. Having just re-read that previous paragraph makes it sound like I am. I’m not.

I am, however, working on something new that I’d like to share with you, though. I’ve called it:

PIXLS.US

I’ve been writing to hopefully help fill in some gaps on high-quality photographic processes using all of the amazing F/OSS tools that so many great groups have built, and now I think it’s time to move that effort into its own home.

F/OSS photography deserves its own site focused on demonstrating just how amazing these projects are and how fantastic the results can be when using them.

I’m hoping pixls.us can be that home. Pixel-editing for all of us!

I’m been building the site in my spare time over the past couple of weeks (I’m building it from scratch, so it’s going a little slower than just slapping up a wordpess/blogger/CMS site). I want the new site to focus on the content above all else, and to make it as accessible and attractive as possible for users. I also want to keep the quality of the content as high as possible.

If anyone would like to contribute anything to help out: expertise, artwork, images, tutorials and more, please feel free to contact me and let me know. I’m in the process of porting my old GIMP tutorials over to the new site (and probably updating/re-writing a bunch of it as well), so we can have at least some content to start out with.

If you want to follow along my progress at the moment while I build out the site, I’m blogging about it on the site itself at http://pixls.us/blog. As mentioned in the comments, I actually do have an RSS feed for the blog posts, I just hadn’t linked to it yet (working on it quickly). The location (should your feedreader not pick it up automatically now) is: http://pixls.us/blog/feed.xml.

If you happen to subscribe in a feedreader, please let me know if anything looks off or broken so I can fix it! :)

Things are in a constant state of flux at the moment (did I mention that I’m still building out the back end?), so please bear with me. Please don’t hesitate for a moment to let me know if something looks strange, or with any suggestions as well!

When it’s ready to go, I’m going to ask for everyones help to get the word out, link to it, talk about it, etc. The sooner I can get it ready to go, the sooner we can help folks find out just how great these projects are and what they can do with them!

Excelsior!

Clarity in GIMP (Local Contrast + Mid Tones)

Tue, 05 Aug 2014 09:53:00 -0500

I was thinking about other ways I fiddle with Luminosity Masks recently, and I thought it might be fun to talk about some other ways to use them when looking at your images.

My previous ramblings about Luminosity Masks:

If you remember from my previous look at Luminosity Masks, the idea is to create masks that correspond to different luminous levels in your image (roughly the lightness of tones). Once you have these masks, you can make adjustments to your image and isolate their effect to particular tonal regions easily.

In my previous examples, I used them to apply different color toning to different tonal regions of the image, like this example masked to the DarkDark tones (yes, DarkDark):

Mouseover to change Hue to: 0 - 90 - 180 - 270

What’s neat about that application is when you combine it with some Film Emulation presets. I’ll leave that as an exercise for you to play with.

In this particular post I want to do something different.
I want to make some eyes bleed.

"My eyes! The goggles do nothing!" — Radioactive Man (Rainier Wolfcastle)

In the same realm of bad tone-mapping for HDR images (see the first two images here) there are those who sharpen to ridiculous proportions as well as abuse local contrast enhancement with Unsharp Mask.

It was this last one that I was fiddling with recently that got me thinking.

Local Contrast Enhancement with Unsharp Mask

If you haven’t heard of this before, let me explain briefly. There is a sharpening method you can use in GIMP (and other software) that utilizes a slightly blurred version of your image to enhance edge contrasts. This leads to a visual perception of increased sharpness or contrast on those edges.

It’s easy to do this manually to see sort of how it works:

Open an image.
Duplicate the base layer.
Blur the top layer a bit (Gaussian blur).
Set the top layer blend mode to "Grain Extract".
Create a New Layer from visible.
Set the new layer blend mode to "Overlay", and hide the blurred layer.

Of course, it’s quite a bit easier to just use Unsharp Mask directly (but now you know how to create high-pass layers of your image - we’re learning things already!).

So let’s have a look at an image from a nice Fall day at a farm:

I can apply Unsharp Mask through the menu:

Filters → Enhance → Unsharp Mask…

Below the preview window there are three sliders to adjust the effect: Radius, Amount, and Threshold.

Radius changes how big a radius to use when blurring the image to create the mask. Amount changes how strong the effect is. Threshold is a setting for the minimum pixel value difference to define an edge. You can ignore it for now.

If we apply the filter with its default values (Radius: 5.0, Amount: 0.50), we get a nice little sharpening effect on the result:

Unsharp Mask with default values (mouseover to compare original)

It gives a nice little “pop” to the image (a bit much for my taste). It also avoids sharpening noise mostly, which is nice as well.

So far this is fairly simple stuff, nothing dramatic. The problem is, once many people learn about this they tend to go a bit overboard with it. For instance, let’s crank up the Amount to 3.0:

Don't do this. Just don't.

Yikes. But don’t worry. It’s going to get worse.

High Radius, Low Amount

So I’m finally getting to my point. There is a neat method of increasing local contrast in an image by pushing the Unsharp Mask values more than you might normally. If you use a high radius, and default amount you get:

Unsharp Mask, Radius: 80 Amount: 0.5 (mouseover to compare original)

It still looks like clown vomit. But we can still gain the nice local contrast enhancement and mitigate the offensiveness by turning the Amount down even further. Here it is with the Radius still at 80, but the Amount turned down to 0.10:

Unsharp Mask, Radius: 80 Amount: 0.10 (mouseover to compare original)

Even with the Amount at 0.10 it might be a tad much for my taste. The point is that you can gain a nice little boost to local contrast with this method.

Neat but hardly earth-shattering. This has been covered countless times in various places already (and if this is the first time you’re hearing about it, then we’re learning two new things today!).

We can see that we now have a neat method for bumping up the local contrast of an image slightly to give it a little extra visual pop. What we can think about now is, how can I apply that to my images in other interesting ways?

Perhaps we could find some way to apply these effects to particular areas of an image? Say, based on something like luminosity?

Clarity in Lightroom

From what I can tell (and find online), it appears that this is basically what the “Clarity” adjustment in Adobe Lightroom does. It’s a Local Contrast Enhancement masked in some way to middle tones in the image.

Let’s have a quick look and see if that theory holds any weight. Here is the image above, brought into Lightroom and with the “Clarity’ pushed to 100:

From Lightroom 4, Clarity: 100

This seems visually similar to the path we started on already, but let’s see if we can get something better with what we know so far.

Clarity in GIMP

What I want to do is to increase the local contrast of my image, and confine those adjustments to the mid-tone areas of the image. We have seen a method for increasing local contrast with Unsharp Mask, and I had previously written about creating Luminosity Masks. Let’s smash them together and see what we get!

If you haven’t already, go get the Script-Fu to automate the creation of these masks (I tend to use Saul’s version as it’s faster than mine) from the GIMP Registry.

Open an image to get started (I’ll be using the same image from above).

Create Your Luminosity Masks

You’ll need to generate a set of luminosity masks using your base image as a reference. With your image open, you can find Saul’s Luminosity Mask script here:

Filters → Generic → Luminosity Masks (saulgoode)

It should only take a moment to run, and you shouldn’t notice anything different when it’s finished. If you do check your Channels dialog, you should see all nine of the masks there (L, LL, LLL, M, MM, MMM, D, DD, DDD).

Luminosity Masks, by row: Darks, Mids, Lights

Enhance the Local Contrast

Now it’s time to leave subtlety behind us. We are going to be masking these results anyway, so we can get a little crazy with the application in this step. You can use the steps I mentioned above with Unsharp Mask to increase the local contrast, or you can use G’MIC to do it instead.

The reason that you may want to use G’MIC instead is that to increase the local contrast without causing a bit of a color shift would require that you apply the Unsharp Mask on a particular channel after decomposition. G’MIC can automatically apply the contrast enhancement only on the luminance in one step.

Let’s try it with the regular Unsharp Mask in GIMP. I’m going to use similar settings to what we used above, but we’ll turn the amount up even more.

With your image open in GIMP, duplicate the base layer. We’ll be applying the effect and mask on this duplicate over your base.

Now we can enhance the local contrast using Unsharp Mask:

Filters → Enhance → Unsharp Mask…

This time around, we’ll try using Radius: 80 and Amount: 1.5.

Unsharp Mask, Radius: 80, Amount: 1.5. My eyes!

Yes, it’s horrid, but we’re going to be masking it to the mid-range tones remember. Now I can apply a layer mask to this layer by Right-clicking on the layer, and selecting “Add Layer Mask…”.

Right-click → Add Layer Mask…

In the “Add a Mask to the Layer” dialog that pops up, I’ll choose to initialize the layer to a Channel, and choose the “M” mid-tone mask:

Once the ridiculous tones are confined to the mid-tones, things look much better:

Unsharp Mask, Radius: 80, Amount: 1.5. Masked to mid-tones. (mouseover to compare original)

You can see that there is now a nice boost to the local contrast that is confined to the mid-tones in the image. This is still a bit much for me personally, but I’m purposefully over-doing it in an attempt to illustrate the process. Really you’d want to either tone-down the amount on the USM (UnSharp Mask), or adjust the opacity of this layer to taste now.

So the general formula we are seeing is to make an adjustment (local contrast enhance in this case), and to use the luminosity masks to give us control over where the effect is applied.

For instance, we can try using other types of contrast/detail enhancement in place of the USM step.

I had previously written about detail enhancement through “Freaky Details”. This is what we get when replacing the USM local contrast enhancement with it. Using G’MIC, I can find “Freaky Details” at:

Filters → G’MIC

Details → Freaky details

I used an Amplitude of 4, Scale 22, and Iterations 1. I applied this to the Luminance Channels:

Freaky Details, Amplitude 4, Scale 22, Iterations 1, mid-tone mask (mouseover to compare original)

Trying other G’MIC detail enhancements such as “Local Normalization” can yield slightly different results:

G'MIC Local Normalization at default values. (mouseover to compare original)

Yes, there’s some halo-ing, but remember that I’m purposefully allowing these results to get ugly to highlight what they’re doing.

G’MIC Local Variance Normalization is a neat result with fine details as well:

G'MIC Local Variance Normalization (default settings) (mouseover to compare original)

In Conclusion

This approach works because our eyes will be more sensitive to slight contrast changes as they occur in the mid-tones of an image as opposed to the upper and lower tones. More importantly, it’s a nice introduction to viewing your images as more than a single layer.

Understanding these concepts and viewing your images as the sum of multiple parts allows you much greater flexibility in how you approach your retouching.

I fully encourage you to give it a shot and see what other strange combinations you might be able to discover! For instance, try using the Film Emulation presets in combination with different luminosity masks to find new and interesting combinations of color grading! Try setting the masked layers to different blending modes! You may surprise yourself with what you find.

Free From XP (LinuxPro Magazine) GIMP Article

Thu, 31 Jul 2014 10:24:00 -0500

So, the last time I talked about LinuxPro Magazine was about having a simple give-away of the promotional copies I had received of their GIMP Handbook issue. At that time, I joked with the editor that surely it couldn’t be complete without anything written by me. :)

Then he called me out on my joke and asked me if I wanted to write an article for them.

So, I’ve got an article in LinuxPro Magazine Special Edition #18: Free From XP!

The article is aimed at new users switching over from XP to Linux, so the stuff I cover is relatively basic, like:

The Interface
Cropping
Rotating
Correcting Levels
Brightness/Contrast
Color Levels
Curves
Resizing
Sharpening
Saving & Exporting

Still, if you know someone who could use a hand switching, it certainly can’t hurt to pick a copy up! (You can get print and digital copies from their website: LinuxPro Magazine).

Here’s a quick preview of the first page of the article:

My hair doesn't look anywhere near as fabulous as this image would have you believe...

Also, if anyone sees a copy on a newsstand, it would be awesome if you could send me a quick snap of it.

Wavelet Decompose (Again)

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 14:01:00 -0500

Yes, more fun things you can do with Wavelet Scales.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a bit (or just read through any of my previous postprocessing tutorials), then you should be familiar with Wavelet Decompose. I use them all the time for skin retouching as well as other things. I find that being able to think of your images in terms of detail scales opens up a new way of approaching problems (and some interesting solutions).

A short discussion on the GIMP Users G+ community led the member +Marty Keil to suggest a tutorial on using wavelets for other things (particularly sharpening). Since I tend to use wavelet scales often in my processing (including sharpening), I figured I would sit down and enumerate some ways to use them, like:

Wavelets? What?

For our purposes (image manipulation), wavelet decomposition allows us to consider the image as multiple levels of detail components, that when combined will yield the full image. That is, we can take an image and separate it out into multiple layers, with each layer representing a discrete level of detail.

To illustrate, let’s have a look at my rather fetching model:

It was kindly pointed out to me that the use of the Lena image might perpetuate the problems with the objectification of women. So I swapped out the Lena image with a model that doesn’t carry those connotations.

The results of running Wavelet Decompose on the image yields these 6 layers. These are arranged in increasing order of detail magnitude (scales 1-5 + a residual layer).

Notice that each of the scales contains a particular set of details starting with the finest details and becoming larger until you reach the residual scale. The residual scale doesn’t contain any fine details, instead it consists mostly of color and tonal information.

This is very handy if you need to isolate particular features for modifications. Simply find the scale (or two) that contain the feature and modify it there without worrying as much about other details at the same location.

The Wavelet Decompose plug-in actually sets each of these layer modes (except Residual) as “Grain Merge”. This allows each layer to contribute their details to the final result (which will look identical to the original starting layer with no modifications). The “Grain Merge” layer blend mode means that pixels that are 50% value ( RGB(127,127,127) ) will not affect the final result. This also means that if we paint on one of the scale layers with gray, it will effectively erase those details from the final image (keep this in mind for later).

Skin Smoothing (Redux)

I previously talked about using Wavelet Decompose for image retouching:

The first link was my original post on how I use wavelets to smooth skin tones. The second and third are examples of applying those principles to portraits. The last two articles are complete walkthroughs of a postprocessing workflow, complete with full-resolution examples to download if you want to try it and follow along.

I guess my point is that I’m re-treading a well worn path here, but I have actually modified part of my workflow so it’s not for naught (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Getting Started

So let’s have a look at using wavelets for skin retouching again. We’ll use my old friend, Mairi for this.

Mairi

When approaching skin retouching like this, I feel it’s important to pay attention to how light interacts with the skin. The way that light will penetrate the epidermis and illuminate under the surface is important. Couple that with the different types of skin structures, and you get a complex surface to consider.

For instance, there are very fine details in skin such as faint wrinkles and pores. These often contribute to the perceived texture of skin overall. There is also the color and toning of the skin under the surface as well. These all contribute to what we will perceive.

Let’s have a look at a 100% crop of her forehead.

If I decompose this image to wavelet scales, I can amplify the details on each level by isolating them over the original. So, turning off all the layers except the original, and the first few wavelet scales will amplify the fine details:

Wavelet scales 1,2,3 over the original image.

You may notice that these fine wavelet scales seem to sharpen up the image. Yes, but we’re not talking about them right now. Stick with me - we’ll look at them a little later.

On the same idea, if I leave the original and the two biggest scales visible, I’ll get a nicely exaggerated view of the sub-surface imperfections:

Wavelet scales 4,5 over the original image.

What we see here are uneven skin tones not caused by surface imperfections, but by deeper tones in the skin. It is this un-evenness that I often try to subdue, and that I think contributes to a more pleasing overall skin tone.

To illustrate, here I have used a bilateral blur on the largest detail scale (Wavelet scale 5) only. Consider the rather marked improvement over the original working on this single detail scale. Notice also that all of the finer details remain to keep skin texture looking real.

Smoothing only the largest detail scale (Wavelet scale 5) results (mouseover to compare to original)

Smoothing Skin Tones

With those results in mind, I can illustrate how I will generally approach this type of skin retouching on a face. I usually start by considering specific sections of a face. I try to isolate my work along common facial contours to avoid anything strange happening across features (like smile lines or noses).

I also like to work in these regions as shown because the amount of smoothing that may be needed is not always consistently the same. The forehead may require more than the cheeks, and both may require less than the nose for instance. This allows me to tailor the retouching I do for each region separately in order to arrive at a more consistent result across the entire face.

I’ll use the free-select tool to create a selection of my region, usually with the “Feather edges” option turned on with a large-ish radius (around 30-45 pixels usually). This lets my edits blend a little smoother into the untouched portions of the image.

These days I’ve adjusted my workflow to minimize how much I actually retouch. I’ll usually look at the residual layer first to check the color tones across an area. If they are too spotty or blotchy, I’ll use a bilateral blur to even them out. There is no bilateral blur built into GIMP directly, so on the suggestion of David Tschumperlé (G’MIC) I’ve started using G’MIC with:

Filters → G’MIC…

Repair → Smooth [bilateral]

Once I’m happy with the results on the residual layer (or it doesn’t need any work), I’ll look at the largest detail scale (usually Wavelet scale 5). Lately, this has been the scale level that usually produces the greatest impact quickly. I’ll usually use a Spatial variance of 10, and a Value variance of 7 (with 2 iterations) on the bilateral blur filter. Of course, adjust these as necessary to suit your image and taste.

Here is the result of following those steps on the image of Mairi (less than 5 minutes of work):

Bilateral smoothing on Residual and Wavelet scale 5 only (mouseover to compare to original)

This was only touching the Residual and Wavelet scale 5 with a bilateral blur and nothing else. As you can see this method provides for a very easy way to get to a great base to begin further work on (spot healing as needed, etc.).

Sharpening

I had actually mentioned this in each of my previous workflow tutorials, but it’s worth repeating here. I tend to use the lowest couple of wavelet scales to sharpen my images when I’m done. This is really just a manual version of using the Wavelet Sharpen plugin.

The first couple of detail scales will contain the highest frequency details. I’ve found that using them to sharpen an image up works fantastic. Here, for example, is our photo of Mairi from above after retouching, but now I use a copy of Wavelet scales 1 & 2 over the image to sharpen those details:

Wavelet scale 1 & 2 copied over the result to sharpen. (mouseover to compare)

I’ve purposefully left both of the detail scales on full opacity to demonstrate the effect. I feel this is a far better method for sharpening compared to regular sharpen (I’ve never gotten good results using it) or even to Unsharp Mask (USM). USM can tend to halo around high contrast areas depending on the settings.

I would also adjust the opacity of the scales to adjust how much they would sharpen. If I wanted to avoid sharpening the background for instance, I would also either mask it out or just paint gray on the detail scale to erase the data in that area.

It doesn’t need to stop just a fine detail sharpening, though. The nature of the wavelet decomposition is that you will also get other scale data that can be useful for enhancing contrast on larger details as well. For instance, if I wanted to enhance the local contrast in the sweater of my image, I could use one of the larger scales over the image again and use a layer mask to control the areas that are affected.

To illustrate, here I have also copied scales 3, 4, and 5 over my image. I’ve applied layer masks to the layers to only allow them to affect the sweater. Using these scales allows a nice local contrast to be applied, adding a bit of “pop” to the sweater texture without increasing contrast on the models face or hair.

Using coarser detail scales to add some local contrast to the texture of the sweater (mouseover to compare to previous)

Normally, if I didn’t have a need to work on wavelet scales, I would just use the Wavelet Sharpen plugin to add a touch of sharpening as needed. If I do find it useful (for whatever reason) to work on detail scales already, then I normally just use the scales directly for manually sharpening the image. Occasionally I’ll create the wavelet scales just to have access to the coarse detail levels to bump local contrast to taste, too.

Once you start thinking in terms of detail scales, it’s hard to not get sucked in to finding all sort of uses for them that can be very, very handy.

Stain Removal

What if the thing we want to adjust is not sub-dermal skin retouching, but rather something more like a stain on a childs clothing? As far as wavelets are concerned, it’s the same thing. So let’s look at something like this:

30% of the food made it in!

So there’s a small stain on the shirt. We can fix this easy, right?!

Let’s zoom 100% into the area we are interested in fixing:

If we run a Wavelet decomposition on this image, we can see that the areas that we are interested in are mostly confined to the coarser scales + residual (mostly scales 4, 5, and residual):

More importantly, the very fine details that give texture to her shirt, like the weave of the cotton and stitching of the letters, are nicely isolated on the finer detail scales. We won’t really have to touch the finer scales to fix the stains - so it’s trivially easy to keep the texture in place.

As a comparison, imagine having to use a clone or heal tool to accomplish this. You would have a very hard time getting the cloth weave to match up correctly, thus creating a visual break that would make the repair more obvious.

I start on the residual scale, and work on getting the broad color information fixed. I like to use a combination of the Clone tool, and the Heal tool to do this. Paying attention to the color areas I want to keep, I’ll use the Clone tool to bring in the correct tone with a soft-edged brush. I’ll then use the Heal tool to blend it a bit better into the surrounding textures.

For example, here is the work I did on the Residual scale to remove the stain color information:

Clone/Heal of the Wavelet Residual layer (mouseover to compare to original)

Yes, I know it’s not a pretty patch, but just a quick pass to illustrate what the results can look like. Here is what the above changes to the Wavelet residual layer produces:

Composite image with retouching only on the Wavelet Residual layer (mouseover to compare to original)

Not bad for a couple of minutes work on a single wavelet layer. I follow the same method on the next two wavelet scales 4 & 5. Clone similar areas into place and Heal to blend into the surrounding texture. After a few minutes, I arrive at this result:

Result of retouching Wavelet residual, 4, and 5 layers only (mouseover to compare to original)

Perfect? No. It’s not. It was less than 5 minutes of work total. I could spend another 5 minutes or so and get a pretty darn good looking result, I think. The point is more about how easy it is once the image is considered with respect to levels of detail. Look where the color is and you’ll notice that the fabric texture remains essentially unchanged.

As a father of a three year old, believe me when I say that this technique has proved invaluable to me the past few years…

Conclusion

I know I talk quite a bit about wavelet decomposition for retouching. There is just a wonderful bunch of tasks that become much easier when considering an image as a sum of discrete detail parts. It’s just another great tool to keep in mind as you work on your images.

Krita Kickstarter

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 11:33:00 -0500

I know that I primarily write about photography here, but sometimes something comes along that’s too important to pass up talking about.

Krita just happens to be one of those things. Krita is a digital painting and sketching software by artists for artists. While I love GIMP and have seen some incredible work by talented artists using it for painting and sketching, sometimes it’s better to use a dedicated tool for the job. This is where Krita really shines.

The reason I’m writing about Krita today is that they are looking for community support to accelerate development through their Kickstarter campaign.

Les Misérables by Tago

That is where you come in. It doesn’t take much to make a difference in great software, and every little bit helps. If you can skip a fancy coffee, pastry, or one drink while out this month, consider using the money you saved to help a great project instead!

There’s only 9 days left in their Kickstarter, and they are less than €800 to hitting their goal of €15,000!

Metamorphosis by Enrico Guarnieri

Of course, the team makes it hard to keep up with them. They seem to be rapidly implementing goals in their Kickstarter before they even get funding. For instance, their “super-stretch” goal was to get an OSX implementation of Krita running. Then this shows up in my feed this morning. A prototype already!

I am in constant awe at the talent and results from digital artists, and this is a great tool to help them produce amazing works. As a photographer I am deeply indebted to those who helped support GIMP development over they years, and if we all pull together maybe we can be the ones who future Krita users thank for helping them get access to a great program…

Skip a few fancy coffee drinks, possibly inspire a future artist? Count me in!

Naia and The Magic Sketchbook by Greg

Still here? Ok, how about some cool video tutorials by Ramón Miranda to help support the campaign?

If you still need more, check out his YouTube channel.

Ok, that’s enough out of me.

Go Donate!

Netflix Top 50 Covers by Genre (Averaged & Normalized)

Tue, 17 Jun 2014 10:44:00 -0500

In my (apparently) never-ending quest to average all the things, I happened to be surfing around Netflix the other evening looking for something to watch. Then a little light bulb went off!

My previous averaging work:

I had previously blended many different variations of movie posters with varying success, but figured it might be interesting to see mean blends based on Netflix genres (and suggestions for me to watch). So, here are my results across a few different genres:

I found a couple of surprising and interesting things in these results…

For instance, I am not surprised at the prevalence of Teal/Orange in Sci-Fi covers. I was surprised to find that the other genre with such prominent color grading happened to be Comedies (I would have guessed Thrillers or Action).

I had also didn’t think that Romance would look like such a hot mess (there’s a cosmic sign there, I think). I can also sort of make out abstract faces in Thrillers and Action. Horror is relatively tame by comparison!

Title location seems mostly consistent across genres, though there’s a marked preference for top-centered titles in Comedies apparently. You can also see that MST3K must have at least a few titles in my Sci-Fi list (a fact of which I am proud of).

I may finish my work on the movie posters and post them in the future. In the meantime, here is one that I did blending all of the movie posters that the legendary Saul Bass created:

In case your curious, here’s the list of the movies these posters are from:

The Shining (1980)
Such Good Friends (1971)
Bunny Lake is Missing (1968)
In Harm’s Way (1965)
The Cardinal (1963)
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
Advise & Consent (1962)
Bird Man of Alcatraz (1962)
One, Two, Three (1961)
Exodus (1960)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
North by Northwest (1959)
Vertigo (1958)
Love in the Afternoon (1957)
The Man With the Golden Arm (1955)

Linux Pro Magazine GIMP Handbook Special Edition

Wed, 04 Jun 2014 16:20:00 -0500

I received a few Promo copies of the Linux Pro Magazine GIMP Handbook Special Edition in the mail a couple of weeks ago. I’ve just been too busy to sit down and have a look at it in depth.

I did give it a few flip-throughs when I had a moment, though.

This is apparently a “Special Edition” magazine aimed entirely at GIMP and using it. As such, it’s mostly (unlike my blog) ad free. So that means there’s over 100+ (full color) pages of good content!

It’s broken down nicely by sections:

Get Started

Compiling GIMP
GIMP 2.8 and 2.9
User Interfaces
Settings
Basic Functions

Highlights

Basic Functions
Colors
Light and Shadow
Animation with GIMP

Practice

Layers
Selection
Colors
Paths
Text and Logos

Photo Processing

Sharpening
Light and Shadow
Retouch
GIMP Maps

Know How

G'MIC
UFRaw
Painting
Fine Art HDR Processing
Animation with GIMP

The sections appear well written and are clearly laid out. They cover external resources where it makes sense as well (referencing the GIMP Registry quite a few times for some of the more useful and popular scripts).

As an image editing program, GIMP provides a variety of useful and advanced functions for any possible task. Before you use them, however, you should be aware of some simple things. Get Started: Basic Functions

The writing is nice and clear, and there is a good range of topics covered that should get most beginners on track for exploring further in GIMP.

For example, in the “Photo Processing” section, while discussing Sharpening an image, they make mention of most of what users are likely to need (and some more obscure ones): Standard Sharpening, Unsharp Mask, High-Pass Sharpening, Wavelet Sharpen, and more.

The instructions are clearly presented, and having all full-color pages really helps as there are many examples showing the concepts. There’s also some neat coverage of associated/support programs as well like G’MIC, UFRaw, and LuminanceHDR!

There’s a bundled DVD included that will boot to ArtistX linux as well (and includes GIMP install files for OSX/Win).

All in all, quite a bit of content for $15.99.

To sweeten the deal, the nice folks at LinuxPro Magazine are offering a discount code to save 20% off the price!

The discount code is: GIMP20DISCOUNT and it’ll be valid through July 15^th.

Of course… A Give-Away!

I do have a few copies they sent to me as promotional copies. I thought it might be more fun to go ahead and pay them forward to someone else who might get more use out of them than me.

So, all you need to do is either leave a comment below, or share any blog post of mine on Twitter or Google+ with the hashtags #patdavid #GIMP.

You can also email me with “GIMP Giveaway” in the subject.

If you do enter, make sure I have a way to reach you.

Oh, and disclaimer: I’ve never done a give away for anything before, so please bear with me if I suck at it…

I’ll sift through the hashtags and whatnot later next week and randomly pick three folks to send these copies to!

[Update]
I chose the winners earlier this week using http://www.random.org. So congratulations to Stan, Anand, and Doug! I’ll be dropping your magazines in the mail this week!

Meet Sarah

Fri, 23 May 2014 14:27:00 -0500

Sarah has been shooting with my friend Brian for a while now. He and I recently tried to organize to shoot together, but unfortunately he was called away at the last moment. Which was a bummer, because I had also just purchased a 60" Photek Softlighter II, and was super-eager to put it through its paces…

Luckily Sarah was still good to do the shoot! (There were some initial hiccups, but we were able to sort them out and finally get started).

There were two aspects to obtaining these results I thought it might be nice to talk about briefly here, the lighting and the post work…

The Lighting

Meet Sarah - YN560 firing into the 60 inch softlighter, camera left, really really close in.

If you’ve ever followed my photographs, I like to keep things simple. This is mostly for two reasons: 1) I’m cheap, and simple is inexpensive. 2) I’m not smart, and simple is easy to understand.

Well, I also happen to really like the look of simply lit images if possible. Some folks can get a little nuts about lighting.

The real creativity is when you can make a simply lit image look good . This is the hard part, I think, and the thing I spend most of my time working to achieve and learn about.

I had previously built myself a small-ish softbox to control my light a bit more, and it has seen quite a bit of use in the time that I’ve had it. It works in a pinch for a neat headshot key light, but I was bumping into the limits of using it due to size. I was mostly constrained with tight-in headshots to keep the light relatively soft. (It was only about 20" square).

So I had been looking for quite some time at a larger modifier. Something I could use for full body images if I wanted, but still keep the nice control and diffusion of a large softbox. Thanks to David Hobby, I finally decided that I simply had to have the Photek Softlighter.

To help me understand faster/better what the light is doing and how it effects a photograph, I try to minimize the other variables as much as I can. Shooting in a controlled environment allows me this luxury, so all these images I took of Sarah are shot with a single light only. This way I can better understand it’s contribution to the image if I want to add any other modifiers or lights (without having to worry about nuking the ambient at the same time).

Plus, chiaroscuro!

Postprocessing

For these images I wanted to try something a little different for a change. I wanted to have a consistent color grading for all the images from the session, and I wanted to shoot for something a bit softer and subdued.

I followed my usual workflow (documented here and here).

Here was the original image straight out of the camera:

Straight out of the camera

In my Raw processor, I adjusted exposure to taste, increased blacks just slightly and added a touch of contrast. I also dropped the vibrance of the image down just a bit as well. I did this because I knew later I would be toning with some curves and didn’t want things to get too saturated.

After exposure, contrast, and vibrance adjustments

I brought the image into GIMP at this point for further pixel-pushing and retouching. As usual, I immediately decomposed the image into wavelet scales so I could work on individual frequencies. There wasn’t much needed to be done for skin work, just some (very) slight mid-frequency smoothing. Spot healing here and there for trivial things, and I was done.

One small difference in my workflow is that I’ve switched from using a Gaussian Blur on the frequency layers to using a Bilateral Blur instead. I feel it preserves tonal changes much better. It can be found in G’MIC under Repair → Smooth [bilateral].

After some mid-frequency smoothing and spot healing

At this point, it was color toning time! (alliteration alert!)

I ended up applying a portra-esque color curve against the image, and reduced its opacity to about 50%. This gave me the nice tones from the curve adjustment, but didn’t throw everything too far red. Just a sort of delicate touch of portra…

A touch of portra-esque color toning

At this point I did something I don’t normally do that often. I wanted to soften the colors a bit more, and skew the overall feeling just slightly warmer and earthy-toned. Sarah has very pretty auburn hair, the portra adjusted the skin tones to be pleasing, and she had on a white shirt, with a gray/brown sweater.

So I added a layer over the entire image and filled it with a nice brown/orange shade. If you’re familiar at all with teal/orange hell, the shade is actually a much darker and unsaturated orange, but we’re not going to cool the shadows separately. We’re just going to wash the image slightly with this brown-ish shade.

This is the shade I used. It's #76645B in HTML notation.

I set the layer opacity for this brown layer down really low to about 9%. This took the edge just ever so slightly off the highlights, and lifted the blacks a tiny bit. Here’s the final result before cropping:

Final result

I feel like it softens the contrast a bit visually, and enhances the browns and reds nicely. After sharpening and cropping I got the final result:

Meet Sarah

I purposefully didn’t go into too much detail because I’ve written at length about each of the steps that went into this. The most important thing I think in this case is finding a good color toning that you like (the post about color curves for skin is here). The color layer over the image is new, but it was honestly done through experimentation and taste. Try laying different shades at really low opacity over your image to see how it changes things! Experiment!

More Sarah

Now that we’ve had a chance to shoot together, I’m hoping we can continue to do so. In the meantime, here’s a few more images from that day.

I love the expression on her face here

DIY Ringflash

Fri, 16 May 2014 10:33:00 -0500

The world probably needs another DIY ringflash tutorial like they need a hole in the head. There’s already quite a few different tutorials around explaining how to create one…

So here’s mine! :)

The Ringflash and I, by Rolf Steinort

At LGM this year I hacked together a quick ringflash using parts I picked up in a €1 store while walking through the city with Rolf (he helped me pick out and find parts - Thank You Rolf!). I built one while I was there because it was way less hassle than trying to bring mine from home all the way to Leipzig, Germany (they don’t really collapse into any sort of smaller size, so they’re cumbersome to transport).

Anyway, I got some pretty strange looks from folks as I was hacking away at the plastic colander I was using. The trick to making and using these DIY ringflashes is to not care what others think …

Using the ringflash on Johannes…, by Tobias Ellinghaus

Because you will look strange building it, and even stranger using it. If you can get past that, the results are pretty neat, I think.

The results of using the ringflash on Johannes…

There’s a nice even light that helps to fill in and remove harsh shadows across a subjects face (very flattering for reducing the appearance of wrinkles for instance). At lower power with other lighting it makes a fantastic fill light as well.

So, after seeing the results I had a few people ask me if I was going to write up a quick guide on building one of these things. I wasn’t intending to originally, but figured it might make for a fun post, so here we are.

Now, normally I would take fancy photos of the ringflash to illustrate how to go about making one, but I realized that it would be hard to account for all the different types, sizes, and styles that one could be made in.

Oh, and more importantly I wasn’t about to try and lug it all the way back to the states. So I left it there (I think Simon from darktable ended up taking it).

So I’ll improvise…

Building a DIY Ringflash

The Parts

The actual parts list is pretty simple. A large bowl, a small bowl, a cup (or tube), and some tape:

The material can be anything you can easily cut and modify, and hopefully that won’t throw it’s own color cast. White is best on the inside of the large bowl and outside of the small bowl and cup. Silver or metal is fine too, but the color temperature will trend to cooler.

The thing I mainly look for are sizes to fit my intended lens(es) I will be using:

Each of the components needs to have a diameter bigger than my lens to fit through.

I’ll also look for a bowl that has a flat bottom as it usually makes it easier for me to cut holes through it (as well as tape things together).

All the other dimensions and sizes are arbitrary, and are usually dictated by the materials I can find. In Leipzig I used a colander for the large bowl, a cup, and the same small cheap white plastic bowls they served soup in at the party for the smaller bowl^*.

^* I did not actually use a soup bowl from the party, I just happened to purchase the same type bowl.

The Cuts

The first cut I’ll usually make is to open a hole in the side of the large bowl to allow the flash to poke through. I almost always just sort of wing it, and cut it by hand (or rotary tool if you have one):

It doesn’t have to be placed perfectly in any particular location, though I usually try to place it as close to the bottom of the large bowl as possible.

Once the hole is cut, the flash should fit into place. I try to err on the side of caution and cut on the smaller side just in case. I can always remove more material if I need to, putting it back is harder.

Then I’ll usually place the cup into the bowl and trace out it’s diameter onto the large bowl. When I’m cutting this hole, I try to make it on the smaller side of my mark lines to leave me some room to tape the cup into place.

I’ll go ahead and cut the bottom of the cup now as well:

As with the large bowl, I’ll also trace the cup diameter on the small bowl and mark it. I’ll cut this hole a little small as well just in case.

That’s all there is to cut the parts! Now go grab a roll of tape to tape the whole thing together. If you want to get fancy I suppose you could use some glue or epoxy, but we’re making a DIY ringflash from a bunch of cheap bowls - why get fancy now?

Assembly

It should be self apparent how the whole thing goes together.

One thing I do try to watch for is to not tape things together where the light will be falling. So to tape the cup to the large bowl, I’ll apply the tape from the outside back of the bowl, into the cup.

Tape the front (small) bowl into place in the same way. It might not be pretty, but it should work!

Result

When all is said and done, this should be sort of what you’re looking at:

I’ve made a few of these now, and they honestly don’t take long at all to throw together. If I’m in a store for any reason I’ll at least check out cheap bowls for sale just in case there might be something good to play with (especially if it’s cheap).

She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid. I’ve made a lot of special modifications myself.

"She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've made a lot of special modifications myself. "

Using It

If you’ve got the power in your flash, it’s pretty easy to drop the ambient to near black (these were mostly all shot around f/5 ¹⁄₂₅₀s ISO 200):

All the shots I took at the LGM 2014 party in Leipzig used this contraption (either as a straight ringflash, or a quick hand-held beauty dish). The whole set is here on Flickr.

Of course, if you put your subject up against a wall, you’ll get that distinctive halo-shadow that a ringflash throws:

Whitney

Sirko

I also normally don’t do anything to attach the flash to the bowls, or the entire contraption to my camera. The reason is that it actually makes a half decent beauty dish in a pinch if needed. All you have to do is move the ringflash off to a side (left side for me, as I shoot right-handed):

David Tschumperlé

Null

Loraine

Conclusion

Well, that’s it. I hope the instructions were clear, and at least somebody out there tries building and playing with one of these (share the results if you do!).

As you can see, there’s not much to it. The hardest part is honestly finding bowls and cups of appropriate size…

G'MIC Montage

Tue, 13 May 2014 11:57:00 -0500

So I was talking with G’MIC creator David Tschumperlé the other day and thought it might be handy to have a way to create a montage of images (similar to the montage command in Imagemagick), but to have more control over the montage layout with automatic image fitting.

In the past, if I wanted to montage a series of images of different sizes, I would do it manually in GIMP. What I was proposing to David was to programatically deal with fitting images given some manual input from the user.

I know that he usually works quite fast, but he blew me away with how quick he got into the idea this time. From describing it one afternoon, it was about a day to get something working. (Add another half a day after I gave him a hard time about making the edges fit regardless of padding… Sorry David!)

That means that it’s now trivially easy to combine multiple images and automatically have them scaled to fit each other, like this:

Just a single parameter change and we can re-orient the images vertically like so:

I used only two images here as a simple example, but it’s not any harder to do this with as many images as your memory will permit…

So let’s have a look at this new filter…

The Montage Filter

To use the filter, you’ll want to load up all of the images you want to create the montage from as layers in GIMP.

After running G’MIC,

Filters → G’MIC…

You’ll need to navigate to the new “Montage” filter:

Arrays & tiles → Montage

Firing up G’MIC to use the Montage filter

The first thing you’ll want to remember to do is to change the “Input layers…” to something more appropriate (I like to use “All visibles”). Your preview window should now change to show all your images. Handily, G’MIC numbers each of your images for you (this will come in handy later when you’re creating a custom montage layout.

(While you’re here, I also like to change the “Output mode…” to be “New image”. This way I can go back and easily tweak things as I fiddle.)

Montage type

The first setting you’ll want to take a look at is the Montage type. The options are:

Custom layout

cover this

Horizontal
Vertical
Horizontal Array
Vertical Array

Here are the results of running each of these against my 5 test images:

Horizontal, Vertical, Vertical Array, and Horizontal Array

If one of these orientations will work for you, then you’re all set! If you want more control on how the images are arranged, I go over it a little later.

Merging mode

This parameter has two options: Aligned and Scaled.

The Aligned option will not resize any of the images, and will only align them.

The Scaled option is the one I am most interested in here. This option will automatically scale the images DOWN to fit them in their orientation if the Alignment/scale factor is 0.5 or below. You can have the images upscale as well if you want by increasing the factor greater than 0.5. I personally try to avoid all upscaling, so I leave it at the default (0.5):

Horizontal montage, scaling to least height automatically (Scaled merging).

Horizontal montage, Aligned merging (no scaling).

Padding

There is also a great option to adjust the padding between images when creating the montage. This value is in pixels. Super handy to allow some space between your images:

Horizontal array with 20px padding between images

Frame

There is also an option to include a colored frame around each of the individual images if you want (I don’t personally use this option - but it’s nice that it’s there!).

Cycle layers

This is a nice option to automatically rotate the images in the stack (effectively swapping through which images belong where).

Output as

This is a very handy option for those of us who may like to fiddle even more after generating the montage. You can output the entire montage as a single layer or as multiple layers for further adjustments (I used this option to move layers around in the first image so I could place text on the canvas).

Custom Layout

Ok, so a quick explanation of how to define your own custom layouts is in order, I think. It may seem daunting at first, but I promise it’s not as bad as it looks!

The command for a custom layout is built up from two things: an identifier for orientation (V or H), and an index number for the image.

It helps to always think of it in terms of two “spaces” where you can add images. So if you were working in a horizontal orientation, you’d have two spaces to designate images (or sub nests) left and right.

For instance, let’s start simply and create a simple 2 image horizontal layout. Assume we want to use images 0 and 1 from our list. We would type the following into the Custom layout input in G’MIC:

H(0,1)

In my case, this would produce:

Custom parameter: H(0, 1)

Now, what if we wanted to have a third image in this row? We would just add another horizontal orientation in place of one of the images. So, if we replace the second image in the command with another horizontal layout we would then have 3 images in a row:

H(0, H(1, 2))

Custom parameter: H(0, H(1, 2))

As you can see, it helps to think of it in pairs. The first command said, put image 0 first, then for the next image, use the horizontal layout of images 1 & 2 (in green).

If we wanted, we could instead have said that we wanted the images on the right to be vertically fit by changing the second H to V:

H(0, V(1, 2))

Custom parameter: H(0, V(1, 2))

Of course, you can sub-nest these layouts as deep as you’d like. So to continue the example, if we wanted to have the bottom right image from above actually be another two images in a horizontal orientation:

H(0, V(1, H(2, 3)))

Custom parameter: H(0, V(1, H(2, 3)))

If you’re ever unsure of which image is which index number, just refer to the G’MIC preview window. The image indices are visible over the images they belong to (super helpful). You can always switch over to horizontal or vertical layout to get an overview of the images that are loaded up.

(New!) Rotation

This is the only problem with working with someone like David… He’s usually working too quickly and adding stuff faster than I can write posts about it! Since I started writing this post, he has already added a neat little feature to the custom code that allows you to rotate any arbitrary image or block by prepending an “R” to it’s section.

Using the 3 image montage from above ( H(0, V(1, 2)) ), but adding an R in front of the vertical block yields:

H(0, RV(1, 2))

To rotate again, just add another R in front:

H(0, RRV(1, 2))

Conclusion

I don’t often arrange my images like this, but I’m not sure if it’s more because I’m too lazy to manually arrange them or not…

I did look around to see if there were other options briefly after David wrote this, and found something called BlogStop. Apparently this is a piece of commercial software to create a montage and includes some sort of blogging integration. It’s also a $49USD piece of software! So consider a small donation to David if you’ve got a few spare bucks around - I know it makes him happy (I’m pretty sure he’s using donations to buy hot chocolates in his lab while he works…).

Libre Graphics Meeting 2014 in Leipzig, Germany

Mon, 05 May 2014 17:13:00 -0500

What an amazing trip!

Leipzig Market Little Planet Panorama

I was half joking when I mentioned to schumaml on irc a few months ago that I should come out to LGM2014 and do a photography workshop using GIMP. Half joking turned into half-serious, and half-serious turned into “holy crap, I better buy my plane tickets!"…

The LGM team accepted a workshop proposal by Tobias Ellinghaus and myself to talk about darktable and FL/OSS photography workflows. I was also presenting alongside David Tschumperlé and Jérome Boulanger on a retrospective look at G’MIC over the last couple of years! (The title of the presentation was “A 2012-2013 retrospective of the G’MIC project : New features from artists/developers collaborations”).

To say that I was excited is an understatement! I was finally going to get a chance to meet the GIMP team face to face (I idle in the GIMP channel on irc quite a bit)! I was also going to be able to hang out with David, who I collaborate quite often with. Also, none other than Rolf Steinort was also going to be there!

So after driving 700 miles to South Florida to drop our daughter off with grandma, Dot and I jumped on a plane in Miami! We finally hopped off the plane in Leipzig the next afternoon and explored a small bit of the city in preparation for the photowalk the next morning… (after first making a quick stop at the GIMP apartment where Michael and Femke were working on CoC stuff for LGM).

Photowalk

The next morning was a little rough for me, being jet-lagged by about 6 hours. I finally made it out and headed over to the University where I expected to have a small handful of people to meet (it ended up being a few more than I had anticipated, which was nice).

Kaffeehaus Riquet (Leipzig, Germany)

We had a stroll through town while making a few stops, such as Nikolaikirche (Church of St. Nicholas), the home of the Monday Demonstrations in East Germany. I probably should have done a better job directing the photowalk, but honestly I was mostly busy being enthralled by the city itself…

I mean, how can you not be when you turn a corner to find this:

Nikolaikirche (Church of St. Nicholas) and Tobias

Or seeing this when peeking inside the church:

Ceiling view of Nikolaikirche atrium

Of course, Leipzig is home to Johannes Sebastian Bach and his final resting place just happens to be in this church:

Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church)

To get ready for my trip, I listened to Toccata and Fugue in D minor a LOT:

Panorama View of Thomaskirche

While walking around the city we also happened into the Leipzig Market. It was a bit of an overcast morning with a sun that was attempting (in vain) to break through the gray cloud cover…

Leipzig Old Town Hall with the sun behing the cupola…

One of the nice thing about overcast days is that the sun gets a perfect diffusion material - clouds! This makes for much softer light and prettier portraits when shot outside. We stopped for a moment for me to bring out my reflectors and talk a little bit about using them in various configurations for fill on days like that.

My favorite model demonstrating using a reflector to brighten shadows

What’s nice about using natural light and reflectors is that you get immediate feedback on what the modifiers are doing to your scene - you can see what the reflector is doing in real-time to adjust and modify to taste.

This was actually funny because we had someone holding the reflector for us, and a group of about 10 people (some with big, fancy gear) all firing cameras at one woman in the middle of the market. This actually got quite a few passer-bys to stop and wonder what we were doing (and I even saw a few people snapping photos with their phones of us!). I wonder if they thought we were papparazzi, or doing a model fashion shoot?

Of course, there were cool things to shoot at some of the vendors…

Flowers in the Leipzig Market

Even cooler to shoot some of the people there as well…

Organ Grinder in the Leipzig Market

First Day of LGM!

I was so busy the first day of LGM meeting new people, seeing faces for the first time, and attending the presentations that I didn’t really grab any photos of the event! (Yet another reason why I’d be a horrible photojournalist…).

There were some fun and great presentations given on the first day, though! Pippin led the proceedings off with the “State of Libre Graphics” giving a nice overview of various projects. Nathan Willis gave a neat statistical presentation on traffic patterns of users across different discussion forms, and Peter Sikking did a great presentation on “UI Design for Full GEGL Integration in GIMP” (slides can be found here):

Of course, immediately following Peter I presented with David Tschumperlé and Jerome Boulanger on a retrospective of G’MIC over the past two years:

There were a ton of other great presentations, and I learned quite a bit (there was cool stuff from the Commons Machinery for instance on contextualizing creative works).

Speaking of David Tschumperlé, it was awesome to finally be able to meet and talk in person (after spending the past year collaborating on a few different things for G’MIC)! We were able to talk about many different things, and during the course of the week Jerome even managed to create a great filter to generate grain from a small sample in G’MIC!

David Tschumperlé poses in front of Thomaskirche...

We wandered around that evening a bit taking in the sights and grabbing some dinner…

No, I have no idea what Jerome Boulanger is pointing at...

Rolf Steinort (Meet the GIMP)!

Here was someone I was also really looking forward to meeting, Rolf Steinort (Meet the GIMP)! Rolf had to work earlier in the week, but was able to catch a train over for the second day of LGM. This was awesome. If you’ve ever spent a lot of time learning great things from someone online, you can imagine how neat it was to finally be able to sit down and spend some time with them.

We spent some time wandering around the city together and talking (he’s German and was able to give us some great history and context to our surroundings). It was a blast!

We even passed by a €1 store where they were selling really inexpensive goods, and I got the idea to build a quick light modifier (I didn’t want to pack too heavily for the trip). I had built a couple of cheap and quick ringflash modifiers previously and thought it might be fun to build one to use during the meeting. So I dropped in and spent about €5 purchasing a pasta straining bowl (colander), some cups and some tape.

I borrowed a knife from Rolf, and while we sat at a cafe getting milkshakes (Milchbar Pinguin) I hacked at the plastic bowl and taped stuff together to build a franken-ringflash. This was a very handy light modifier to have for the LGM party later that evening:

People were patient with me using the ringflash…

Rolf managed to capture a great shot of me…

just as I was getting ready to photograph him (though intimidating to the subject, the light quality is uniquely ring-flash-y):

Rolf Steinort through a DIY ringflash…

One nice thing about the way this ringflash was constructed (not being attached to the camera permanently), is that I can easily just hold it off to the side to use it as a makeshift beauty dish as well:

David lit from the side using the ringflash as a beauty dish instead…

The rest of my photos from the LGM party night are here (or here as a Flickr set):

Not too bad for €5 worth of cheap goods from a corner store!

Yes, many people have asked for a build guide or tutorial for making the same ringflash you see here - I’ll be glad to write one up as soon as I finish processing photos from the trip! So stay tuned!

Some Portraits

Yes, the DIY ringflash was fun to play with, but I really wanted to use the opportunity to grab something a little more polished of the GIMP team. Thanks to Tobias Ellinghaus from the darktable team, I was able to borrow his umbrella and stand to shoot some quick one-light portraits.

I was also able to borrow Rolf’s tripod to hold up my diffusion panel as a makeshift umbrella in a pinch. This is how I shot the sample image I used for the workshop on Saturday:

Image used for the photo workshop on Saturday

Including an outtake that I thought was cute:

I didn’t have the luxury of my own room to setup when it came time to shoot everone else, though. I had to do my best with a small area at the top of the stairs in the University, next to the main meeting room…

Not the most ideal situation, but sometimes a challenge is fun! I setup very close to a single wall with Tobias’ umbrella on a lightstand. The chair for the subjects was about a foot from the wall and the umbrella was about the same distance away. We moved out from the back wall to let it fall to gray (which was tough because umbrellas like to spill a lot of light everywhere!).

In the end I feel like I got some neat portraits out of it.

Rolf sat in for me while I adjusted lighting ratios, and I got a pretty nice photo of him in the process…

Rolf Steinort (Meet the GIMP)

Not everyone looked so somber! Antenne wouldn’t stop laughing and grinning long enough for me to get a serious photo, so I opted for one that suited her better:

Antenne

Ryan Lerch jumped in for one of my favorite portraits of the series in a more somber look:

Ryan

While ginger coons had a slightly brighter portrait…

ginger coons

GIMP Portraits

The set of portraits that I really wanted to grab while I was at LGM was of all of the GIMP team who were able to attend. I wanted to put faces to the people who were giving their time and expertise to all of us in improving and maintaining such an important piece of software to me and my pursuits.

These are the people working hard to bring us such a great piece of software like GIMP. They donate their talents to the software that many of us use every day (and sometimes take for granted perhaps). So remember to donate whenever you can!

In no particular order:

Jehan

Ville

Simon

Null

Michael

Mitch

Peter

Pippin

Sven

I can’t thank the GIMP team enough for letting me tag along this year to LGM. It really was wonderful getting to meet everyone!

darktable Portraits

While at LGM I also got to meet and make friends with the darktable team as well! These guys were a lot of fun to hang out with, and Tobias opened the Photo Workshop on Saturday with a great intro to darktable! So I couldn’t pass up a chance to shoot their portraits as well:

Tobias

Simon

Johannes

I’m actually missing a portrait of Pascal for some reason. I must have spaced out and didn’t chase him down to get him to sit for a quick shot. I’m sorry Pascal!

Before I completely finished wrapping up the last shoot at LGM, Dot had a great idea to shoot the darktable team as an homage to Mick Rocks famous cover for Queen II:

Which led to a photograph so funny that I was laughing the entire time while editing it!

In Conclusion

This was an amazing trip! The opportunity to meet so many smart and talented people working hard on free software was just incredible. Everyone was quite passionate about what they were doing, and so many great ideas and discussions were had! I can’t recommend it enough if you’ve ever considered attending! Just go!

If you want to see the complete set of photos I took while I was there, I have them all in an album on Flickr here:

LGM2014 Album by Pat David

2.5D Parallax Animated Photo Tutorial (using Free Software)

Mon, 17 Feb 2014 12:41:00 -0600

I had been fiddling with creating these 2.5D parallax animated photos for quite a few years now, but there had recently been a neat post by Joe Fellows that brought it into the light again.

The reason I had originally played with the idea is part of a long, sad story involving my wedding and an out-of-focus camcorder that resulted in my not having any usable video of my wedding (in 2008). I did have all of the photographs, though. So as a present to my wife, I was going to re-create the wedding with these animated photos (I’m 99% sure she doesn’t ever read my blog - so if anyone knows her don’t say anything! I can still make it a surprise!).

So I had been dabbling with creating these in my spare time over a few years, and it was really neat to see the work done by Joe Fellows for the World Wildlife Fund. Here is that video:

WWF PARALLAX SEQUENCE from Make Productions on Vimeo.
He followed that up with a great video walking through how he does it:

I’m writing here today to walk through the methods I had been using for a while to create the same effect, but entirely with Free/Open Source Software…

Open Source Software Method

Using nothing but Free/Open Source Software, I was able to produce the same effect here:

Joe uses Adobe software to create his animations (Photoshop & After Effects). I neither have, nor want, Photoshop or After Effects.

What I do have is GIMP and Blender!

+ =

What I also don’t have (but would like) is access to the World Wildlife Fund photo archive. Large, good photographs make a huge difference in the final results you’ll see.

What I do have access to are some great old photographs of Ziegfeld Follies Girls. For the purposes of this tutorial we’ll use this one:

Click here to download the full size image.

This is a long post.
It’s long because I’ve written hopefully detailed enough steps that a completely new user of Blender can pick it up and get something working. For more experienced users, I’m sorry for the length.

As a consolation prize, I’ve linked to my final .blend file just below if anyone wants to download it and see what I finally ended up with at the end of the tutorial. Enjoy!

Here’s an outline of my steps if it helps…

Pick a good image
Think in planes
Into GIMP

Isolate woman as new layer
Rebuild background as separate layer (automatically or manually)
Export isolated woman and background layer

Into Blender

Enable "Import Images as Planes" Addon
Import Images as Planes
Basic environment setup
Add some depth
Animate woman image mesh
Animate camera
Animate mesh
Render

File downloads:

Download the .blend file
These files are being made available under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license (CC-BY-SA-NC). You’re free to use them, modify them, and share them as long as you attribute me, Pat David, as the originator of the file.

Consider the Source Material

What you probably want to look for if you are just starting with these are images with a good separation between a fore/middle ground subject and the background. This will make your first attempts a bit easier until you get the hang of what’s going on. Even better if there are mostly sharp edges differentiating your subject from the background (to help during masking/cutting).

You’ll also want an image bigger than your rendering size (for instance, mine are usually rendered at 1280×720). This is because you want to avoid blowing up your pixels when rendering if possible. This will make more sense later, but for now just try to use source material that’s larger than your intended render size.

Thinking in Planes

The trick to pre-visualizing these is to consider slicing up your image into separate planes. For instance, with our working image, I can see immediately that it’s relatively simple. There is the background plane, and one with the woman/box:

Simple 2-plane visualization of the image.

This is actually all I did in my version of this in the video. This is nice because for the most part the edges are all relatively clean as well (making the job of masking an easier one).

One of my previous tests had shown this idea of planes a little bit clearer:

Yes, that’s my daughter at the grave of H.P. Lovecraft with a flower.

So we’ve visualized a simple plan - isolate the woman and platform from the background. Great!

Into GIMP!

So I will simply open the base image in GIMP to do my masking and exporting each of the individual image planes. Remember, when we’re done, we want to have 2 images, the background and the woman/platform (with alpha transparency):

What my final cleaned up backplate should look like.

My isolated woman/platform image.

Get Ready to Work

Once in GIMP I will usually duplicate the base image layer a couple of times (this way I have the original untouched image at the bottom of layer stack in case I need it or screw up too badly). The top-most layer is the one I will be masking the woman from. The middle layer will become my new background plate.

Isolating the Woman

To isolate the woman, I’ll need to add a Layer Mask to the top-most layer (if you aren’t familiar with Layer Masks, the go back and read my previous post on them to brush up.

I initialize my layer mask to White (full opacity). Now anywhere I paint black on my layer mask, will make that area transparent on this layer. I also usually turn off the visibility of all the other layers when I am working (so I can see what I’m doing - otherwise the layers beneath would show through and I wouldn’t know where I was working). This is what my layer dialog looks like at this point:

Masking the Woman

Some of these headings are beginning to sound like book titles (possibly romance?) “Isolating the Woman”, “Masking the Woman”…

There’s a few different ways you can proceed at this point to isolate the woman. Really it depends on what you’re most comfortable with. One way is to use Paths to trace out a path around the subject. Another way is to paint directly on the Layer Mask.

All of them suck.

Sorry. There is no fast and easy method of doing this well. This is also one of the most important elements to getting a good result, so don’t cheap out now. Take your time and pull a nice clean mask, whatever method you choose.

For this tutorial, we can just paint directly onto our Layer Mask. Check to make sure the Layer Mask is active (white border around it that you won’t be able to see because the mask is white) in the Layer palette, and make sure your foreground color is set to Black. Then it’s just a matter of choosing a paintbrush you like, and start painting around your subject.

I tend to use a simple round brush with a 75% hardness. I’ll usually start painting, then take advantage of the Shift key modifier to draw straight lines along my edges. For finer details I’ll drop down into a really small brush, and stay a bit larger for easier things.

To illustrate, here’s a 3X speedrun of me pulling a quick mask of our image:

To erase the regions that are left, I’ll usually use the Fuzzy Select Tool, grow the selection by a few pixels, and then Bucket Fill that region with black to make it transparent (you can see me doing it at about 2:13 in the video).

Now I have a layer with the woman isolated from the background. I can just select that layer and export it to a .PNG file to retain transparency.

File → Export

Name the file with a .png extension, and make sure that the “Save color values from transparent pixels” is checked to save the alpha transparency.

Rebuilding the Background

Now that you have the isolated woman as an image, it’s time to remove her and the platform from the background image to get a clean backplate. There’s a few ways to go about this, the automated way, or the manual way.

Automated Background Rebuild

The automated way is to use an Inpainting algorithm to do the work for you. I had previously written about using the new G’MIC patch-based Inpainting algorithm, and it does a pretty decent job on this image. If you want to try this method you should first read up about using it here (and have G’MIC installed of course).

To use it in this case was simple. I had already masked out the woman with a layer mask, so all I had to do was Right-Click on the layer mask, and choose “Mask to Selection” from the menu.

Then just turn on the visibility of my “Background” layer (and toggle the visibility of the isolated woman layer off) and activate my “Background” layer by clicking on it.

Then I would grow the selection by a few pixels:

Select → Grow

I grew it by about 4 pixels, then sharpened the selection to remove anti-aliasing:

Select → Sharpen

Finally, make sure my foreground color is pure red (255, 0, 0), and bucket fill that selection. Now I can just run the G’MIC Inpainting [patch-based] against it to Inpaint the region:

Filters → G’MIC

Repair → Inpaint [patch-based] Let it run for a while (it’s intensive), and in the end my layer now looks like this:

Not bad at all, and certainly usable for our purposes!

If I don’t want to use it as is, it’s certainly a better starting point for doing some selective healing with the Heal Tool to clean it up.

Manual Background Rebuild

Manually is exactly as it sounds. We basically want to erase the woman and platform from the image to produce a clean background plate. For this I would normally just use a large radius Clone Tool for mostly filling in areas, and then the Heal Tool for cleaning it up to look smoother and more natural.

It doesn’t have to be 100% perfect, remember. It only needs to look good just behind the edges of your foreground subjects (assuming the parallax isn’t too extreme). Not to mention one of the nice things about this workflow is that it’s relatively trivial later to make modifications and push them into Blender.

Rinse & Repeat

For this tutorial we are now done. We’ve got a clean backplate and an isolated subject that we will be animating. If you wanted to get a little more complex just continue the process starting with the next layer closer to the camera. An example of this is the last girl in my video, where I had separated her from the background, and then her forearm from her body. In that case I had to rebuild the image of her chest that was behind her forearm to account for the animation.

Example of a three-layer separation (notice the rebuilt dress texture)

Into Blender

Now that we have our source material, it’s time to build some planes. Actually, this part is trivially easy thanks to the Import Images as Planes Blender addon.

The key to this addon is that it will automatically import an image into Blender, and assign it to a plane with the correct aspect ratio.

Enable Import Images as Planes

This addon is not enabled by default (at least in my Blender), so we just need to enable it. You can access all of the addons by first going to User Preferences in Blender:

Then into the Addons window:

I find it faster to get what I need by searching in this window for “images”:

To enable the Addon, just put check the small box in the upper right corner of the Addon. Now you can go back into the 3D View.

Back in the 3D View, you can also select the default cube and lamp (Shift - Right Click), and delete them (X key). (Selected objects will have an orange outline highlighting them).

Import Images as Planes

We can now bring in the images we exported from GIMP earlier. The import option is available in:

File → Import → Images as Planes

At this point you’ll be able to navigate to the location of your images and can select them for import (Shift-Click to select multiple):

Before you do the import though, have a look at the options that are presented to you (bottom of the left panel). We need to turn on a couple of options to make things work how we want:

For the Import Options we want to Un-Check the option to “Align Planes”. This will import all of the image planes already stacked with each other in the same location.

Under Material Settings we want to Check both Shadeless and Use Alpha so our image planes will not be affected by lamps and will use the transparency that is already there. We also want to make sure that Z Transparency is pressed.

Everything else can stay at their default settings.

Go ahead and hit the “Import Images as Planes” button now.

Some Basic Setup Stuff

At this point things may look less than interesting. We’re getting there. First we need to cover just a few basic things about getting around in Blender for those that might be new to it.

In the 3D window, your MouseWheel controls the zoom level, and your Middle Mouse button controls the orbit. Right-Click selects objects, and Left-Click will place the cursor. Shift-Middle Click will allow you to pan.

At this point your image planes should already be located in the center of the view. Go ahead and roll your MouseWheel to zoom into the planes a bit more. You should notice that they just look like boring gray planes:

I thought you said we were importing images?!

To see what we’re doing in 3D View, we’ll need to get Blender to show the textures. This is easily accomplished in the toolbar for this view by changing the Viewport Shading:

Now that’s more like it!

At this point I personally like to get my camera to an initial setup as well, so zoom back out and Right-Click on your camera:

We want to reset all of the default camera transformations and rotations by setting those values to 0 (zero). This will place your camera at the origin facing down.

Now change your view to Camera View (looking through the actual camera) by hitting zero (0) on your keyboard numberpad (not 0 along the top of your alpha keys).

Yes, this zero, not the other one!

You’ll be staring at a blank gray viewport at this point. All we have to do now is move the camera back (along the Z-axis), until we can see our working area. I like to use the default Blender grid as a rough approximation of my working area.

To pull the camera back, hit the G key (this will move the active object), and then press the Z key (this will constrain movement along the Z-axis. Slowly pull your mouse cursor away from the center of the screen, and you should see the camera view getting further away from your image planes. As I said, I like to use the default grid as a rough approximation, so I’ll zoom out until I am just viewing the width of the grid:

I’ve also found that working at small scales is a little tough, so I like to scale my image planes up to roughly match my camera view/grid. So we can select all the image planes in the center of our view by pressing the B key and dragging a rectangle over the image planes.

To scale them, press the S key and move the mouse cursor away from the center again. Adjust until the images just fill the camera view:

Image planes scaled up to just fit the camera/grid

This will make the adjustments a little easier to do. Now we’re ready to start fiddling with things!

Adding Some Depth

What we have now is all of our image planes in the exact same location. What we want to do is to offset the background image further away from the camera view (and the other planes).

Right-click on your image planes. If you click multiple times you will cycle through each object under your cursor (in this case between the background/woman image planes). With your background image plane selected, hit the G key to move it, and the Z key again to constrain movement along the Z-axis. (If you find that you’ve accidentally selected the woman image plane, just hit the ESC key to escape out of the action).

This time you’ll want to move the mouse cursor towards the center of the viewport to push the background further back in depth. Here’s where I moved mine to:

We also need to scale that image plane back up so that its apparent size is similar to what it was before we pushed it back in depth. With the background image plane still selected, hit the S key and pull the mouse away from the center again to scale it up. Make it around the same size as it was before (a little bigger than the width of the camera viewport):

Keep in mind that the further back the background plane is, the more pronounced the parallax effect will be. Use a relatively light touch here to maintain a realistic sense of depth.

What’s neat at this point is that if we were not going to animate any of the image planes themselves, we would be about done. For example, if you select the camera again (Right-click on the camera viewport border) you can hit the G key and move the camera slightly. You should be able to clearly see the parallax effect of the background being behind the woman.

Animating the Image Plane

After Effects has a neat tool called “Puppet Tool” that allowed Joe to easily deform his image to appear animated. We don’t have such a tool exactly in Blender at the moment, but it’s trivial to emulate the effects on the image plane using Shape Keys.

What Shape Keys does is simple. You will take a base mesh, add a Shape Key, and then deform the mesh in any way you’d like. Then you can animate the Shape Key deformation of the mesh over time. Multiple Shape Keys will blend together.

We are going to use this function to animate our woman (as opposed to some much more complex animation abilities in Blender).

Before we can deform the woman image plane, though, we need a good mesh to deform. At the moment the woman plane contains only 4 vertices in the mesh. We are going to make this much denser before we do anything else.

We want to subdivide the image plane with the woman. So Right-click to select the woman image plane. Then hit the Tab key to change into edit mode. All of the vertices should already be active (selected), they will all be highlighted if they are (if not, hit the A key to toggle selection of all vertices until they are):

What we want to do is to Subdivide the mesh until we get a desired level of density. With all of the vertices in the plane selected, hit the W key and choose Subdivide from the menu. Repeat until the mesh is sufficiently dense for you. In my case, I subdivided six times and the result looks like this:

If you’ve got a touch of OCD in you, you might want to reduce the unused vertices in the mesh. This is not necessary, but might make things a bit cleaner to look at. To remove those vertices, first hit the A key to de-select all the vertices. Then hit the C key to circle-select. Your should see a circle select region where your mouse is. You can increase/decrease the size of the circle using your MouseWheel. Just click now on areas that are NOT your image to select those vertices:

Select all the vertices in a rough outline around your image, and press the X key to invoke the Delete menu. You can just choose Vertices from this menu. You should be left with a simpler mesh containing only your woman image. Hit the Tab key again to exit Edit mode.

Here is what things look like at the moment:

To clear a little space while I work, I am going to hide the Transform and Object Tools palettes from my view. They can be toggled on/off by pressing the N key and T key respectively.

I am also going to increase the size of the Properties panel on the right. This can be done by clicking and dragging on it’s edge (the cursor will change to a resize cursor):

We will want to change the Properties panel to show the Object Data for the woman image plane. Click on that icon to show the Object Data panel. You will see the entry for Shape Keys in this panel.

We want to add a new Shape Key to this mesh, so press the + button two times to add two new keys to this mesh (one key will be the basis, or default position, while the other will be for the deformation we want). After doing this, you should see this in the Shape Keys panel:

Now, the next time we are in Edit mode for this mesh, it will be assigned to this particular Shape Key. We can just start editing vertices by hand now if we want, but there’s a couple of things we can do to really make things much easier.

Proportional Editing Mode

We should turn on Proportional Editing Mode. This will make the deformation of our mesh a bit smoother by allowing our changes to effect nearby vertices as well. So in your 3D View press the Tab key again to enter edit mode.

Once in Edit mode, there is a button for accessing Proportional Editing Mode. Once here, just click on Enable to turn it on.

To test things out, you can Right-click to select a vertex in your mesh, and use the G key to move it around. You should see nearby vertices being pulled along with it. Rolling your MouseWheel up or down will increase/decrease the radius of the proportional pull. Remember, to get out of the current action you can just hit the ESC key on your keyboard to exit without making any changes.

If you really screw up and accidentally make a mess of your mesh, it’s easy to get back to the base mesh again. Just hit Tab to get out of Edit mode, then in the Shape Keys panel you can hit the “−” button to remove that shape key. Just don’t forget to hit “+” again to add another key back when you want to try again.

Pivot Point

Blender lets you control where the current pivot point of any modifications you make to the mesh should be. By default it will be the median point of all selected objects, which is fine. You may occasionally want to specify where the point of rotation should be manually.

The button for adjusting the pivot point is in the toolbar of the 3D View. I’ll usually only use Median Point or 3D Cursor when I’m doing these. Remember: Left-clicking the mouse in 3D View will set the cursor location. You can leave it at Median Point for now.

To Animate!

Ok, now we can actually get to the animating of the mesh. We need to decide what we’d like the mesh to look like it’s doing first, though. For this tutorial let’s do a couple of simple animations to get a feel for how the system works. I’m going to focus on changing two things.

First we will rotate the womans head slightly down from it’s base position and second we will rotate her arm down slightly as well.

Let’s start with rotating her head. I will use the circle-select in the 3D View again to select a bunch of vertices in the center of her head (no need to exactly select all the vertices all the way around):

In the 3D View, press the R key to rotate those vertices. With Proportional Editing turned on you should see not only your selected vertices, but nearby vertices also rotating. While in this operation, the mousewheel will adjust the radius of the proportional editing influence (the circle around my rotation in my screenshot shows where my radius was set):

Remember: hit the ESC key if you need to cancel out of any operation without applying anything. Go ahead and rotate the head down a bit until you like how it looks. When you get it where you’d like it, just Left-click the mouse to set the rotation. Subtle is the name of the game here. Try small movements at first!

Now let’s move on to rotating the arm a bit. Hit the A key to de-select all the vertices, and choose a bunch of vertices along the arm (again, I use the circle-select C key to select a bunch at once easily):

If you end up selecting a couple of vertices you don’t want, remember that you can Shift + Right-click to toggle adding/removing vertices to the selection set. For example, in my image above I didn’t want to select any vertices that were too close to her face to avoid warping it too much. I also went ahead and made sure to select as many vertices around the arm as I could.

I also Left-click in the location you see in my screenshot to place the cursor roughly at her shoulder. For the arm I also changed the Pivot Point to be the 3D Cursor because I want the arm to pivot at a natural location.

Again, hit the R key to begin rotating the arm. If you find the rotation pulls vertices from too far away and modifies them, scroll your mousewheel to decrease the radius of the proportional editing. In my example I had the radius of influence down very low to avoid warping the womans face too much.

As before, rotate to where you like it, and Left-click the mouse when you’re happy.

Finally, you can test how the overall mesh modifications will look with your Shape Key. Hit the Tab key to get out of Edit Mode and back into Object Mode. All of your mesh modifications should snap back to what they were before you changed anything.

Don’t Panic.

What has happened is that the mesh is currently set so that the Shape Key we were modifying has a zero influence value right now:

The Value slider for the shape key is 0 right now. If you click and drag in this slider you can change the influence of this key from 0 - 1. As you change the value you should be seeing your woman mesh deform from it’s base position at 0, up to it’s fully deformed state at 1. Neat!

Once we’re happy with our mesh modifications, we can now move on to animating the sequence to see how things look!

Animating

So what we now want to do is to animate two different things over the course of time in the video. First we want to animate the mesh deformation we just created with Shape Keys, and second we want to animate the movement of the camera through our scene.

If you have a look just below the 3D View window, you should be seeing the Timeline window:

The Timeline window at the bottom

What we are going to do is to set keyframes for our camera and mesh at the beginning and end of our animation timeline (1-250 by default).

We should already be on the first frame by default, so let’s set the camera keyframe now. In the 3D View, Right-click on the camera border to select it (will highlight when selected). Once selected, hit the I key to bring up the keyframe menu.

You’ll see all of the options that you can keyframe here. The one we are interested in is the first, Location. Click it in the menu. This tells Blender that at frame 1 in our animation, the camera should be located at this position.

Now we can define where we’d like our camera to be at the end of the animation. So we should move the frame to 250 in the timeline window. The easiest way to do this is to hit the button to jump to the last frame in the range:

This should move the current frame to 250. Now we can just move the location of our camera slightly, and set a new keyframe for this frame. I am going to just move the camera straight up slightly:

Once position, hit the I key again and set a Location keyframe.

At this point, if you wanted to preview what the animation would look like you can press Alt-A to preview the animation so far (hit ESC when you’re done).

Now we want to do the same thing, but for the Shape Keys to deform over time from the base position to the deformed position we created earlier. In the Timeline window, get back to frame 1 by hitting the jump to first frame in range button:

Once back at frame 1, take a look at the Shape Keys panel again:

Make sure the value is 0, then Right-click on the slider and choose the first entry, Insert Keyframe:

Just like with the camera, now jump back to the last frame in the range. Then set the value slider for the Shape Keys to 1.000. Then Right-click on the Value slider again, and insert another keyframe.

This tells Blender to start the animation with no deformation on the mesh, and at the end to transition to full deformation according to the Shape Key. Conveniently Blender will calculate all of the vertices locations between the two for us for a smooth transition.

As before, now try hitting Alt-A to preview the full animation.

Congratulations, you made it!

Getting a Video Out

If you’re happy with the results, then all that’s left now is to render out the video! There are a few settings we need to specify first, though. So switch over to the Render tab in Blender:

The main settings you’ll want to adjust here are the resolution X & Y and the frame rate. I rendered out at 1280×720 at 100% and Frame Rate of 30 fps. Change your settings as appropriate.

Finally, we just need to choose what format to render out to…

If you scroll down the Render panel you’ll find the options for changing the Output. The first option allows you to choose where you’d like the output file to get rendered to (I normally just leave it as /tmp - it will be C:\tmp in windows). I also change the output format to a movie rendering type. In my screenshot it shows “H.264”, by default it will probably show “PNG”. Change it to H.264.

Once changed, you’ll see the Encoding panel become available just below it. For this test you can just click on the Presets spinner and choose H264 there as well.

Scroll back up to the top of the Render panel, and hit the big Animation button in the top center (see the previous screenshot).

Go get a cup of coffee. Take a walk. Get some fresh air. Depending on the speed of your machine it will take a while…

Once it’s finished, in your tmp directory you’ll find a file called 0001-250.avi. Fire it up and marvel at your results (or wince). Here’s the result of mine directly from the above results:

Holy crap, we made it to the end. That was really, really long.

I promise, though, that it just reads long. If you’re comfortable moving around in Blender and understand the process this takes about 10-15 minutes to do once you get your planes isolated.

Well, that’s about it. I hope this has been helpful, and that I didn’t muck anything up too badly. As always, I’d love to see others results!

[Update] Reader David notes in the comments that if the render results look a little ‘soft’ or ‘fuzzy’, increasing the Anti-Aliasing size can help sharpen things up a bit (it’s located on the render panel just below render dimensions). Thanks for the tip David!

Getting Around in GIMP - Plug-ins and Scripts Management

Mon, 10 Feb 2014 17:22:00 -0600

I had written last week about building the latest G’MIC beta to test out the fancy-schmancy new patch-based inpainting algorithm that the team had cooked up. In the process of building it and testing it, I thought it might be useful for other GIMP users out there to briefly touch on the subject of installing and managing Script-Fu scripts and Plug-ins.

Plug-Ins/Scripts Folder Location

GIMP has a very handy feature that’s tucked away in the Preferences window, and that is the ability to have GIMP search for Plug-Ins and Scripts wherever you want to put them. You can access this through the Preferences:

Edit → Preferences

There are all kinds of neat settings you can feel free to play with here, but for this post we want to look specifically under the Folders section:

There we will find two sections, one for the location of Plug-Ins and the other for Scripts. These entries tell GIMP the location of each, respectively. I happen to be using one of Partha’s portable GIMP builds so don’t go off by my paths obviously, but the principle is the the same - you can tell GIMP where to look for Plug-Ins/Scripts wherever you’d like on your filesystem.

Adding a New Folder Location

So, let’s say you try downloading a new Plug-In and you’d like to try using it. You may be confused initially about where the Plug-In should be installed or unzipped on your machine. Well, you get to decide where that is if you remember to set a path here.

I will often create a new folder somewhere on my machine specifically to hold Plug-Ins I am trying out. This has the benefit of not mucking up your GIMP install as well. If a Plug-In isn’t working correctly, you can just remove the path from this Preference window to skip trying to use it (or if you decide to upgrade/reinstall GIMP - it won’t muck with your downloaded scripts/plug-ins).

For instance, if I wanted to install the G’MIC plugin, I would create a new folder somewhere to hold it, unzip the files into that folder, and then add a new entry in GIMP to look in that folder for Plug-Ins.

Adding a new path is relatively easy:

Adding a new path for Plug-Ins is simple.

Simply hit the New button, and then the Folder button. Navigate to your directory you want to add, and you’re done.

For example, you’ll notice that my last path for Plug-Ins is where I built my G’MIC beta:

C:\petit-msys-mingw-64bits-gimp28\GMIC-GIMP-PLUGIN-64bit-WIN

This works the exact same way for scripts.

Using Dropbox to Sync

I actually work on multiple machines most of the time. At work I’m using Windows 7, but at home I’m usually running OSX on a couple of machines (with the occasional *nix and Win7 thrown in for good measure). One thing that helps me stay in a consistent environment with GIMP is the second to the last entry in that Plug-Ins folder location list above.

C:\Users\patrickd\Dropbox\GIMP plugins

I use the file syncing service Dropbox. It’s nice in that it will automatically sync the contents of a directory across all the computers I have it setup on. (Of course, there are many other services that do this - but they fundamentally work the same). Two very important folders in my Dropbox account are “GIMP scripts” and “GIMP plugins”. As long as I set each of these folders as a path in my local GIMP install, all the scripts and plug-ins will sync and be available to me, no matter which computer I’m on (just don’t forget that Plug-Ins are usually compiled for a particular OS/architecture).

Just a quick tip at the moment that I figured might be helpful to those that didn’t know about it. “The More You Know”, right?

[Addendum]

+Alexandre Prokoudine pointed me to a post over at Libre Graphics World that not only mentions this same topic, but covers much more as well (brushes and patterns and palettes, oh my!). I highly recommend having a look at that post:

Libre Graphics World
GIMP add-ons: types, installation, management

Getting Around in GIMP - G'MIC Inpainting (Content Aware Fill)

Tue, 04 Feb 2014 17:33:00 -0600

One of the advantages of hanging around people smarter than me is that I get to see some really neat things as they are being developed. Lucky for me, +David Tschumperlé let’s me see interesting things that they are hacking on over at G’MIC.

Of course, if you’re reading me occasionally you’ll remember that last time I got a chance to work on something with G’MIC, we ended up making some fun film emulation presets. This time I’m not involved other than to play, and it’s really neat!

It is the latest work on the patch-based inpainting algorithm.

I had previously written about using the Resynthesizer plug-in (with the Heal Selection script) for GIMP to produce results similar to Photoshop’s “Content Aware Fill”, but I think at this point I’m going to switch over to using G’MIC full-time for this type of work.

What the algorithms basically do is take a given region in an image that needs to be replaced, search around that region for textures to fill it with, determine what works well, then fills it in (see the previous post for a visual explanation of this).

Using Resynthesizer results (mouseover to see.)

Well, the folks over at G’MIC have been working hard on improving their algorithm for doing this type of inpainting, focusing on results and speed. Let’s have a look…

G’MIC Inpainting

I’m using some examples from my previous post on Resynthesizer so we can compare the results. To access the command, it will be in G’MIC:

Filters → G'MIC

then,

Repair → Inpaint [patch-based]

A major difference between Inpaint and Resynthesizer is the ability to fine-tune the algorithm for your image. Resynthesizer only really has a couple of parameters - how big of a search area to use around your selection, and to restrict the texture search to all-around, sides, or top/bottom.

By contrast, here are the parameters for the Inpainting [patch-based] algorithm:

Don’t let it scare you away just yet…

In speaking with David, the primary parameters that one would use to adjust the results would mainly be the Patch size, Lookup size, and Blend size.

To experiment, I just created a duplicate of my base layer, made a freehand selection around my object to remove, sharpened the selection, and filled it with bright red (to match the mask color indicated in the G’MIC window):

Duplicate layer with red mask over object to remove.

So, let’s have a quick run with the same selection as above, but with the default settings to see where things stand:

Inpainting results with default parameter values.

Not too bad with the defaults. Not too good either, though.

As I said earlier, what’s really nice about the G’MIC Inpainting vs. Resynthesizer is that I can tune the parameters to my liking…

Tweaking

As I understand it from David, the Patch size parameter adjusts the size of the area that will be copied from the surrounding texture to place into the region. The Lookup size adjusts how far away from the inpaint region to look for new textures (similar to “sampling width” in Resynthesizer), and the Blend size adjusts how big of a blend to allow when patching.

I left the Blend size alone, but did increase the patch size to 25 (from the default of 7). I also increased the Lookup factor a bit to allow a bigger search radius from a given patch. Here are the results:

Now we're talking! (mouseover to compare to Resynthesizer) G'MIC Inpainting, patch size 25, lookup factor 0.5

This is a really nice result and I prefer the G’MIC version over the Resynthesizer output here. Being able to modify parameters to adjust how the algorithm approaches the problem really opens up many more possibilities.

Of course, here are some requisite samples using G’MIC, pulled from the previous samples I had done with Resynthesizer.

I had captured the full nadir, but needed to remove tripod legs…

G’MIC Inpainting with similar parameter values as before.

Tourists! by Josiah Mackenzie on Flickr (cb)

Patch size 14, everything else default.

Tourists and the MIB by Ekke on Flickr (cb)

Patch size 35, Lookup size 18, Lookup factor 0.25, Blend size 1

I think with just a small bit of experimentation we can get some really fantastic results. Particularly in places where it might have been harder for Resynthesizer to work well.

The best part is that this is already a part of G’MIC, and the team has been actively working to make it faster and better (I believe they are even presenting a paper on this topic later this year).

Personally, this is my future go-to for inpainting/content-aware-fill where I need it (not often, but when I do, boy am I glad we have options like this). If you haven’t already, you may want to give G’MIC a try (don’t forget there’s a ton of fun film emulation filters as well!).

Libre Graphics Meeting 2014 in Leipzig, Germany (and a Workshop Announcement)

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 20:52:00 -0600

Ok, I’m sorry I’ve been so quiet! I’m not Missing in Action, I’ve just been busy with some other things…

As a matter of fact, here are those other things!

Libre Graphics Meeting

I’ve been helping out the Libre Graphics Meeting team where I can. If you’re not familiar with them, the Libre Graphics Meeting is the meeting opportunity for many open-source graphics related projects.

This is the meeting where the hackers, designers, users, and developers of many of the most popular FLOSS graphics tools meet to share ideas and to showcase works. For many projects this is the only time that the teams can actually meet face to face to discuss new ideas and progress.

Personally I’ve been trying to help by writing/copyediting posts on the LGM website. So I haven’t had an opportunity to write here as much these paste few weeks.

If you’re reading this, please consider chipping in anything that you can to help bring these great FLOSS project teams together! Seriously, just a few dollars from each person can really, really make a difference. These are the people that are building tools that make what I do here possible, and the only way to get quality software that respects our freedoms.

Donate to the Libre Graphics Meeting Pledgie Campaign!

FL/OSS Tools in a Photographic Workflow

Sounds fancy doesn’t it? Well, not only should you donate to LGM if you can, but if you have the means you should also attend! There’s a good reason to!

I’m going to be conducting a workshop at the meeting on using FL/OSS tools in a photography workflow. I’ve got a two hour block where I’ll be having a photowalk with attendees to talk about photographic processes and maybe techniques, and then back to the meeting to discuss various methods of processing and editing the photographs using a variety of FL/OSS tools (RawTherapee, darktable, Hugin, LuminanceHDR, G’MIC, Imagemagick, and more!).

Of course, GIMP is missing from that list because I wanted to address them separately.

The GIMP team is graciously sponsoring me to attend LGM this year!

I’ve been slowly updating the tutorials on the GIMP website and attaching much more liberal licenses to them so they can be reused freely. (Yet another reason I’ve been unable to post new stuff here lately, but a good reason!). I was thinking that a look at my photographic retouching process using GIMP might be fun and helpful.

I tend to use many different software depending on what I need to do, but of course I always find myself in GIMP at the end… :)

Consider Attending LGM

So, if you’re able to - consider coming over to Leipzig, Germany April 2-5 to join us! The meeting is free to attend, and there will be many great things to see and learn about. For instance:

G'MIC
Rolf Steinort / Meet the GIMP

Meet the GIMP

darktable
Magic Lantern

These are just a few of the many, many things that will be presented at this years LGM. There’s tons more, and as I get the time I’m updating the LGM website to showcase new sneak peeks at what’s to come.

Oh, and just to help remind you, don’t forget to donate a little something if you can:

Donate to the Libre Graphics Meeting Pledgie Campaign!

GIMP Magazine Issue 5 Released

Wed, 11 Dec 2013 11:33:00 -0600

The team over at GIMP Magazine have released their latest issue, and check out that handsome gentleman on the cover!

I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking.— Derek Zoolander

Yep, +Steve Czajka and crew have pushed out yet another great issue of the magazine, and I’m not just saying that because my ugly mug is gracing the cover. This issue has my portrait retouching tutorial with the wonderful Mairi, and a really neat tutorial for emulating the results of an old analog photographic process (really old), Gum over Palladium, by +Christopher Perez. +Debi Dalio also reviews Tux Paint for kids!

Personally, I would have gone for a better looking cover model, like Mairi from the tutorial:

Mairi (see more of her here on Flickr)

As +Meet the GIMP Rolf Steinort points out, I’m glad to stand in as a Cover Girl (“Easy, Breezy, Beautiful”, right?). Speaking of Rolf, the results of his “Look Down!" photo challenge are in this issue as well!

So what are you waiting for? The issue is free to get digitally (PDF), $5 for an iPad version, and $24 for a print version (I bought a couple of print versions - of course):

View or download PDF from Issuu (FREE)
GIMP Magazine PDF Direct Download (FREE)
Buy Printed Magazine ($24)
Buy iPad Format Magazine ($5)
Watch Directors Cut Video (FREE)

Let’s set a new record for the magazine! Go get it!

Oh, one last thing. I just had to have a quick go at Christophers tutorial from this issue for doing Gum over Palladium, so here’s the cover image using his tutorial:

Mean Averaged Music Videos [G’MIC/Blender]

Thu, 05 Dec 2013 15:20:00 -0600

So I can’t leave well enough alone, as seen in my last post about mean averaging stuff. In that last post I had averaged entire music videos to see what the resulting images would look like.

My previous averaging work:

This time around I took a different path. I wanted to demonstrate what exactly was visually happening when creating these averaged images. For that I turned to the experts (by experts, I mean David Tschumperlé), and this time did all of the image averaging in G’MIC. (So a great big Thank You! to David for putting up with me while I tried to describe what I wanted).

The reason is that I wanted to show the videos turning into the final mean averaged images in realtime, as the video played. For this, David was kind enough to write me a quick G’MIC script that would do the mean average for every frame in the video, and dump the total average for each frame one by one.

Basically, each frame of my new video would be a mean average of that frame and all the frames that came before it.

Once I had all my new frames, I just needed to re-assemble them into a video. For that I turned to my ever-trusty Blender install. There was just enough control in the VSE in Blender for me to quickly do exactly what I wanted.

I created two version of my videos, one where I manually made cuts in places, and then began mean blending over each of the cuts. The other version is a straight run of the video as it’s blending, with the normal video overlayed at a very reduced transparency. By the end of the video, you should see something just like the full mean blend of the entire video.

Enough words, let’s see some images and videos!

Not surprisingly, I had some issues with these being hosted on YouTube. The music is copyrighted, so it may not play in some countries (Germany seems to be having a problem). So I apologize to my German readers. Also, due to the Content ID program, YouTube automatically places ads on these videos on behalf of the rightsholders, so they aren’t my ads - sorry about them…

Beyoncé

First up is Beyoncé with “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”. Here was the resulting mean average of the entire video:

Beyoncé - “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” (5955 frames)

I did two versions of this video, and the only difference is the music. Here is the original music, with the original video overlayed at small opacity:

Here is the same video, with a mashup by Party Ben:

P!nk

I also redid a couple of the videos by P!nk as well.

True Love

Pink - “True Love” (5803 frames)

This first video for “True Love” has my cuts in it, and re-starts the mean blending at the beginning of each cut. It’s an interesting way to view it:

Here is the same video, with the mean average building up over the entire video:

Try

Pink - “Try” (5972 frames)

As before, this first video includes my cuts, and starts the mean blending at the beginning of each cut, which is really interesting considering the acrobatics performed in the video:

And the same video, with only the build-up of the averaged frames:

Röyksopp

Remind Me

For those of you in the U.S., you may recognize the slower version of this song as the one that played with the Caveman in the GEICO commercials…

Röyksopp - “Remind Me” (6399 frames)

G’MIC

This time around, I used G’MIC to do the heavy lifting of blending these. David was kind enough to write me a quick script that would do the cumulative mean blending across all of the frames.

First I dumped all of the frames of the video to a directory. Then David supplied me with a custom G’MIC function:

foo :
  -e[] "" -v - ({'"$1"'}) -autocrop 32  -replace 32,{','}
  -m "_foo : $""=_file _nb_files=$""#" -_foo @{-1,t} -rm
  -repeat $_nb_files
    -v + -e[] "\r - Frame "$> -v -
    -i ${_file{$>+1}} -+ --/ {1+$>} -o[-1] mean_${_file{$>+1}} -rm[-1]
  -done -rm -v +

I just dropped that into a file in my directory (and named the file “video.gmic”), then ran the rather simple command:

gmic video.gmic -foo \" *.png \"

After a little while, I had all of the cumulative mean averaged frames ready for bringing into Blender to re-mux with the original video and audio tracks!

Getting Around in GIMP - Luminosity Masks Revisited

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 12:25:00 -0600

Brorfelde landscape by Stig Nygaard (cb) After adding an aggressive curve along with a mid-tone luminosity mask.

I had previously written about adapting Tony Kuyper’s Luminosity Masks for GIMP. I won’t re-hash all of the details and theory here (just head back over to that post and brush up on them there), but rather I’d like to re-visit them using channels. Specifically to have another look at using the mid-tones mask to give a little pop to images.

Luminosity Masking in darktable:
PIXLS.US - Luminosity Masking in darktable

Let’s Build Some Luminosity Masks!

The way I had approached building the luminosity masks previously were to create them as a function of layer blending modes. In this re-visit, I’d like to build them from selection sets in the Channels tab of GIMP.

For the Impatient:
I’ve also written a Script-Fu that automates the creation of these channels mimicking the steps below.

Download patdavid-luminosity-masks-2.scm

Once installed, you’ll find it under:
Filters → Generic → Luminosity Masks (patdavid)

[Update]:
Yet another reason to love open-source - Saul Goode over at this post on GimpChat updated my script to run faster and cleaner. You can get a copy of his version at the same Registry link above. (Saul’s a bit of a Script-Fu guru, so it’s always worth seeing what he’s up to!)

Mountains as Far as the Eye Can See by Western Arctic National Parklands on Flickr (cb)

We’ll start off in a similar way as we did previously.

Duplicate your base image

Either through the menus, or by Right-Clicking on the layer in the Layer Dialog:

Layer → Duplicate Layer

Desaturate the Duplicated Layer

Now desaturate the duplicated layer. I use Luminosity to desaturate:

Colors → Desaturate…

This desaturated copy of your color image represents the “Lights” channel. What we want to do is to create a new channel based on this layer.

Create a New Channel “Lights”

The easiest way to do this is to go to your Channels Dialog.

If you don’t see it, you can open it by going to:

Windows → Dockable Dialogs → Channels

The Channels dialog

On the top half of this window you’ll see the an entry for each channel in your image (Red, Green, Blue, and Alpha). On the bottom will be a list of any channels you have previously defined.

To create a new channel that will become your “Lights” channel, drag any one of the RGB channels down to the lower window (it doesn’t matter which - they all have the same data due to the desaturation operation).

Now rename this channel to something meaningful (like “L” for instance!), by double-clicking on its name (in my case it’s called “Blue Channel Copy”) and entering a new one.

This now gives us our “Lights” channel, L :

Now that we have the “Lights” channel created, we can use it to create its inverse, the “Darks” channel…

Create a New Channel “Darks”

To create the “Darks” channel, it helps to realize that it should be the inverse of the “Lights” channel. We can get this selection through a few simple operations.

We are going to basically select the entire image, then subtract the “Lights” channel from it. What is left should be our new “Darks” channel.

Select the Entire Image

First, have the entire image selected:

Select → All

Remember, you should be seeing the “marching ants” around your selection - in this case the entire image.

Subtract the “Lights” Channel

With the entire image selected, now we just have to subtract the “Lights” channel. In the Channels dialog, just Right-Click on the “Lights” channel, and choose “Subtract from Selection”:

You’ll now see a new selection on your image. This selection represents the inverse of the “Lights” channel…

Create a New “Darks” Channel from the Selection

Now we just need to save the current selection to a new channel (which we’ll call… Darks!). To save the current selection to a channel, we can just use:

Select → Save to Channel

This will create a new channel in the Channel dialog (probably named “Selection Mask copy”). To give it a better name, just Double-Click on the name to rename it. Let’s choose something exciting, like “D”!

More Darker!

At this point, you’ll have a “Lights” and a “Darks” channel. If you wanted to create some channels that target darker and darker regions of the image, you can subtract the “Lights” channel again (this time from the current selection, “Darks”, as opposed to the entire image).

Once you’ve subtracted the “Lights” channel again, don’t forget to save the selection to a new channel (and name it appropriately - I like to name subsequent masks things like, “DD”, in this case - if I subtracted again, I’d call the next one “DDD” and so on…).

I’ll usually make 3 levels of “Darks” channels, D, DD, and DDD:

Three levels of Dark masks created.

Here’s what the final three different channels of darks looks like:

The D, DD, and DDD channels

Lighter Lights

At this point we have one “Lights” channel, and three “Darks” channels. Now we can go ahead and create two more “Lights” channels, to target lighter and lighter tones.

The process is identical to creating the darker channels, just in reverse.

Lights Channel to Selection

To get started, activate the “Lights” channel as a selection:

With the “Lights” channel as a selection, now all we have to do is Subtract the “Darks” channel from it. Then save that selection as a new channel (which will become our “LL” channel, and so on…

Subtracting the D channel from the L selection

To get an even lighter channel, you can subtract D one more time from the selection so far as well.

Here are what the three channels look like, starting with L up to LLL:

The L, LL, and LLL channels

Mid Tones Channels

By this point, we’ve got 6 new channels now, three each for light and dark tones:

Now we can generate our mid-tone channels from these.

The concept of generating the mid-tones is relatively simple - we’re just going to intersect dark and light channels to produce whats left - midtones.

Intersecting Channels for Midtones

To get started, first select the “L” channel, and set it to the current selection (just like above). Right-Click → Channel to Selection.

Then, Right-Click on the “D” channel, and choose “Intersect with Selection”.

You likely won’t see any selection active on your image, but it’s there, I promise. Now as before, just save the selection to a channel:

Select → Save to Channel

Give it a neat name. Sayyy, “M”? :)

You can repeat for each of the other levels, creating an MM and MMM if you’d like.

Now remember, the mid-tones channels are intended to isolate mid values as a mask, so they can look a little strange at first glance. Here’s what the basic mid-tones mask looks like:

Basic Mid-tones channel

Remember, black tones in this mask represent full transparency to the layer below, while white represents full opacity, from the associated layer.

Using the Masks

The basic idea behind creating these channels is that you can now mask particular tonal ranges in your images, and the mask will be self-feathering (due to how we created them). So we can now isolate specific tones in the image for manipulation.

Previously, I had shown how this could be used to do some simple split-toning of an image. In that case I worked on a B&W image, and tinted it. Here I’ll do the same with our image we’ve been working on so far…

Split Toning

Using the image I’ve been working through so far, we have the base layer to start with:

Create Duplicates

We are going to want two duplicates of this base layer. One to tone the lighter values, and another to tone the darker ones. We’ll start by considering the dark tones first. Duplicate the base layer:

Layer → Duplicate Layer

Then rename the copy something descriptive. In my example, I’ll call this layer “Dark” (original, I know):

Add a Mask

Now we can add a layer mask to this layer. You can either Right-Click the layer, and choose “Add Layer Mask”, or you can go through the menus:

Layer → Mask → Add Layer Mask

You’ll then be presented with options about how to initialize the mask. You’ll want to Initialize Layer Mask to: “Channel”, then choose one of your luminosity masks from the drop-down. In my case, I’ll use the DD mask we previously made:

Adjust the Layer

Now you’ll have a Dark layer with a DD mask that will restrict any modification you do to this layer to only apply to the darker tones.

Make sure you select the layer, and not it’s mask, by clicking on it (you’ll see a white outline around the active layer). Otherwise any operations you do may accidentally get applied to the mask, and not the layer.

At this point, we now want to modify the colors of this layer in some way. There are literally endless ways to approach this, bounded only by your creativity and imagination. For this example, we are going to tone the image with a cool teal/blue color (just like before), which combined with the DD layer mask, will restrict it to modifying only the darker tones.

So I’ll use the Colorize option to tone the entire layer a new color:

Colors → Colorize

To get a Teal-ish color, I’ll pull the Hue slider over to about 200:

Now, pay attention to what’s happening on your image canvas at this point. Drag the Hue slider around and see how it changes the colors in your image. Especially note that the color shifts will be restricted to the darker tones thanks to the DD mask being used!

To illustrate, mouseover the different hue values in the caption of the image below to change the Hue, and see how it effects the image with the DD mask active:

Mouseover to change Hue to: 0 - 90 - 180 - 270

So after I choose a new Hue of 200 for my layer, I should be seeing this:

Repeat for Light Tones

Now just repeat the above steps, but this time for the light tones. So duplicate the base layer again, and add a layer mask, but this time try using the LL channel as a mask.

For the lighter tones, I chose a Hue of around 25 instead (more orange-ish than blue):

In the end, here are the results that I achieved:

After a quick split-tone (mouseover to compare to original)

The real power here comes from experimentation. I encourage you to try using a different mask to restrict the changes to different areas (try the LLL for instance). You can also adjust the opacity of the layers now to modify how strongly the color tones will effect those areas as well. Play!

Mid-Tones Masks

The mid-tone masks were very interesting to me. In Tony’s original article, he mentioned how much he loved using them to provide a nice boost to contrast and saturation in the image. Well, he’s right. It certainly does do that! (He also feels that it’s similar to shooting the image on Velvia).

Let’s have a look.

I’ve deleted the layers from my split-toning exercise above, and am back to just the base image layer again.

To try out the mid-tones mask, we only need to duplicate the base layer, and apply a layer mask to it.

This time I’ll choose the basic mid-tones mask M.

What’s interesting about using this mask is that you can use pretty aggressive curve modifications to it, and still keep the image from blowing up. We are only targeting the mid-tones.

To illustrate, I’m going to apply a fairly aggressive compression to the curves by using Adjust Color Curves:

Colors → Curves

When I say aggressive, here is what I’m referring to:

Here is the effect it has on the image when using the M mid-tones mask:

Aggressive curve with Mid-Tone layer mask (mouseover to compare to original)

As you can see, there is an increase in contrast across the image, as well a nice little boost to saturation. You don’t need to worry about blowing out highlights or losing shadow detail, because the mask will not allow you to modify those values.

More Samples of the Mid-Tone Mask in Use

The lede image again, with another aggressive curve applied to a mid-tone masked layer (mouseover to compare to original)

Red Tailed Black Cockatoo at f/4 by Debi Dalio on Flickr (used with permission) (mouseover to compare to original)

Landscape Ballon by Lennart Tange on Flickr (cb) (mouseover to compare to original)

Landscapes by Tom Hannigan on Flickr (cb) (mouseover to compare to original)

Stitched photos of the Idaho landscape near Craters of the Moon National Monument by Frank Kovalchek on Flickr (cb) (mouseover to compare to original)

Mixing Films

This is something that I’ve found myself doing quite often. It’s a very powerful method for combining color toning that you may like from different film emulations. Consider what we just walked through.

These masks allow you to target modifications of layers to specific tones of an image. So if you like the saturation of, say, Fuji Velvia in the shadows, but like the upper tones to look similar to Polaroid Polachrome, then these luminosity masks are just what you’re looking for!

Just a little food for experimentation thought… :)

Stay tuned later in the week where I’ll investigate this idea in a little more depth.

In Conclusion

This is just another tool in our mental toolbox of image manipulation, but it’s a very powerful tool indeed. When considering your images, you can now look at them as a function of luminosity - with a neat and powerful way to isolate and target specific tones for modification.

As always, I encourage you to experiment and play. I’m willing to bet this method finds it’s way into at least a few peoples workflows in some fashion.

Using G'MIC Film Emulation Filters Offline

Sun, 27 Oct 2013 14:05:00 -0500

I’ve had a few questions regarding using the Film Emulation presets I put together with the G’MIC team. Specifically, how to use the emulations while offline. So I figured I would offer some suggestions on how to make this possible at the moment.

Well, David Tschumperlé already fixed this (within a couple of hours of publishing this post, no less). I’m leaving it here for posterity, though. Thanks David!

The way it currently works is, there is a file for each film emulation type. When you choose one to preview in G’MIC, behind the scenes it will go and download the file to your local temporary directory (where this is depends on your OS).

Now, this is fine for the most part. Unless you don’t have a constant internet connection, or a fast one. Then it becomes a bit of a problem. The reason is that sometimes the contents of the temporary directory might be wiped out on a reboot, which means you’d have to re-download all of the emulation files again.

So here’s a way to get around this problem.

I’m going to show this in Windows 7, as I don’t have a linux box nearby to test this on at the moment. See below for notes on linux use.

Get Files

To begin, you’ll actually need to get some of the .cimgz emulation files. The easiest way to do this is to actually use G’MIC to preview the effect on an image.

Open an image, open G’MIC:

Filters → G’MIC

and go to:

Film emulation

Pick a few to preview. If you’ve never used the type before, you’ll notice a slight lag while G’MIC downloads the .cimgz file in the background, then applies it. When you’ve cycled through a few different emulation types, you’re done.

Move Files Around

Now you will have the .cimgz files on your computer somewhere. In my example (Windows 7), the files are stored in a temporary directory in the %APPDATA% directory. In my case they are here:

C:\Users\{USERNAME}\AppData\Local\Temp

So what I want to do is to move all of the .cimgz files to a more permanent place. To make things simple, I just moved up one directory and created a new folder that I called “gmic-film-presets”:

C:\Users\{USERNAME}\AppData\Local\gmic-film-presets

I then just moved all of the gmic*.cimgz files into that folder.

Symlinks in Windows

Ok, a little trial and error led me to this solution. It turns out you can’t just use a shortcut to the files. G’MIC will still download the files if you do. The solution is to use a proper symlink (which wasn’t available until Vista, I believe). A symlink is just a reference to a file somewhere else on your filesystem (linux users should already be aware of them).

It’s sort of like a shortcut, but it’s not. :)

The only caveat is that you’ll need to perform this next step as an administrator on your machine.

Basically, we are going to create symbolic links from our actual files (in the “gmic-film-presets” directory) to the “Temp” directory.

To do this, we’ll need a windows command line, run as administrator. So click on the “Start” button, and in the search box, type in “cmd”. Right-Click on the “cmd.exe” that comes up, and choose “Run as administrator”.

Once you have a command window, just navigate to the Temp directory:

cd C:\Users\{USERNAME}\AppData\Local\Temp

Ok, the actual command for creating a symbolic link is:

mklink {LINK-NAME} {SOURCE}

For example, if I wanted to link a single file from my new directory, into Temp, I would use this command (from the Temp directory):

mklink gmic_rollei_retro_80s.cimgz ..\gmic-film-presets\gmic_rollei_retro_80s.cimgz

This will create a symlink called “gmic_rollei_retro_80s.cimgz” in your Temp directory that G’MIC will be able to read and use!

Symlink All the Things!

With apologies to Allie Brosh

So now we know that symlinks will work, but we don’t want to do this manually for each file.

Turns out it’s one, simple command (assuming you are in your Temp directory):

for %f in (..\gmic-film-presets\*.cimgz) do (mklink %~nf.cimgz %f)

Yep, that’s about it. If you have to reboot your machine, or your Temp directory gets cleaned out for any reason, just re-issue that command. You’ll have access to all of the presets immediately (and off-line).

If you download any new .cimgz preset files that you didn’t already have, just move them into the “gimp-film-presets” directory, and re-run the command.

Linux (and possibly OSX) Users

I haven’t tried this yet on my OSX box to check, but the same principle should work no problem with symlinks. (ln -s …). Can someone with a linux box test this and let us know if it works the same?

Stop the Presses

Well, the problem with having David Tschumperlé as a contact is that as soon as I write about something in G’MIC, he either implements it, or fixes it!

So, a little less than two hours after posting, David has already modified G’MIC so that the emulation preset files are no longer stored in a tmp/ directory, but rather in the users filesystem. So they won’t disappear after a reboot. So this whole post is now moot…

Thank you David!

Mean Averaging Music Videos [Imagemagick/GIMP]

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 14:24:00 -0500

Well, I apparently just can’t get enough of averaging things.

While playing around on the last post for averaging long exposure images, I stumbled across something interesting. Apparently Imagemagick can open video files. At that point I just had to have a go at averaging some music videos.

The results were … interesting to say the least.

These are really worth seeing large, just click the image to embiggen.
The links for each video name below will open the video in the page, in case you wanted to watch.

Some of them were really cool though. For instance here’s Beyoncé’s “All the Single Ladies”:

Beyoncé - "All the Single Ladies" (5955 frames)

Or kicking it a little old school produces some greats.

Here’s A-ha’s “Take On Me”:

A-Ha - "Take On Me" (6807 frames)

“Tonight, Tonight” from The Smashing Pumpkins:

The Smashing Pumpkins - "Tonight, Tonight" (6475 frames)

I couldn’t help but mess around and try some more recent videos as well, of course.

Not surprisingly, Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know’ looks exactly like you’d expect:

Gotye - "Somebody That I Used to Know" (6099 frames)

Of course, I had to do Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” video, for (ahem ) science:

Robin Thicke - "Blurred Lines" (6235 glorious NSFW frames)

Pink

Billboards Woman of the Year, Pink, yielded some interesting results:

Pink - "Blow Me (One Last Kiss)" (5535 frames)

Pink - "Try" (5972 frames)

Pink - "Just Give Me a Reason" (5814 frames)

Pink - "True Love" (5803 frames)

I find it interesting that if you’re familiar at all with these videos, the blends immediately evoke the sense of what you’ll see watching them.

Die Antwoord

Almost completely on the other side of the musical spectrum, we have Die Antwoord. I want to send a special “Thank You!" to Boing Boinger Xeni Jardin for turning me onto these guys (I consider it telling that I’ve lost count of the cool things that Boing Boing has led me to over the years).

If you haven’t had a chance to give them a listen, do it.

Die Antwoord - "Enter the Ninja" (7805 frames)

Die Antwoord - "Rich Bitch" (4402 frames)

Die Antwoord - "Evil Boy" (6961 frames)

Die Antwoord - "I Fink You Freeky" (5865 frames)

Die Antwoord - "Fatty Boom Boom" (8554 frames)

I like “Fatty Boom Boom” because it really looks like the video sounds. Hectic.

Die Antwoord - "Cookie Thumper" (8459 frames)

Creating These

I did mention back at the beginning that it was cool I could load video files directly into Imagemagick. Just one problem: IM likes to load up the entire set of files before doing further operations against them. So trying to load up a full HD video in memory didn’t work so well. SD videos loaded, but took forever to process.

To speed it up I just dumped the videos to files first, then operated on them in batches.

You’ll need FFmpeg and Imagemagick, of course. I also happen to be using Cygwin, because I’m more comfortable doing things in a bash shell vs. windows command line.

Dumping the Video

I dumped the video using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i INFILE -y -f image2 output_%05d.png

This is fairly self-explanatory. The %05d tells ffmpeg to name each file with 5 digits sequentially.

So now I have a directory of files called output_00001.png, output_00002.png, etc.

Batch Averaging

As I said, IM will choke up if you try to load it with too much data (thousands of 1080p frames for instance). So I did a first pass of averaging by only generating the averages for 100 files at a time:

ls output_*.png | xargs -n 100 sh -c 'convert "$0" "$@" -evaluate-sequence mean outdir/"$0" '

Don’t worry, it’s not so as it looks. Let’s break it down:

ls output_*.png | ...

Generate a list of files in the directory name output_*.png. Then pipe that list into…

xargs -n 100 sh -c

xargs is used to build a command up. The -n 100 switch tells it to use 100 items from the piped list (all the filenames from the ls command) at a time.

Spawn a shell, and run this command:

convert "$0" "$@" -evaluate-sequence mean outdir/"$0"

This just runs the previous imagemagick command to mean average the images. $0 is the first in the list, $@ are the rest.

Then output the results into the directory “outdir”, with the file named the first in the list.

In my “outdir” directory, there are now a bunch of files with names like “output_00000.png, output_00100.png, output_00200.png” etc. These are averages of 100 frames from my video at a time.

In that directory, it’s now trivial to get the final average:

convert output_*.png -evaluate-sequence mean -channel RGB -normalize final.png

This will generate the final mean average from all of the images we output previously. The inclusion of “-channel RGB -normalize” is to automatically normalize the results on a per-channel basis.

Batch Averaging (Windows Command Line)

Reader Belzecue has noted below a means for doing the first run batch averaging with just the windows command line:

FOR /L %i in (0,1,8) DO convert c:\inputpath\output_0%i*.png -evaluate-sequence mean -channel RGB -normalize c:\outputpath\final_0%i.png

The magic part is the options in the FOR command (0,1,8). Basically it means, start counting at 0, increment by 1, and stop at 8. Couple that with the globbing for filename “output_0%i*.png”, and that command will batch up 9 images, averaged across 1000 items at a time.

(The result to the command line will be output_00.png, output_01.png, output_02*.png, etc…)

Thanks for the tip!

Conclusion

Of course, I had to leave you all with one last video. The question is, can you guess which video it is?

Guess the video. Here's a little hint: "You wouldn't get this from any other guy"

Faking an ND Filter for Long Exposure Photography

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 16:27:00 -0500

So, I’ve had this idea bouncing around in my head for a bit, and figured it might help me to get off my ass and actually try it out if I described my thought process.

Long Exposure - Shanklin by Richard ‘Tenspeed’ Heaven, (cb) 5 sec f/32 ISO 100

I’ve been wanting to get some ND filters to experiment with daytime long exposures for a while now. The problem is that I’m lazy. So when I say “for a while now”, I really mean that it’s been like 3 years.

I had previously written about using median stacks to remove noise from an image, as an easy way to remove non-static objects from a scene, and to create interesting artwork. It’s those last two things that got me thinking…

All of the Playboy Centerfolds from 1970

This is one of the first amalgamation images I did after seeing Jason Salavon’s incredible work. This is all twelve centerfolds averaged together. While I think it’s neat, it’s more interesting when you begin to view it in the context of a typical long exposure image.

Long Exposure Groin by Paul Chaloner, (cbd) 30 sec f/22 ISO 200

Do you see some visual similarities between the water in these long exposure images, and the centerfold image?

This similarity led me to realize the main point of this entire post:

Theoretically, there should be no difference between a single long exposure image, and multiple short(er) exposed images that have been averaged together. It helps to visualize the fact that when taking a long exposure image, the camera is averaging over the duration of the exposure. I know this is probably “Duh!” for most people out there, but for me it was a “Eureka!” moment (it takes me a bit longer to get things).

Looking at the Exposure

So let’s have a look at the numbers for the image, Long Exposure Groin , above. According to the photographer, Paul Chaloner, the image was exposed for 30 seconds, at f/22 ISO 200. For this discussion, I am going to assume that the ISO is already set to it’s lowest acceptable value.

With that in mind, we can see the relationship of shutter speed and f-stop in this table:

f Aperture	0.7	1	1.4	2	2.8	4	5.6	8	11	16	22	32
s Shutter	¹⁄₃₀	¹⁄₁₅	¹⁄₈	¹⁄₄	¹⁄₂	1	2	4	8	15	30

This table shows the relationship of Aperture ( f ) to shutter speed (seconds) to maintain the same exposure (in full stop increments). The parameters for the base exposure are shown in green.

What this means is that if I wanted to have the same exposure, but wanted to change one of my parameters (either f-stop or shutter speed), I need only move left or right on the table to get the required values.

To illustrate, perhaps I wouldn’t want to shoot stopped all the way down to f/22. Instead I might prefer to shoot at f/11. No problem looking at the table for f/11 yields:

f Aperture	0.7	1	1.4	2	2.8	4	5.6	8	11	16	22	32
s Shutter	¹⁄₃₀	¹⁄₁₅	¹⁄₈	¹⁄₄	¹⁄₂	1	2	4	8	15	30

I can see that at f/11, my new shutter speed would be 8 seconds. Pretty elementary so far, and really just Exposure 101.

Things get a bit more interesting when we consider how some of these are shot. There is some more information about the photo which isn’t present in the EXIF data.

Neutral Density (ND) Filters

The EXIF data on the photo shows that the image was shot at ~3:30PM local time. Just going off of the Sunny 16 rule, I would be shooting at f/16 and ¹⁄_200^ths of a second (at ISO 200).

So how did the photographer get his shutter speed all the way up to 30 seconds? Simple. A Neutral Density (ND) filter.

ND filters are pretty simple things, in theory. Just reduce all wavelengths of light by a certain amount.

The image above was, according to the photographer, shot with a B&W ND110 (10-stop) filter.

Fiddling with the Exposure

Now things get a little more interesting. Let’s assume for a moment that the image uses a 5-stop ND filter to achieve it’s exposure. Let’s also assume that we want to keep the aperture at the same setting ( f/22).

Stops	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1	0
f Aperture	0.7	1	1.4	2	2.8	4	5.6	8	11	16	22	32
s Shutter	¹⁄₃₀	¹⁄₁₅	¹⁄₈	¹⁄₄	¹⁄₂	1	2	4	8	15	30

What we’re essentially doing is removing the 5-stop filter from the lens. To maintain the same exposure, we have to shift those 5 stops of light somewhere. Since we want to keep the aperture at f/22, this means that our shutter speed has to become faster to accommodate.

As we can see in our table, moving over 5 stops yields a new shutter speed of 1 second.

So, if keep the aperture (and ISO) the same, and remove the ND filter, then we will now have to reduce the shutter speed to one second to maintain the same exposure.

The new exposure settings are: 1 second @ f/22 (still ISO 200).

Shutter Speed is too Fast!

So we’ve easily managed to compute a new shutter speed to take the same exposed image. The problem is that now we have a (relatively) short shutter speed compared to the original. With such a short shutter speed we will no longer have nearly the same level of blur for moving objects in the scene.

We’re getting to the meat of this post now.

I contend that with the new exposure value of 1 second, that we can achieve the same level of blur by averaging the same number of frames to equal the original exposure value.

That is, the original shutter speed was 30 seconds. Without an ND filter, our new shutter speed to maintain exposure is 1 second.

I’m saying that with ³⁰⁄₁ = 30 frames @ 1 second, averaged together, we’ll get the same result as the original image.

Testing the Theory

Things are more fun when we actually start testing out this idea. So I headed out this past weekend and found a nice fountain near my home to see if I could illustrate what I’m thinking.

Here is a single frame from one of the shots:

¹⁄₁₅ sec at f/11, ISO 200

I had my camera setup on a tripod, and just let the burst mode run with this (9 fps for the win!). So I ended up with 55 images of the scene.

As in my Enfuse tutorial, I first made sure all my images were correctly aligned using Hugin’s align_image_stack:

C:\Program Files\Hugin\bin\align_image_stack -a OUT FILE1 FILE2 FILE3

My tripod is a little wobbly, so I wanted to make sure everything was well aligned. Obviously this could be skipped if you’re sporting a fancy, heavy tripod.

After all the images are aligned, I just use Imagemagick the same way I did for averaging my other images:

convert *.tif -evaluate-sequence mean -alpha off OUT.tif

So 55 images × ¹⁄₁₅ = 3.6 second equivalent exposure. Here’s the result:

3.6 sec f/11 ISO 200 (mouseover to compare to single frame)

This is the same as if I had used a 5-stop ND filter, and exposed for the same result.

Here is a 100% crop to show some detail better:

Results

I’d say that the results so far are in line with what I expected. That is, multiple shorter exposures average blended together will yield the same visual results as a much longer exposure.

Cool! So now I have a way to replicate the results usually obtained with an ND filter, without having to get one.

Now, this way may seem a bit fussy, but really it was pretty simple. Most modern cameras can fire off quite a few shots per second. The setup is no different than shooting with an ND filter (you’ll still have to have a steady tripod setup, and the shot framed up and ready to go).

The only difference is that you are now firing off multiple shots instead of one long shot.

Processing is pretty straightforward once you have all the images, too. Those two commands are all that is needed (and really if my tripod was steady enough, I could have skipped the align_image_stack step).

So the next time you’re out shooting and forget (or don’t have) your ND filter, try setting up the tripod anyway, and firing off a bunch of images instead!

[Bonus] - An added bonus of using this technique is that you’ll be actively reducing the noise in your image through averaging, which is normally the opposite of running your sensor for 30+ seconds in a single go.

Something Neat

I also learned something really neat while writing this. Apparently Imagemagick can also read in video files! So I can also just setup a camera, and take a video of the scene in question. I’ll get about 30 frames per second from my camera, so a 10 second video gets me 300 frames (albeit at HD resolution). In my case, I had 435 frames to quickly average from my video:

435 frames averaged directly from HD video.

Of course, doing it this way means your view has to be really, really still. Otherwise you’ll have to extract all those frames and align them first to keep still objects sharp.

G’MIC/GIMP

Just to be complete, the same results can be obtained through G’MIC in GIMP. G’MIC has a command for doing average blending of all layers in the image:

Layers → Blend [average all]

I didn’t do it in GIMP because 55 full resolution images tends to choke things up (and I really didn’t need to see each layer).

Film Emulation Presets in G'MIC (GIMP) [Addendum]

Fri, 06 Sep 2013 10:50:00 -0500

Well, it’s been a busy week. I thought it would be nice to post a small update on the current status of these film emulation presets.

In my first post on these, I described what I was doing. At that time, I had only a few different film emulations to go with it. I released a couple of more earlier this week as well (instant films). Here is the current types of film available, with sample plates at their lowest settings to show what they look like (and a preview of some new stuff coming soon).

A method for using these filters while offline can now be found here: Using Film Emulation Filters While Offline.

Old(er) Film Stock Emulation

First up are older film stocks (some haven’t been around for a while):

Old(er) film stock emulations, lowest setting.

The films available with these are:

Fuji Neopan 1600
Fuji Superia 100/400/800/1600
Ilford Delta 3200
Kodak Portra 160 NC/VC
Kodak Portra 400 NC/UC/VC

New(er) Film Stock Emulation

Then I took a look at some newer film stocks as well:

New(ish) film stock emulations, lowest setting.

The films available with this set are:

Fuji 160C
Fuji 400H
Fuji 800Z
Ilford HP5
Kodak Portra 160/400/800
Kodak TMax 3200
Kodak Tri-X 400

After the initial release, I worked hard to get the next set of my emulations in shape for use.

Instant Film Emulation (Consumer)

I had a bunch of instant film stuff laying around from before, so these were a good choice to push out next. These are the consumer grade instant films:

Consumer grade instant film emulations, lowest setting.

Some people may even remember some of these…

Polaroid PX-70
Polaroid PX100UV
Polaroid PX-680
Polaroid Time Zero (Expired)

Instant Film Emulation (Professional)

To go along with the consumer stuff, I had some pro instant film emulations as well:

Professional instant film emulations, lowest setting.

These include:

Fuji FP-100c
Fuji FP-3000b
Polaroid 665
Polaroid 669
Polaroid 690

If you wanted a neat script to auto-generate the classic polaroid border, I had previously posted something about it here.

This is over 200 different film emulations. The best part is that they are all available right now if you have a recent G’MIC installed.

But wait, there’s more!

I’m not done just yet. I’ve got a bunch of other B&W films, color negative films, and color slide films coming!

Color Positive (Slide) Film Emulation

There are many out there who love their old slide films, and I had a request for some on the previous post, so here are the slide films that I am working on, and will hopefully be available shortly:

The color positive films included in this next batch (in case the text is too small to read) are:

Agfa Precisa 100
Fuji Astia 100F
Fuji FP 100C
Fuji Provia 100F
Fuji Provia 400F
Fuji Provia 400X
Fuji Sensia 100
Fuji Superia 200 XPRO
Fuji Velvia 50
Generic Fuji Astia 100
Generic Fuji Provia 100
Generic Fuji Velvia 100
Generic Kodachrome 64
Generic Kodak Ektachrome 100 VS
Kodak E-100 GX Ektachrome 100
Kodak Ektachrome 100 VS
Kodak Elite Chrome 200
Kodak Elite Chrome 400
Kodak Elite ExtraColor 100
Kodak Kodachrome 200
Kodak Kodachrome 25
Kodak Kodachrome 64
Lomography X-Pro Slide 200
Polaroid 669
Polaroid 690
Polaroid Polachrome

Color Negative Film Emulation

Here are some other color negative films coming soon also:

The films in this list include:

Agfa Ultra Color 100
Agfa Vista 200
Fuji Superia 200
Fuji Superia HG 1600
Fuji Superia Reala 100
Fuji Superia X-Tra 800
Kodak Elite 100 XPRO
Kodak Elite Color 200
Kodak Elite Color 400
Kodak Portra 160 NC
Kodak Portra 160 VC
Lomography Redscale 100

Black & White Film Emulation

Of course, I had to play with a bunch of different B&W films as well:

All of the B&W films are:

Agfa APX 100
Agfa APX 25
Fuji Neopan 1600
Fuji Neopan Acros 100
Ilford Delta 100
Ilford Delta 3200
Ilford Delta 400
Ilford FP4 Plus 125
Ilford HP5 Plus 400
Ilford HPS 800
Ilford Pan F Plus 50
Ilford XP2
Kodak BW 400 CN
Kodak HIE (HS Infra)
Kodak T-Max 100
Kodak T-Max 3200
Kodak T-Max 400
Kodak Tri-X 400
Polaroid 664
Polaroid 667
Polaroid 672
Rollei IR 400
Rollei Ortho 25
Rollei Retro 100 Tonal
Rollei Retro 80s

Even More?

That is what I have at the moment. I’m looking around for any others that I may like to play with, but for the moment this is quite a bundle. As soon as David Tschumperlé gets a moment, I’m sure he’ll be adding these last set of emulations into G’MIC as well.

As I’ve mentioned before, these might make a good starting off point to finding what works for you and your taste. Experiment and have fun! If you do use these at all, please show them off and share with the community (either over on the GIMP Users community on G+, or over at the Flickr group).

I’d love to see what others do with these!

Film Emulation Presets in G'MIC (GIMP)

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 09:57:00 -0500

Color toning/grading can be a heck of a rabbit-hole sometimes. You start innocently enough, but hours later you’ll find yourself still fiddling with one particular point in one particular channel. Just a little bit more to get it just right! Just a slight bump to saturation in this color! Push the hue a little more this way!

Mairi. Kodak Portra 400 NC Emulation (Strongest setting) (mouseover for original)

It may seem trivial, but these tiny differences can mean the world to obsessive-compulsive types. I’m speaking from experience because I just finished clawing my way out of the rabbit hole…

I brought some things back with me, though.

An update and addendum on new film emulations can be found here.

A method for saving the presets for use while offline can be found here: Using G’MIC Film Emulation Filters Offline.

What Came Back

You might recall that I talked about color curves a couple of times in the past. In my previous post on color curves & skin, I looked at Petteri Sulonen’s curves, and walked through a process for matching color tones from other images. There was a lot of back and forth between Sample Points and the Curves editor.

It’s a pretty good description of the process, and with enough time and patience you can come up with some pretty good curves. If you’re feeling really ambitious, you can also start fiddling with Hue, Saturation, and Value as well (something curves alone can’t really do for you).

Mairi. Fuji Superia 100 Emulation (Strongest setting) (mouseover for original)

In an effort to practice and learn even more about color and tone manipulations, I figured it would be fun to replicate the effects found in a very popular set of film emulation presets that are available commercially…

The problem is, I tend to only use F/OSS in my workflow, so I don’t have Photoshop, Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw, or Aperture. Which also means I don’t have a means to access those presets directly.

What I do have is (some) patience and examples online. I also know enough about color manipulation to be dangerous (and annoying as hell to people smarter than me).

Mairi. Fuji Neopan 1600 Emulation (Strongest setting) (mouseover for original)

So I basically walked through re-creating many of the popular film emulations that people seem to like so much these days. (This is where I spent a LOT of time fiddling, see the first paragraph of this post again).

To make things easier on myself I generated a full set of 16-bit Hald CLUT images, thus allowing me to apply these color emulations to my images with Imagemagick. (I may come back and post more about this later).

The problem I had is that it’s more fun to share this with others, and I wasn’t sure of an easy way to do this (seriously, each Hald CLUT image to re-create the effect weighs in at 50MB each).

I wanted an easy way to share these presets and let others play with them…

Enter G’MIC (David Tschumperlé)

Lucky for me, I’m friends with David Tschumperlé.

If you need yet another reason to go download and support G’MIC, here it is. Within 24 hours of asking if there was a way to do this, he had something ready to go. (See, it’s good to know smart people).

If you haven't already, click the image above and go download G'MIC.

A few hours after that, and all of the emulations I worked on can now be accessed in G’MIC.

So, that’s my announcement. My film emulation presets are now available in GIMP, thanks to David and G’MIC.

Here’s a sample of the “old” film stocks there are now presets for:

All of the current old stock films I have emulations for. (Highest strength setting)

The best part is, if you are reading this post, and have a recent G’MIC installed, you already have them at your disposal right now .

All you have to do is update the filters in your G’MIC to the latest ones, then:

Filters → G’MIC

then,

Film Emulation → (type)

The Preset list will show all of the color presets I worked on. Under Film Emulation there are sub-categories depending on the type of film stocks you want to use. At the moment they are only broken down by old film stocks vs. new(ish) film stocks. I’m probably going to include some old expired Polaroid stuff I did a while back, and any other instant films I can find as well.

The current list of emulations are:

Fuji 160C, 400H, 800Z
Fuji Ilford HP5
Kodak Portra 160, 400, 800
Kodak TMAX 3200
Kodak Tri-X 400

and,

Fuji Neopan 1600
Fuji Superia 100, 400, 800, 1600
Fuji Ilford Delta 3200
Kodak Portra 160 NC, 160 VC, 400 NC, 400 UC, 400 VC

** [Updated with more]: **

Polaroid PX-70
Polaroid PX100UV
Polaroid PX-680
Polaroid Time Zero (Expired)

Fuji FP-100c
Fuji FP-3000b
Polaroid 665
Polaroid 669
Polaroid 690

All in various intensities of the effect.

The same old stock film emulation, at their lowest setting.

Now, these are my approximations, so they aren’t exact. There’s a lot of ‘creative’ interpretations going on, and I had to fill in some things with artistic liberties. They also don’t do any fancy stuff like vignettes and grain, but those are things you can easily do in GIMP.

In fact, I highly recommend the grain map prepared by Petteri Sulonen on his page as an overlay to your images to add the grain. G’MIC also has a synthetic grain generator as well.

Also, as with most automated things, use these as a starting point to experiment and learn more as well. I learned a huge amount about color and HSL manipulations (my eyes bled at one point), while fiddling with these. It’s been an invaluable experience for me, and I hope it will spur more creative experimentation in you.

And hopefully, the next time someone asks “How do I get these colors/tones?”, you can just point them here for a starting point. :)

An Open Source Headshot (Ronni) (Postprocessing)

Wed, 21 Aug 2013 14:19:00 -0500

In my previous post I had to do a bit of fiddling to bring my relative exposures back into line with each other (while retaining hair details from being blown out). Now that the image has been corrected, I’m ready to begin my normal workflow for retouching.

To give us an idea of what we’re working towards, here’s my final result for this image:

The results I will be working towards.

After my corrections in the previous post, here’s the image I’ll be starting with:

My base starting image.

There’s a few different ways to approach retouching this image, and it’s really dependent on the personal preferences of the retoucher. Some may like to fiddle with colors and tones first to set a mood, or possibly look more at general cropping/layouts to taste for instance. There’s quite a few ways to begin, so I can only speak to what I personally like to do.

File downloads:

Download the .xcf.bz2 File [Google Drive] (55MB)

These files are being made available under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license (cc-by-sa-nc). You're free to use them, modify them, and share them as long as you attribute me, Pat David, as the originator of the file. You're not allowed to use this file for Commercial purposes.

My General Workflow

Wavelet Decompose
Spot Corrections/Healing
Dodging & Burning
Color Toning

This is just a general set of steps that I tend towards when considering an image. I’ll sometimes mix these up a bit, but each of these gets some sort of consideration from me when retouching.

Wavelet Decompose

I’ve written about using Wavelet Decompose (WD) for skin retouching before, and as part of my previous Open Source Portrait walkthrough.

I will usually start here because it’s where I’ll have the most control over various aspects of the image that are important (skin in the case of a headshot like this). I like to have skin and details under control before I move on to any other retouching.

This time around, I’d like to focus a bit on visualizing the contributions from the different scales, and how they combine to produce your final result. Hopefully with the result of gaining a better feeling for what the different frequency scales can do for you.

I’ll start by decomposing the image to 5 scales (+residual).

Remember, the low-numbered scales represent the fine details in your image, and increase the detail size as you move up to the residual scale. The residual scale maintains the (majority of) color and global contrast information.

I’d recommend starting at a higher scale or residual when beginning to retouch, but this is just my personal preference (I often rarely touch the lowest couple of scales for instance).

Residual Scale

So, let’s start by taking a careful look at the residual scale isolated from the rest of the scales. Here is a 100% crop of a section of my image, looking only at the residual scale:

Residual Scale, 100% crop (mouseover to compare to base) (View: Residual - Base)

If you toggle between the Residual scale and the base image, you’ll see how the Residual scale contains the color and contrast information. If you want a clearer view, move back away from your monitor and look at this from a distance. You’ll see what I mean.

More importantly, you can see how the Residual scale contains the underlying color tonal data for the skin. There is a slight reddening in the brow, and a slightly darker coloration around the temple of the subject.

This scale contains the large contrast changes as well, and will add to the perception of depth through the shadows/highlights. If there is skin discoloration, or areas that need slight smoothing of the underlying tones, this is a great place to start.

Here I am highlighting areas that I may want to address, and that might lead to a perception of uneven tones:

So looking at this we can see that we might like to smooth these tones out a bit. There are a few different ways we could proceed. We could use the Heal or Clone tool, we could use the smudge tool to push tones around, or my personal favorite: Gaussian blurring the area.

The reason I tend to use Gaussian Blur is that I don’t necessarily want to obliterate the tones, but rather I’d like to make them a bit smoother overall. Painting in the areas can sometimes lead to strange/hard color shifts in the tones that are not appealing, whereas blurring will smooth the tones out (relatively) evenly.

So I’ll use the Free Select Tool, and set it to “Feather edges” around 20px.

I’ll make a selection based on the contours of the face that I want to target. I mention this in my previous tutorial, but here is an example of the general regions I will work on:

This is just a rough guide, and I’ll usually take into account the angles and lighting when choosing regions on a per-image basis.

For this example I’m going to work on the forehead region as shown above. I’ll Free Select around the hairline/hairs, and above the eyebrow.

Just a couple of notes on my process:
I will usually do my region selections with all of the wavelet scales visible (giving me a composite view of the entire image). This allows me to avoid selecting too close to fine detail edges, which will produce an unsightly smearing with some scales.

It should go without saying, but I’ll usually have the scale I am working on selected in my layers palette (you’ll see a white border around the active layer). Keep this in mind as you work on different scales.

I’ll also usually hide the selection border when applying my blurs (Ctrl + t or ⌘ + t), just don’t forget to toggle it back on or you’ll tear your hair out wondering why something is not working.

Free selection region I'll be working in.

The size of the Gaussian Blur radius is really a function of your taste at this point. Using too large a value will obliterate the contrasts across your region, using too little may not smooth out the tones enough for you. The best advice I can give is:

“Err on the side of too little.”

For my image, I chose to go with a radius of 45px on the Residual scale. Here are the results:

Residual Scale - 45px Gaussian Blur, 100% crop (mouseover to compare to base) (View: Blurred - Original)

As you can see, the tones have smoothed out slightly, and are not as prominent (even without any further scale edits). There is a slight decrease in the contrasts in the region, which visually help to de-emphasize any uneven tones or skin slightly.

The thing to keep in mind at this point is that we are just trying to get a good base of relatively even tones under all the details. Don’t go nuts at this point, as there are still a couple of scales we will be working on as well (and the effects are additive).

Detail Scales

Each of the wavelet scales has their layer blending modes set to Grain Merge to re-constitute your full image. The problem is that it can sometimes be hard to isolate what each scale does visually to your image. So I’ll point out a neat trick to help.

Just remember one thing about what I’m about to show you:

“Don’t show this to your model.”

Especially if you want to remain friends with them. :) We are going to highly emphasis all of the wavelet scales to show us places where we may want to work.

All we need to do is, with all of the layers visible, to turn off the visibility of the Wavelet residual layer. This will leave all of the scale layers visible over the base image, and will show you all of their contributions. It’s not flattering.

Wavelet Scales - no residual, 100% crop (mouseover to compare to base) (View: Scales - Original)

On the right is my current layers palette to show what I’m looking at.

All I’ve done is hide the Wavelet residual layer, and have allowed all of the detail scales to be overlaid on my base image.

This severely emphasizes the contributions from the detail scales, and while it’s not flattering it does offer us a clear view of areas we may want to touch up.

Toggle the residual scale on/off to get a feeling for what the scales are doing to your final result.

You can actually use a similar method when you’re exploring the contributions from a single scale. In this case I would leave the base layer visible, and toggle the scale you are interested in to quickly see its contribution.

Wavelet scale 5

The largest detail scale I’ve got is Wavelet scale 5. This is usually the next best place to modify larger tonal changes under the skin, and can often do a great job of evening out complexions on its own.

To see what scale 5 is doing to our image, I’ve left the base image visible, and toggled on only Wavelet scale 5 below:

Wavelet Scale 5 + Base, 100% crop (mouseover to compare to base) (View: Scale 5 - Original)

The best way to think about this scale (usually) is to remember that it likely contains larger tonal values underneath your details. I’ll be a little aggressive when smoothing this scale sometimes, just keep an eye out for over smoothing.

Here I’ve tried a couple of different radii, but finally settled on 22px as a reasonable result (Ctrl/⌘ + z and Ctrl/⌘ + y are your friends - I use them all the time to toggle back and forth between applying the blur and not).

So after applying the 22px blur to Wavelet scale 5 on the same selected region as I previously used on the Residual scale, I’ve got this so far:

Residual: 45px blur, Scale 5: 22px Blur (mouseover to compare to base) (View: Scale 5 - Original)

Honestly, at this point I would probably stop working in this area. The underlying tones look reasonably smooth, and any further touchups would be more about spot corrections as opposed to larger scale tonal changes.

Some images may require a small amount of extra smoothing on a lower Wavelet scale (like 4), but I personally like the results so far. Still good skin texture, with more even tones.

Spot Corrections

Once I feel like the underlying skin tones are under control, I have two options for considering any spot healing/touchups that I want to do.

One option is to tackle them while still using Wavelet scales. I already have them separated, and I’m already working on the scales so this is a natural option.

The other option is to combine all of the edits so far into a new layer, and to use either the Clone Tool or the Heal Tool to make spot corrections.

Wavelet Spot Retouching

This is mostly dependent on your experience and eye, as some corrections are better suited (and faster) to using a Heal/Clone Tool. In some places the Wavelet scales can be indispensable. For instance, looking at the forehead we’ve worked on so far, there are some immediate places where I can see it would be easier to use a heal tool:

Good candidates for Heal/Clone Tool vs good candidate for WD

The areas in red show great candidates for simply fixing with the Heal tool. They are relatively small and without any major discoloration or tone issues. They also have good source textures very near them.

The slight blemish in blue show a better candidate for retouching using Wavelet scales. It’s a larger blemish that does have underlying tonal changes to it (the spot is noticeable across multiple scales: 3, 4, 5). It also occurs behind strands of hair that would make it harder to correct while still looking natural. This is a great example of where Wavelets are so handy - we can correct the blemish on scales that won’t destroy those hair details across it.

Base image, plus scales 1-5

As you can see in the above scale breakdown, the blemish is very visible on scales 3, 4, and a small bit of tonal change on 5. It’s also slightly visible on scale 2. In approaching this I would probably start with the Heal Tool on scale 5, and work down from there.

Progressive retouching of scales

As you can see above, even by scale 3 the blemish is mostly gone (and not noticeable at all in the full image for normal viewing), and the hair details haven’t been affected over it.

I’ll repeat this process for places where they would need it in my region before moving on. I will also sometimes use a combination of Wavelet spot retouching along with Healing/Cloning on the composite image. If a blemish has redness or discoloration around it, I will try to correct for the underlying tones first using scales, and worry about the details afterwards.

Spot Retouching with Heal/Clone Tool

When I’ve corrected for tones in all the places where I need to, I’ll create a new layer from all of the visible layers to do the spot Healing/Cloning on.

There is no special magic here other than normal use of the Heal/Clone Tool. I’ll sample from nearby textures that retain similar lighting and tones, and brush the tool over the blemishes to remove them.

Here are the results of spot healing the areas identified previously as being good candidates:

Spot Healed (mouseover to compare) (View: Spot Healed - Not Healed)

Finishing Up Skin Retouching

That is basically my process for this image in a nutshell. I’ll repeat the above steps for each region of interest to me until I am happy with the final result.

It may seem like there are still many places that could use touching up in the view above, but remember that we are pixel peeping here. I’d recommend zooming wayyy out often to get a feel for how the skin looks from further away. You still need to have texture in the skin to look natural.

Remember to err on the side of too little!

Finally, here are my results after applying the above to the different regions of the face:

Skin Retouching Finished (mouseover to compare to original) (View: Skin Retouched - Original Image)

Dodging & Burning

I personally tend to refer to D&B as more of “Contour Painting”, which is how I approach the process. The general idea is to use D&B to enhance the contours and perceived volume of the subject by manipulating highlights and shadows (the primary means by which we judge volume and shape in a 2D image).

I will usually use transparent layers over my image, and set them to Overlay blend mode to do my contour shaping. Though really you can use whatever method suits you (addition/screen/dodge/lighten for highlights and similar for shadows).

More important is that you get a good feel for the contours of your subject, and how the light is already falling across them. Usually you’ll want to use D&B to enhance those contours to taste.

For instance, smoothing on the Residual scale will sometimes decrease contrast in your image a bit. I’ll use my D&B layers to bring some depth back to those areas.

Let’s have a look at the forehead. I’d like to emphasize the lighter areas where the softbox is hitting her face first. So I’ll add a new layer over the image, and set its Blend Mode to Overlay. I’ll use white as my foreground color and paint with a large radius brush along the contour I’d like to highlight:

Highlight layer (Overlay Mode) at 100% opacity (mouseover to compare) (View: D&B Highlight - Original Image)

You can see on the right that I had a single transparent layer set to Overlay blend mode. I painted on this layer with pure white, and a round brush with 25% hardness and a fairly large size (400).

I painted along the areas of greatest highlight, then applied a gaussian blur with a large radius (111px) to smooth the result.

You’ll want to experiment with the size of both the painted areas as well as the gaussian blur to taste.

Once you’re happy with the contour highlight, you’ll want to dial the opacity of this layer back. Wayyy back.

For example, this forehead highlight is the largest in area, as well as the brightest highlight area in my entire image, and here I’ve dialed the opacity back to only 22%:

Highlight layer (Overlay Mode) at 100% opacity (mouseover to compare) (View: D&B Highlight - Original Image)

As with most things I’ve been talking about, use a light touch. Try to keep the D&B opacity levels low to keep it natural looking.

I’ll also keep using separate new layers for each highlight/shadow I add. This allows me to independently adjust the opacity of each addition to taste.

I continued with the same basic idea of painting white on new layers with a large brush, blurring those layers, and then adjusting opacity of each area. In total I’ve done the forehead, nose, cheek, and chin; these are the results when I’m done:

Final D&B Highlights applied (mouseover to compare) (View: D&B Highlights - Original Image)

Hair and Eyes D&B

I will also apply a similar method for highlighting regions of hair sometimes. The principle is the same, follow contours and apply highlights to accentuate features (in this case the wonderful color of the models hair).

I’ll also add a slight accent to the iris of the eyes. I’ll follow the same principle, but add the highlights to the iris opposite the light source. Use this with a light touch as well (you’ll notice immediately when it looks overdone and unnatural). I set the hair highlights opacity to about 40%, and the eyes to about 30%.

Final D&B Highlights applied (mouseover to compare) (View: D&B Hair & Eyes - Original Image)

That is about all I want to do to this particular image with D&B. Remember that you can also accentuate shadows by following the exact same procedures, but using black as your painting color instead of white. The same principles apply: follow contours in order to enhance them in some fashion.

Color Toning

At this point I will sometimes also do a little teeth whitening. I won’t go into the details of the method, as there are already quiet a few tutorials around for whitening teeth in GIMP. The general idea is to make a selection of the teeth (quick mask and a soft brush helps here), and apply Colors → Hue-Saturation. Lower the Saturation to whiten, and raise Lightness to offset the brightness. This is yet another place where you want to use a really, really light hand.

My final step before I’ll call an image finished is to do some color adjustments of some sort. Sometimes it may be a slight curves modification to increase/decrease contrast (as needed).

Usually I’ll apply a curve I have already defined and like. If you haven’t played with curves before I address them here, as well as here.

If you’ve been reading my ramblings for any amount of time (or paid any attention to my photography), you’ll know that I’ve been really, really partial to Petteri Sulonen’s emulation of Kodak Portra film. You can read more about what he did, as well as download the curves themselves from his post.

So at this point I’ll create a new layer from all of my visible layers. I’ll apply my curves on this new layer. Here is the final result using Petteri’s Portra-esque color curve:

Final Results (mouseover to compare) (View: Final Result & Eyes - Original Image)

An Open Source Headshot (Ronni)

Mon, 12 Aug 2013 12:03:00 -0500

I recently had an opportunity to shoot some headshots of a model, Ronni on ModelMayhem. She was kind enough to brave some nasty weather to help get to the shoot. It was my first time shooting with her, and she was super nice (if you’re in the Mobile, AL area give her a shout!).

My personal favorite of the set.

The image we'll be working on in this tutorial.

This post is going to focus on what I had to do to get the final result you see above. I had a couple of small problems that I ran into, but they led to some neat solutions!

The Plan

The intention was to shoot her against a white backdrop that I would light and expose to be pure white, and lighting her separately. While I had the rough setup from my previous headshot of myself to work from, I still managed to botch the exposure a little bit (if anyone wants to help me buy a lightmeter so this doesn’t happen again, that would just be aces! ;) ).

So the result you see above is mostly what I had envisioned before the shoot. If I had things setup correctly, I could have just positioned the model, shot away, and would already have my clean white background ready to go.

Of course, that is not what happened.

File Downloads:
As usual, to keep things open and accessible, here are my “source” files:
Download the .ORF RAW file
If you’d rather work with my two final JPG outputs (hi/lo), and my crop, here are those files:

This file is being made available under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license (CC-BY-SA-NC). You're free to use it, modify it, and share it as long as you attribute me, Pat David, as the originator of the file. You're not allowed to use these images for Commercial purposes.

Uh Oh

Really, what I should do is just re-shoot the headshots. The exposures are off, and I would save myself much more time in the end by reshooting. This does present us a nice learning opportunity, however. What would be the steps I could use to still get a good shot out of this? Well, stay with me…

So, here is the neutral result that I was seeing in RawTherapee once I was finished:

The problem is that my model is under-exposed, while the edges of the background flash around her are right at the edge of over-exposure. This means that if I increase the exposure to correct for my model, I will begin blowing out the background.

Normally, this would be fine, as I want the background to be pure white anyway. Unfortunately, result of this is that the hairs along the edges that are over the white background will begin to blow out, and I’ll lose that detail.

Here is the same image, exposure corrected for my subject (Only change is Exposure Compensation to 1.2 in RawTherapee):

This isn’t too bad at first glance. The model is more properly exposed, and the background is now pure white as well, which is what I wanted to begin with.

The problem with the corrected version is the hair. Here’s a closeup to illustrate what I mean:

Comparison of edge hairs between neutral exposure (left), and corrected for subject (right).

As you can see, by raising the exposure to proper levels for my subject, I lose too much of the hair details in front of the background. I guess I could let them blow out, but it just doesn’t look very well thought out or executed (and the last thing I want is for people to think I poorly executed something, right?).

The New Plan

So now I had a plan of sorts. I want the hair details over a white background from the neutral exposure, but want the subject from the corrected exposure. Now I know I’ll be dealing with two images, and compositing them together to give me a single image that has a pure white background, hairs defined against that background, and a properly exposed subject. Piece of cake!

Here is a short (30s) video I made to illustrate what I was now going to do:

Because I knew I would be masking my corrected exposure image over the others, there was nothing else to do with it at the moment. That layer is done.

The layer with the hair details is the problem I now had. How can I effectively extract the subject/hair from the background in this image?

Let’s look at the image again:

I need a way to effectively mask out the background from the model, and all of her hairs that are over the background. Here are my options:

I could mask it all by hand (hours of work).
I can pay someone to do it (according to my latest spam emails this is apparently a thing).
I can use the Fuzzy Select Tool (magic wand).
I can use the Foreground Select tool.

Now, if you know me, you’ll know that I’m lazy, so the first option is out as long as there are other options on the table. I’m also cheap, so the second option is out as well (seriously, this is a thing?!).

Now, I have tried to use the Fuzzy Select Tool in the past to do this, and let me tell you: it’s frustrating. It’s hard to get a good selection, and you’ll always get things you didn’t really want (or vice-versa). Plus, the background is not consistently the same value, shifting with the light falloff on the backdrop. Nope, not for me.

Foreground Select sounds like just the tool for the job, right?

Well, yes, it does sound perfect for this in theory. It’s just that in practice it’s pretty much useless. See, the current Foreground Select tool uses SIOX to create the mask. Unfortunately, this means that the mask results are binary, meaning that a pixel is either fully transparent, or fully colored. No in-between.

The result of GIMP's Foreground Select tool using SIOX.

It may get a foreground selection for you, but in my case it looks even worse than the blown out, corrected exposure version. So this was a no-go.

IF only there was some more advanced method of pixel extraction from a background that took into account transparency and could magically create a selection for me…

RGGJAN Foreground Select / GIMP Fork

Well, turns out there is! Thanks to Jan Rüegg and Johann Wolf, there is a fork of GIMP that has a much more advanced Alpha Matting foreground select tool, instead of the SIOX implementation in main GIMP.

I won’t get into the reasons why this is not the default for the Foreground Select tool in GIMP at the moment. It’s being worked on somewhat, and may find itself in GIMP at some point. For now you’ll have to download a version of GIMP that has it included. Luckily, +Partha Bagchi has you covered with a pre-compiled version of this fork! Head to Partha.com and get it. (It’s the RGGJAN Fork).

I have this same version saved on my machine just for this tool (seriously, that’s how useful it is). It’s a portable build, so it doesn’t interfere with any other GIMP versions I may have installed. Well worth the download.

Using the RGGJAN Foreground Select Tool

So I have my neutral exposure image exported from RawTherapee, and now it’s time for some magic (well, maybe not “magic”, but it does seem magical sometimes).

For a change I’ve actually recorded a video of me going through the steps I describe below. I know some people prefer videos, so here it is:

At about 5:30s I start outling the first rough selection, there should be an annotation that will let you fast forward past that part if you’d like (sorry, I was having audio sync issues when I tried to fix it myself before uploading). Otherwise, it’s basically a walkthrough of everything I am doing below (the only downside is you have to listen to me ramble - sorry).

Opening up my base neutral exposure image:

You can invoke the command through:

Tools → Selection Tools → Foreground Select

The first thing you’ll do is create a rough selection around your foreground object that you want to separate. Due to how the algorithm operates, you’ll want to get reasonably close during this step to help speed things up. The more pixels you can identify as definitely foreground/background, the faster things will move (and the better the results).

Here is my rough mask for the image:

After you’ve identified the rough mask, the tool will now be expecting you to paint over the foreground object that you want to extract. As with the first pass mask, you’ll want to make sure you select as much of the foreground as possible, and be sure that it really is the foreground.

If possible it’s best to make sure you have good coverage of the foreground object, and to not leave any holes in your selection (paint over the entire foreground object, not just the edges). This will help speed things up a bit.

Once you let go of the mouse button, the algorithm will begin working on identifying the foreground pixels. Go get a cup of coffee.

When I came back from my mandatory coffee break, I had this:

At this point, if you’re happy with the results you can just hit “Enter”, and you’ll have a new layer with your foreground object over a transparent background.

If you need to tweak the mask further, you can opt to paint-in and identify either backround/foreground pixels to help the algorithm even more. In my case, it pulled a pretty dark clean mask right out of the gate:

On Blue - On Red - On Green - On White (mouseover to change background)

There are a couple of places that I could refine the mask further if needed. There are two spots in the hair on the left, and some background peeking through on the right. Remember, though, that I only really need the hairs that are mostly in front of the background (as I’ll be masking most of this with the other exposure image).

So at this point I can say that I’m done! I personally now save the foreground extracted image as a PNG with transparency, and open up my regular GIMP build to finalize the base image.

Compositing it all Together

At this point I’ll work entirely in my normal build of GIMP that I use (which also happens to be a Partha build). I’ll open up the foreground extracted image, and because I want a white background I’ll add a pure white layer underneath it.

At this point I’ll touch up the slight mask problem in the outlying hair, and make it look a bit cleaner (on the left):

Then I will open up the corrected exposure version over all the other layers. I’ll also add a fully transparent layer mask to it:

At this point, I’ll simply paint on the mask with white to show through the properly exposed image. I’ll use a soft brush, and keep away from getting too close to the edges, instead letting the layer underneath with the extracted foreground handle that for me.

When I’m done, I’m left with this:

If you’re curious, here’s what my layer palette currently looks like as well:

Almost Ready to Start

So at this point I’m done with just getting my base image ready for my normal workflow. The image is in a state that it should have been in from the start, of course. If I had gotten my exposures correct I could have avoided all of this.

We wouldn’t have had a chance to learn about a great method of foreground extraction, though!

Normally at this point, I would get started with the next part of my retouching workflow. I am going to stop here, and publish this now, though. I figured it might be more helpful if I record a video of the next steps as well, and I haven’t finished those yet.

So stayed tuned later this week, as we start with this base image and try to whip it into shape!

A Simple Headshot (of Myself)

Fri, 02 Aug 2013 14:59:00 -0500

I needed a new headshot for something recently, and I figured it might be fun to expand a little on something I started playing with while shooting my friend Mairi. I wanted to work on getting my backgrounds blown out to pure white.

I think this was mostly due to reading the great Zack Arias “White Seamless Tutorial”, and trolling around on The Strobist again. I also just got my camera back, so it was as good a time as any to put it through some paces… (Plus, I needed the practice).

So first, here is the final result after all of my fiddling:

Could have been a lot worse, I think…

So my first desire in shooting this was to play with getting the background blown to pure white. I happened to have a whiteboard in my office conference room that I figured would be a good background to start with.

I setup one Yongnuo YN-560 II on a stand just a couple of feet from the whiteboard, firing back into it. I had to adjust the distance a little in order to get the right spread. A couple of test shots later, and I was able to dial in the exposure to just blow out the background to white. This was going to give me a base to work from.

Because I apparently lack the drive to buy proper equipment, I didn’t have a light stand handy to hold my key light. I also didn’t have my larger softbox handy to use for this. I did have a smaller 6” × 8” Softbox, so I went with that instead. So this meant that I had to hold the little softbox in one hand, and point it back to me. Here’s a quick render I did to show what my setup looked like (and no, I don’t have breasts like that — mine are fuller):

If you need a video instead of an animated gif, here it is (and how does YouTube not know how to handle a 960×540 resolution properly?):

So what I had was, one YN560 at just over ½ power firing into the whiteboard behind me, and a second YN560 in the small softbox, handheld, at just under ½ power. After cropping, this is the image straight out of the camera (well, the RAW after RawTherapee with some leveling):

See? Told you it could’ve been worse…

I notice right away that I’m over-driving my background. I wanted to get a little wrap on the dark side of the face, but instead have the background leeching onto me a bit too much (the slight flare shows this too well). At least the background is white, though, right? :)

You’d think if I was going to bother reading a tutorial, that I’d at least pay attention to what it said, right? It’s funny because Zack specifically shows a case of the BG being overexposed. The flare and loss of contrast on the subject is an effect of this.

The softbox was just a bit too small for my taste. One this small is really only useful up super-close to the subject, I think. Otherwise it’s a bit too hard for me.

Still, I don’t think the image is a loss (but I’ll definitely spend a few extra minutes dialing in the ratio between subject and background next time). I purposefully kept the shadows a little brighter from my RAW conversion, and would push them down a bit in GIMP.

Into GIMP I just moved along with my normal workflow. Wavelet Decompose where I stayed mostly on residual with a touch of the largest scale. Mostly just to smooth out my skin tones a little. Some slight dodging and burning to bring some volume back, levels to push the blacks down and to increase the contrast a little more. Finally, Petteri Sulonen’s Portra-esque color curve to finish it off.

Here’s the final result again (mouseover to compare to the original):

The final result again (mouseover to compare).

Two other things that I think are worth mentioning. I couldn’t help but try Peter Hurley’s advice to bring the head forward to help accentuate the jawline (and hopefully remove unsightly turkey-neck), but even more interesting was the slight squinting of the eyes. Not like I forgot my glasses, but more of squinting with the lower lids of my eyes.

I have really bad bags under my eyes that are a permanent fixture of my face, and slightly squinting with my lower lids really helped alleviate some of that apparent bagginess. I didn’t retouch those bags at all, which was nice.

The other thing is the crop, in case anyone was wondering:

F_n = F_n-1 + F_n-2, seed F₀=0, F₁=1

Thirds are for chumps.

Not really, but figured if I was going to play with the crop, might as well have some fun with a Fibonacci sequence, right? Why not!

Getting Around in GIMP - Photography Plugins & Tools

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 17:09:00 -0500

After a recent post I came across on the FOSSPhotography sub on reddit that proposed to list the “Must Have GIMP Plugins for Photographers” I got a bit irked. I made a snarky comment about how crappy the linked post was, and the mod made a pretty level-headed response: “Make a list and submit it”. So here I am.

Just a little disclaimer before I get started. This is not a comprehensive list at all. Most of my work utilizes the built–in functionality of GIMP. So they are not all done with plug–ins/scripts, rather I’ll work those built–in functions manually to modify my images. I’m 100% positive I’ve left a few other great things out, but not intentionally for the most part. If I am missing something that you think I really should have included, let me know in the comments!

Also, this is what works for me . I make no claims that this is the way you should approach things (except for the learning concepts part - everyone should learn to approach things that way).

Tools

Wooden Handscrew Clamps by Pat David

When I refer to ‘tools’ I’m really referring to concepts. The great thing about learning concepts is that you can then transfer that knowledge to just about any other system. If you haven’t noticed, I try my best to speak more about concepts in my tutorials (and then how those concepts are applied in GIMP, of course).

For example, consider creating a B&W image. Many people will simply desaturate the image and call it a day, but some people may realize the concept that the red channel of an image is often very flattering to skin tones. So they may want to overlay a copy of the red channel over their image to enhance those tones.

The concept of the red channel being flattering to skin, and overlaying it to enhance those tones is (relatively) universal. Chances are you can find a way to get a layer of the red channel in just about any image editor.

Learning the concepts will serve you very well as you explore more post–processing techniques, and removes your dependance on any single piece of software.

Scripts & Plugins

What follows is just a short list of plugins/scripts that I’ve found to be very helpful for photographic retouching purposes. It’s not a complete list, just the things I’ve found myself using over and over again whenever I fire up GIMP to edit photographs.

G’MIC

I’m going to get the big one out of the way right up front. G’MIC for GIMP is a plugin to a very powerful image processing framework. I mean really powerful.

Click the image to go get G'MIC. Seriously.

Some really creative people have taken the scripting capabilities to heart, and are responsible for creating some extremely interesting filters for G’MIC. For instance, there are currently over 493 different filters available that produce a wide range of effects. I’ll only have room to mention a few of them here.

Smoothing and Noise Reduction

Filters → G’MIC… → Repair → Smooth

My first encounter with what was then GREYCstoration was during my search for an open source noise reduction. At the time Noise Ninja was quite popular, and appeared to produce good results. My searching led me to GreyC.

Here was an open source implementation of a few different noise reduction methods that could easily match the output from the commercial offerings.

There are many options to control how the smoothing takes place, which can be overwhelming for a first time user, but the defaults are sane and give a good starting point to begin experimenting and fine–tuning. What’s more, since the time I first started using it there are now a total of 10 different methods of noise reduction available (not counting other contributors custom tweaked derivations of those):

anisotropic
bilateral
diffusion
mean-curvature
median
patch-based
selective gaussian
thin brush
total-variation
wavelets

It is still, in my opinion, the single best option for noise reduction in F/OSS photography, hands down.

Black and White

Filters → G’MIC… → Black & white → Black & White

The G’MIC options for B&W conversion are also heavily considered in my workflow. There’s a high level of control available across the RGB channels (similar to using the channel mixer, but with much better control, and a zoomable preview window), as well as gamma/contrast/brightness. There’s also a nifty option for introducing grain into the image in different luminosity ranges.

Another nice option for approaching B&W through G’MIC is the ability to modify local contrast as well (there’s also a local contrast enhancement filter available separately).

Finally, David was kind enough to include a Pseudogrey dithering option in the B&W conversion for me that lets you use up to 5 scales of difference (if you don’t know what pseudogrey is, have a look here at my previous post).

Even if you haven’t read my previous giant B&W conversion tutorial, this is a great way to do conversions and get instant feedback on what changes in the mixer settings will do to your final result. Skip the “Desaturate” option and start using G’MIC B&W conversion instead (you might be surprised at how quickly you start learning what each of the channel options does to your image!).

Freaky Details

Filters → G’MIC… → Details → Freaky details

This doesn’t always make it into my workflow, because it’s highly dependent on the image it’s being applied to, but I love that it’s only a single click away now. I had previously written a tutorial on achieving this effect from Ps guru Calvin Hollywood, but was missing a very important layer blending mode that GIMP doesn’t have: Vivid Light.

A few conversations later, and it was there. However, he wasn’t content with supplying just one step for the process, and implemented the entire process into a single filter directly. You can still follow my original steps for doing this in GIMP, but David’s version in G’MIC is just faster and easier once you know what it does.

Local Contrast Enhancement

Filters → G’MIC… → Details → Local contrast enhancement

Local contrast enhancement is relatively easy to achieve, it’s really just an Unsharp Mask with a large radius, and a low amount. However, in the G’MIC version you can also adjust the dark/light levels independently, as well as apply the effect to a particular channel instead of the entire image (luminance would be a good place to start). This can be quite handy when fiddling with LCE towards the end of processing.

Sharpening

Filters → G’MIC… → Details → Sharpen

So you need to add a little sharpening at the end of your processing (you are only sharpening as the last step before exporting, right?!), then look no further than G’MIC. In the same way there are many different algorithms for smoothing noise in an image, there are many algorithms for doing the reverse.

G’MIC makes available 8 different sharpening methods for you, and I’m sure one of them will work for what you want! At the moment they are:

deblur
Gold-Meinel
inverse diffusion
octave sharpening
Richardson–Lucy
shock filters
unsharp mask
Whiten

Layer Blending Modes

Filters → G’MIC… → Layers → Blend [standard]

GIMP has 21 different layer blending modes that you’re all probably familiar with. G’MIC has 42 currently. These come in really handy when you’re trying to follow a tutorial in Photoshop for instance. As I said earlier, the Vivid Light blending mode doesn’t exist in GIMP at all, and was recently added to G’MIC. There are a few other Ps layer blending modes that you’ll now be able to find thanks to G’MIC.

Just Go Get It

I can’t stress this enough, but I have barely begun to scratch the surface of all the filters and effects available through G’MIC. If there is one thing you download to add on to GIMP, this needs to be that one thing.

Wavelet Decompose/Denoise/Sharpen

For anyone that’s been reading my stuff for a little while, you’ve probably noticed that I’m a huge fan of Wavelet Decompose. GIMP Registry user marcor released the 3 Wavelet operation plugins quite a few years back, and they’re still an amazing suite of operations for image processing.

Sample 5 wavelet scales + residual

The fundamental idea is that the image is broken down according to its varying frequency levels. You can then modify any of the frequency levels independent of the others. For decompose, this means that I can retouch features in an image based on their relative size to other features separately (think high/low frequency separation on steroids). I’ve written tutorials about using it before, so I won’t rehash them here, but needless to say for portrait/skin retouching work, this is my go–to method.

I don’t personally use Wavelet Sharpen, only because I often decompose anyway as one of my steps, and I can re–use one or more of those scales to do my sharpening manually (the same with denoise).

Luminosity Masks

Photographer Tony Kuyper described a method in Ps of using masks and layers derived from the luminosity separation of an image a few years back, and it’s a great article to serve as an introduction to the process. Basically, it’s a method for breaking the image down to multiple layers that are all masked with luminosity values that contain a certain range of tones in an image (bright values, mid values, and dark values).

This let’s you now modify the image and to constrain those modifications to a certain tonal region with minimal impact on the other tones (brighten the shadows without affecting the rest of the tones, or vice–versa). Mike Rosulek wrote a script to automate the process of creating these masks.

I use these all the time. It’s just too handy to be able to restrict modifications to certain tonal regions in an image.

Resynthesizer

Long before Adobe introduced “Content–Aware Fill” to Photoshop, we GIMP users had Resynthesizer. Couple the plug–in with the helper script “Heal Selection”, and you had a pretty powerful method for filling in areas based on surrounding textures.

I had also previously done an in–depth look at using this plug–in with the “Heal Selection” helper script, and wrote up a bit more over on GimpChat about considering your surrounding textures when using it to maximize the results.

I don’t use this as often as the rest of the things I’ve mentioned so far, but when you need it, boy does it feel like magic.

Liquid Rescale

This is another plug–in that I don’t use that often, but is really handy when I do need it. This will basically use a seam–carving algorithm to slice away portions of your image (or fill it in) in order to resize it in some fashion. Check it out with more examples.

This approach is something that the G’MIC team has also been playing with lately – so keep an eye out there for another implementation.

This is not complete

As I said in the beginning, this is just a small simple list of my most commonly used plug–ins and scripts. I haven’t even mentioned the myriad of functions that I use on every single photo (like Curves, Levels, colorspace decomposition, layer blending modes, layer masks, etc…).

It’s a nice place to start, though, if you’re looking for handy tools to help with your photographic retouching workflow.

My Camera Broke

Tue, 23 Jul 2013 11:21:00 -0500

Almost a month ago I headed out on a really hot day down here in the deep south* with coworkers for a day on the delta in Mobile, AL. I had brought along my (relatively) new OM-D E-M5 to take some nature/fun shots with everyone. However, after finally boarding our boat and pulling my camera out to take some shots, I was greeted by a completely white EVF when trying to shoot some photos…

Crap. Looking around online yielded nothing relevant, so off to Olympus service she went. I was so angry at the problem I just didn’t want to think about photographs until I could get it back.

I needed to vent some creativity, and turned to something else I enjoy playing with, 3D rendering/modeling! So a few days during my lunch breaks I tried my hand at speed modeling in Blender. In particular learning to use the new dynamic topology sculpting tools (dyntopo).

So I thought it might be fun to share what I came up with here (I had already posted these on Google+, but figured it might be fun to share them here as well).

Bear in mind, I’m not really a whiz at Blender, I just happen to know enough to have fun playing with it and doodling (which is really all these are). I tried to keep everything in Cycles for the most part, and was just having fun…

No, I have no idea. Just playing around…

Mostly just working out materials that I liked here.

Trying something a little different. Sort of an "Alien"-esque thingy (with a vagina for a mouth apparently).

Finally getting something a little more cohesive.

Yes, it's a carrot. I didn't think he was grumpy when I made him, but he does look sort of grumpy.

Testing particle grass on an icosphere - worked out pretty well!

The lightbulb finally managed to fly.

A radish search party.

Of course, now my camera is back, so not sure if I will continue with these. I had a couple of other ideas kicking around that I may go ahead and finish, though.

I did at least manage to use some neat tricks for creating these, though. I did some rudimentary network rendering by passing off a few of these to different machines, rendering different frames with the seed value in Cycles set to #frame. This gave me a different noise pattern for each frame. Of course, I brought them together in GIMP and used G’MIC to mean average the layers together, which really cut down on the noise and smoothed things out nicely!

For example, here’s a single frame from the “Radish Search Party” image:

Quite a bit noisier in a single frame

The nice thing about rendering/averaging these frames is that if at any time I want it to be a bit cleaner, I can just render a few more new frames until I am happy with the result.

Fixed the Getting Around in GIMP Page

Fri, 12 Jul 2013 09:39:00 -0500

This is really just a small update. I had noticed a while back that I get many international visitors here (cool!), but that the actual Getting Around in GIMP main page was unusable if someone was using Google Translation (not cool!). Luckily this only affected that page and not the regular posts.

So I finally got off my butt to fix it. I used some questionable javascript to detect if the page is being loaded inside a frame, and injected different css to hopefully fix the problem. If anyone happens to visit the page using Google Translate and it is still unusable, please let me know!

It’s not perfect, but should at least work to get around the different tutorials.

Fixing Flickr (Removing the New Navigation Bar)

Tue, 02 Jul 2013 15:57:00 -0500

Hot on the heels of Flickr’s new redesign, and giving its users up to 1TB of free storage, is a real fumble, in my opinion: a Google-esque navigation bar.

I was greeted today on logging into Flickr with an incredibly inane navigation bar above the rest of the Flickr navigation header.

I’m not sure what I’m more offended by, that the navigation bar is there, or that it is so incredibly ugly. It’s just poorly styled and implemented (if they had at least matched the color of the nav bar already there, it wouldn’t be so bad). Seriously, look at that screenshot.

So here is a quick fix for those of you running Chrome (and Firefox, too, but I’m not sure where user styles are kept in Firefox).

Find your “User StyleSheets” folder. On Win7, this is located at:

C:\Users\{USERNAME}\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\User StyleSheets

In that folder there should be a Custom.css file. Open that file in a text editor.

Add these lines to the file:

.zeus.with-eyebrow.new-header #eyebrow { display: none; }
.zeus.with-eyebrow.new-header #global-nav { top: 0px !important; }

Save. If needed, refresh Flickr. The nasty nav bar should now be gone…

Man, if only there was some way to keep this thing from showing up for other users. It’s almost embarrassing to send someone to your Flickr page the way it is now.

Automatic Exposure Blending with Enfuse (HDR-ish)

Tue, 02 Jul 2013 12:03:00 -0500

I say HDR-ish because there is not a true HDRi being created, but rather a final output image is being blended together from multiple exposures (using a fancy algorithm and what I suspect is some magical kung-fu).

First, though, a quick recap. I talked about creating HDRi’s in my previous post about doing it entirely with F/OSS tools. The intention there was to create a single HDRi scene that contained more luminance data than could be captured with any camera in a single shot. The problem was, you had no means of visualizing this high range of data.

So to squeeze the large range of light values into something you can see, we have to rely on Tone Mapping Operators (TMO’s) to compress the range of values down to something we can see. There are quite a few different methods for doing this, which led to all the results in my previous post:

My results from using all the different TMO’s in Luminance HDR

In each of these cases, the first step was to create an HDRi, then to feed that through a TMO to produce the result (and tweak as necessary).

Remember - the goal was to produce an image that could represent a large dynamic range of information into a smaller range that we can see.

In that article, I neglected to mention another method for achieving the same result - exposure blending.

At its simplest, an exposure-blended image could just be two exposures. For instance, one to capture the dark areas nicely exposed, with another exposed for light areas. The basic idea is to bring both of those images into GIMP, then use layer masks to blend them together where you can choose the best exposed parts for the final output manually.

This is actually a great method for total control of your final result. I personally have used this method often to great results. Of course, I take advantage of things like luminosity masks to help me quickly/easily mask areas of an image.

The problem is that it gets unwieldy very fast as the number of exposures goes up. (Image trying to manually blend the exposures from 7 different images - yikes!).

So I just go ahead and cheat a little by using Enfuse (included as part of Hugin) to automatically blend the different exposures together for me! (Some of you may remember Enfuse from my previous post about using it to focus-stack a series of macro images to increase depth-of-field). For reference, I’m re-using the images from my earlier HDR tutorial. Here are those images:

The base exposure, ¹⁄₁₆₀ s, 0EV

¹⁄₈₀ second, +1EV (left), ¹⁄₄₀ second, +2EV (right)

¹⁄₃₂₀, -1EV (left), ¹⁄₆₄₀, -2EV (right)

Enough talk. Get all your JPG’s in a directory, open a command prompt there, and:

enfuse *.jpg

Impressive, right? Wait a bit, and when it’s done you’ll have a file a.tif in that directory. Here’s my output from the above images:

Compared to all of the previous results from the different TMO’s in LuminanceHDR, this is a fantastic result, I think! No weird halos or colors, and I can get detail just about everywhere in the resulting image. This would make a great base image to start with if I wanted to do any further processing. As a bonus, it was fast (wayyyy faster than creating an HDRi and then tonemapping it).

There’s another neat trick you can use as well. If you wanted to tweak the results you can have enfuse also save the masks it used to generate the results:

enfuse --save-masks=%f-softmask.png *.jpg

This will generate the mask used (named FILE-softmask.png) for each of the input files. Now you can load up your original images in GIMP, and add layer masks with these masks for further tweaking and adjustment. Couldn’t be simpler!

I would highly recommend you keep this in mind as part of your toolset for blending images with high dynamic ranges. It usually produces very realistic and well-blended images much faster and easier than going through all of the steps for creating an HDRi.

The $30,429,899 Photograph

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 21:49:00 -0500

So, here is a view of the most expensive image ever (that doesn’t really exist - except for now because I made it):

The $30,429,899 Photograph by Pat David

This is an amalgam of 16 (out of 18) of the most expensive photographs ever sold, all at once (based on the list at Wikipedia).

I averaged all of the images in Imagemagick, and brought them into GIMP for some level adjustments and minor processing.

I am only missing two images, that I could not find suitable resolution versions of. Those two were Andreas Gursky’s “99 Cent II Diptychon” (2001), and Dmitry Medvedev’s “Tobolsk Kremlin” (2009).

The rest of the images, at auction time, had a staggering value of $30,429,899! (I’ll sell you a print of this for a bit less…) :D Of course, I averaged the images to produce this, so perhaps it’s better to show the averaged price of $1,901,868…

The 16 images blended together are:

Andreas Gursky	Rhein II (1999)	$4,338,500
Cindy Sherman	Untitled #96 (1981)	$3,890,500
Jeff Wall	Dead Troops Talk (A vision after an ambush of a Red Army patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986) (1992)	$3,666,500
Edward Steichen	The Pond-Moonlight (1904)	$2,928,000
Cindy Sherman	Untitled #153 (1985)	$2,700,000
unknown	Billy the Kid (1879–80) tintype portrait	$2,300,000
Edward Weston	Nude (1925)	$1,609,000
Alfred Stieglitz	Georgia O'Keeffe (Hands) (1919)	$1,470,000
Alfred Stieglitz	Georgia O'Keeffe Nude (1919)	$1,360,000
Richard Prince	Untitled (Cowboy) (1989) ^[12]	$1,248,000
Richard Avedon	Dovima with elephants (1955)	$1,151,976
Edward Weston	Nautilus (1927)	$1,082,500
Jeff Wall	Untangling (1994)	$1 Million AUD
Eugène Atget	Joueur d'Orgue (1898–1899)	$686,500
Robert Mapplethorpe	Andy Warhol (1987)	$643,200
Ansel Adams	Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1948)	$609,600

After staring at it for a bit, I actually started to notice a Conehead looking Andy Warhol in the middle. In fact, now I can’t stop seeing it.

Mr. Presidents

Fri, 31 May 2013 15:12:00 -0500

I’ve been pretty busy lately, and haven’t had a chance to post anything, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been fooling around when I can! Here’s a finished blended amalgam from the other night:

Mr. Presidents by Pat David (cc-by-nc-sa)

This is every one of the U.S. Presidential portraits (except one) all blended in Imagemagick. Once using an average, and a second one using median blending. I brought these into GIMP and overlayed the median blend at 50% opacity.

I also liked the original average blend, but the median blend added a few nice abstract edges that were not as pronounced in the average image. It also darkened the image a bit more, and gave it a more ‘grungy’ feel overall that I like. Here’s the average version for comparison:

Mr. Presidents (average) by Pat David (cc-by-nc-sa)

While the averaged image has a nice soft quality, I think for the subject the median blended version has a slightly ‘harder’ feel to it, and seems a bit more painterly.

This is the first one of these that I’ve done that have me seriously contemplating finding a way to get them into a gallery or something (I’m woefully ignorant of how it all works apparently). I am also thinking about selling limited prints of these as well, but again - I haven’t the foggiest idea about how to actually do it…

Actually, I do have this print for sale on RedBubble, but it’s different than what I’m referring to. They’ll print, mat/frame and ship it to you, but it’s just like any other Print On Demand (POD) service.

I’m referring to more specialized/limited prints that are signed and numbered for instance.

I think if anyone actually wants to buy one of these, I’d probably limit the number to some multiple of the number of U.S. Presidents, like 44/4.

So, 11 signed prints (8x10).

And maybe $1 for each president, so $44 per print (matted)?

I’d be interested in hearing what others are doing for this!

Of course, like most of my stuff, it’s licensed cc-by-nc-sa - so you can always feel free to download the full resolution and print it out yourself (if you do, please tell me! Extra internet points if you take a picture of it hanging and send it to me!).

Okay, this feels like a bit too much self-promotion (even for me). Drop me a line if you’re interested in picking up a print, or if you have some insight!

In Other News…

The founder of PetaPixel.com, Michael Zhang must have been out of his mind recently when he let me start writing for PetaPixel. So, I’m writing for PetaPixel. Here’s my first post there.

I’ll be doing my best to drop some interesting posts over there (and here still).

HDR Photography with F/OSS Tools (LuminanceHDR)

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:45:00 -0500

I was absolutely not going to bother covering this topic. Then I started a conversation with +Dan Tauro in this thread on the GIMP Users Community in G+…

The reason is that I’ve had mostly a love/hate relationship with HDR images (well, tonemapping HDR more than the HDR themselves). I think the problem is that it’s really easy to create really bad HDR images that the photographer thinks look really good. I know because I’ve been there:

Don't judge me, it was a weird time in my life...

The best term I’ve heard used to describe over-processed images created from an HDR is “clown vomit” (which would also be a great name for a band, by the way).

They are easily spotted with some tell-tale signs such as the halos at high-contrast edges, the unrealistically hyper-saturated colors that make your eyes bleed, and a general affront to good taste.

In fact, while I’m putting up embarrassing images that I’ve done in the past, here’s one that scores on all the points for a crappy image from an HDR:

“My Eyes! The goggles do nothing!”

Crap-tastic! Of course, the allure here is that it provides first timers a glimpse into something new, and they feel the desire to crank every setting up to 11 with no regards to good taste or aesthetics.

If you take anything away from this post, let it be this: “Turn it DOWN”. If it looks good to you, then it’s too much.

So What is HDR anyway?

Technically, HDRi - High Dynamic Range imaging - is just a means for recording a greater dynamic range than is possible with a single photograph.

HDR lightprobes are used in movie fx compositing to ensure that the lighting on CG models matches exactly the lighting for a live-action scene. By using an HDR lightprobe, you can match the lighting exactly to what is filmed.

I originally learned about, and used, HDR images when I would use them to illuminate a scene in Blender. In fact, I will still often use Paul Debevec’s Uffizi gallery lightprobe to light scene renders in Blender today. For example, you may be able to record 10-12 stops of light information using a modern camera. Some old films could record 12-13 stops of light, while your eyes can approximately see up to 14 stops.

HDR images are intended to capture more than this number of stops. (Depending on your patience, significantly more in some cases).

I can go on a bit about the technical aspects of HDR imaging, but I won’t. It’s boring. Plus, I’m sure you can use Wikipedia, or Google yourselves. :)

In the end, just realize that all an HDR image is, is one where there is a greater amount of light information being stored than is able to be recorded by your camera sensor in one shot.

Taking an HDR image(s)

More light information than my camera can record in one shot? Then how do I take an HDR photo?

You don’t.

You take multiple photos of a scene, and combine them to create the final HDR image.

Before I get into the process of capturing these photos to create an HDR with, consider something:

When/Why to use HDR

An HDR image is most useful to you when the scene you want to capture has bright and dark areas that fall outside the range of a single exposure, and you feel that there is something important enough outside that range to include in your final image.

That last part is important, because sometimes it’s OK to have some of your photo be too dark for details (or too light). This is an aesthetic decision of course, but keep it in mind…

Here’s what happens. Say you have a pretty scene you would like to photograph. Maybe it’s the Lower Chapel of Sainte Chapelle:

Sainte Chapelle Lower Chapel by iwillbehomesoon on Flickr (cc-by-nc-sa)

You may setup to take the shot, but when you are setting your exposure you may run into a problem. To expose for the brighter parts of the image means that the shadows fall to black too quickly, crushing out the details there.

If you expose for the shadows, then the brighter parts of the image quickly clip beyond white.

The use case for an HDR is when you can’t find a happy medium between those two exposures.

A similar situation comes up when you want to shoot any ground details against a bright sky, but you want to keep the details in both. Have a look at this example:

HDR Layers by dontmindme, on Flickr (cc-by-nc-sa)

In the first column, if you expose for the ground, the sky blows out.

In the second, you can drop the exposure to bring the sky in a bit, but the ground is getting too dark.

In the third, the sky is exposed nicely, but the ground has gone to mostly black.

If you wanted to keep the details in the sky and ground at the same time, you might use an HDR (you could technically also use exposure blending with just a couple of exposures and blend them by hand, but I digress).

Shooting Images for an HDR

Many cameras have an auto-bracketing feature that will let you quickly shoot a number of photos while changing the exposure value (EV) of each. You can also do this by hand simply by changing one parameter of your exposure each time.

You can technically change any of ISO, shutter speed, or aperture to modify the exposure, but I’d recommend you change only the shutter speed (or EV value when in Aperture Priority modes).

The reason is that changing the shutter speed will not alter the depth-of-field (DoF) of your view (from changing the aperture), or introduce any extra noise the way changing the ISO would.

When considering your scene, you will also want to try to stick to static scenes if possible. The reason is that objects that move around (swaying trees, people, cars, fast moving clouds, etc.) will end up as ghosts or mis-alignments in your final image. So as you’re starting out, choose your scene to help you achieve success.

Set up your camera someplace very steady (like a tripod), dial in your exposure and take a shot. If you let your camera meter your scene for you then this is a good middle starting point.

For example, if you setup your camera and meter your scene, it might report a ¹⁄₁₆₀ second exposure. This is our starting point (0EV).

The base exposure, ¹⁄₁₆₀ s, 0EV

To capture the lower values, just cut your shutter speed in half ( ¹⁄₈₀ second, +1EV), and take a photo. Repeat if you’d like ( ¹⁄₄₀ second, +2EV).

¹⁄₈₀ second, +1EV (left), ¹⁄₄₀ second, +2EV (right)

To capture the upper values, just double your starting point shutter speed ( ¹⁄₃₂₀, -1EV) and take a photo. Repeat if you’d like again ( ¹⁄₆₄₀, -2EV).

¹⁄₃₂₀, -1EV (left), ¹⁄₆₄₀, -2EV (right)

This will give you 5 images covering a range of -2EV to +2EV:

Shutter Speed	Exposure Value
¹⁄₆₄₀	-2EV
¹⁄₃₂₀	-1EV
¹⁄₁₆₀	0EV
¹⁄₈₀	+1EV
¹⁄₄₀	+2EV

(Just a side note - your values don’t have to be exactly 1EV each time, LuminanceHDR is usually smart enough to figure out what’s going on from the EXIF data in your image - I chose full EV stops here to simplify the example.)

So armed with your images, it’s time to turn them into an HDR image!

Creating an HDR Image

You kids have it too easy these days. We used to have to bring all the images into Hugin and align them before we could save an hdr/exr file. Nowadays you’ve got a phenomenal piece of Free/Open Source Software to handle this for you:

LuminanceHDR (previously qtpfsgui)
(thank goodness for the name change)

After installing it, open it up and hit “New HDR Image”:

This will open up the “HDR Creation Wizard” that will walk you through the steps of creating the HDR. The splash screen notes a couple of constraints.

On the next screen, you’ll be able to load up all of the images in your stack. Just hit the big green “+” button in the middle, and choose all of your images:

LuminanceHDR will load up each of your files, and investigate them to try and determine the EV values for each one. It usually does a good job of this on its own, but if there a problem you can always manually specify what the actual EV value is for each image.

Also notice that because I only adjusted my shutter speed by half or double, that each of the relative EV values is neatly spaced 1EV apart. They don’t have to be, though. I could have just as easily done ¹⁄₂ EV or ¹⁄₃ EV steps as well.

If there is even the remotest question about how well your images will line up, I’d recommend that you check the box for “Autoalign images”, and let Hugin’s align_image_stack do it’s magic. You really need all of your images to line up perfectly for the best results.

Hit “Next”, and if you are aligning the images be patient. Hugin’s align_image_stack will find control points between the images and remap them so they are all aligned. When it’s done you’ll be presented with some editing tools to tweak the final result before the HDR is created.

You are basically looking at a difference view between images in your stack at the moment. You can choose which two images to difference compare by choosing them in the list on the left. You can now shift an image horizontally/vertically if it’s needed, or even generate a ghosting mask (a mask to handle portions of an image where objects may have shifted between frames).

If you are careful, and there’s not much movement in your image stacks, then you can safely click through this screen. Hit the “Next” button.

This is the final screen of the HDR Creation Wizard. There are a few different ways to calculate the pixel values that make up an HDR image, and this is where you can choose which ones to use. For the most part, people far smarter than I had a look at a bunch of creation methods, and created the predefined profiles. Unless you know what you’re doing, I would stick with those.

Hit “Finish”, and you’re all done!

You’ll now be presented with your HDR image in LuminanceHDR, ready to be tonemapped so us mere mortals can actually make sense of the HDR values present in the image. At this point, I would hit the “Save As…” button, and save your work.

Tonemapping the HDR

So now you’ve got an HDR image. Congratulations!

The problem is, you can’t really view it with your puny little monitor (or eyeballs).

The reason is that the HDRi now contains more information than can be represented within the limited range of your monitor (and eyeballs, likely). So we need to find a way to represent all of that extra light-goodness so that we can actually view it on our monitors. This is where tonemapping comes in.

We basically have to take our HDRi and use a method for compressing all of that radiance data down into something we can view on our monitors/prints/eyeballs. We need to create a Low Dynamic Range (LDR) image from our HDR.

Yes - we just went through all the trouble of stacking together a bunch of LDR images to create the HDRi, and now we’re going back to LDR ? We are - but this time we are armed with way more radiance data than we had to begin with!

The question is, how do we represent all that extra data in an LDR? Well, there’s quite a few different ways. LuminanceHDR provides for 9 different tonemapping operators (tmo) to represent your HDRi as an LDR image (click to jump directly to that operator):

Just a small reminder, there’s a ton of math involved in how to map these values to an LDR image. I’m going to skip the math. The references are out there if you want them.

I’ll try to give examples of each of the operators below, and a little comment here and there. If you want more information, you can always check out the list on the Open Source Photography wikidot page.

Before we get started, let’s have a look at the window we’ll be working in:

Tonemap is the section where you can choose which TMO you want to use, and will expose the various parameters you can change for each TMO. This is the section you will likely be spending most of your time, tweaking the settings for whichever TMO you decide to play with.

Process gives you two things you’ll want to adjust. The first is the size of the output that you want to create (Result Size). While you are trying things out and dialing in settings you’ll probably want to use a smaller size here (some operators will take a while to run against the full resolution image). The second is any pre-gamma you want to apply to the image. I’ll talk about this setting a bit later on.

Oh, and this section also has the “Tonemap” button to apply your settings and generate a preview. I’ll also usually keep the “Update current LDR” checked while I rough in parameters. When I’m fine-tuning I may uncheck this (it will create a new image every time you hit the “Tonemap” button).

Results are shown in this big center section of the window. The result will be whatever Result Size you set in the previous section.

Previews are automatically generated and shown in this column for each of the TMO. If you click on one, it will automatically apply that TMO to your image and display it (at a reduced resolution - I think the default is 400px, but you can change it if you want). It’s a nice way to quickly get a preview overview of what all the different TMOs are doing to your image.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s dive into the TMOs and have a look at what we can do. I’m going to try to aim for a reasonably realistic output here that (hopefully) won’t make your eyeballs bleed. No promises, though.

I figured it might be more fun (easier?) to follow along if you had the same file I do. So here it is, don’t say I never gave you anything (This hdr is licensed cc-by-sa-nc by me):

Download from Google Drive (41MB .hdr)

Another note - all of the operators can have their results tweaked by modification of the pre-gamma value ahead of time. This is applied the image before the TMO is applied, and will make a difference in the final output. Usually pushing the pre-gamma value down will increase contrast/brightness in the image, while increasing it will do the opposite. I find it better to start with pre-gamma set to 1 as I experiment, just remember that it is another factor that you use to modify your final result.

Mantiuk ‘06

I’m starting with this one because it’s the first in the list of TMOs. Let’s see what the defaults from this operator look like against our base HDRi:

Default Mantiuk ‘06 applied

By default Mantiuk ‘06 produces a muted color result that seems pleasing to my eye. Overall the image feels like it’s almost “dirty” or “gritty” with these results. The default settings produce a bit of extra local contrast boosting as well.

Let’s see what the parameters do to our image.

Contrast Factor

The default factor is 0.10.

Pushing this value down to as low as 0.01 produces just a slight increase in contrast across the image from the default. Not that much overall.

Pushing this value up, though, will tone down the contrast overall. I think this helps to add some moderation to the image, as hard contrasts can be jarring to the eyes sometimes. Here is the image with only the Contrast Factor pushed up to 0.40:

Mantiuk '06 - Contrast Factor increased to 0.40 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Saturation Factor

The default value is 0.80.

This factor just scales the saturation in the image, and behaves as expected. If you find the colors a bit muted using this TMO, you can bump this value a bit (don’t get crazy). For example, here is the Saturation Factor bumped to 1.10:

Mantiuk '06 - Saturation Factor increased to 1.10 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Of course, you can also go the other way if you want to mute the colors a bit more:

Mantiuk '06 - Saturation Factor decreased to 0.40 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Detail Factor

The default is 1.0.

The Detail Factor appears to control local contrast intensity. It gets overpowering very quickly, so make small movements here (if at all). Here is what pushing the Detail Factor up to 10.0 produces:

Don't do this. Mantiuk '06 - Detail Factor increased to 10.0 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Contrast Equalization

This is supposed to equalize the contrast if there are heavy swings of light/dark across the image on a global scale, but in my example did little to the image (other than a strange lightening in the upper left corner).

My Final Version

I played a bit starting from the defaults. First I wanted to push down the contrast a bit to make everything just a bit more realistic, so I pushed Contrast Factor up to 0.30. I slightly bumped the Saturation Factor to 0.95 as well.

I liked the textures of the tree and house, so I wanted to bring those back up a bit after decreasing the Contrast Factor, so I pushed the Detail Factor up to 5.0.

Here is what I ended up with in the end:

My final output (Contrast 0.3, Saturation 0.95, Detail 5.0) (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Mantiuk ‘08

Mantiuk ‘08 is a global contrast TMO (for comparison, Mantiuk ‘06 uses local contrast heavily). Being a global operator, it’s very quick to apply.

Default Mantiuk ‘08 applied

As you can see, the effect of this TMO is to compress the dynamic range into an LDR output using a function that operates across the entire image globally. This will produce a more realistic result I think, overall.

The default output is not bad at all, where brights seem appropriately bright, and darks are dark while still retaining details. It does feel like the resulting output is a little over-sharp to my eye, however.

There are only a couple of parameters for this TMO (unless you specifically override the Luminance Level with the checkbox, Mantiuk ‘08 will automatically adjust it for you):

Predefined Display

There are options for LCD Office, LCD, LCD Bright, and CRT but they didn’t seem to make any difference in my final output at all.

Color Saturation

The default is 1.0. Color Saturation operates exactly how you’d expect. Dropping this value decreases the saturation, and vice versa. Here’s a version with the Color Saturation bumped to 1.50:

Mantiuk '08 - Color Saturation increased to 1.50 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Contrast Enhancement

The default value is 1.0.

This will affect the global contrast across the image. The default seemed to have a bit too much contrast, so it’s worth it to dial this value in. For instance, here is the Contrast Enhancement dialed down to 0.51:

Mantiuk '08 - Contrast Enhancement decreased to 0.51 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Compared to the default settings I feel like this operator can work better if the contrast is turned down just a bit to make it all a little less harsh.

Enable Luminance Level

This checkbox/slider allows you to manually specify the Luminance Level in the image. The problem that I ran into was that with this enabled, I couldn’t adjust the Luminance far enough to keep bright areas in the image from blowing out. if I let the default behavior of automatically adjusting Luminanace, then it kept things more under control.

My Final Version

Starting from the defaults, I pushed down the Contrast Enhancement to 0.61 to even out the overall contrast. I bumped the Color Saturation to 1.10 to bring out the colors a bit more as well.

I also dropped the pre-gamma correction to 0.91 in order to bring back some of the contrast lost from the Contrast Enhancement .

My final Mantiuk '08 output (pre-gamma 0.91, Contrast Enhancement 0.61, Color Saturation 1.10) (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Fattal

Crap. Time for this TMO I guess…

THIS is the TMO responsible for some of the greatest sins of HDR images. Did you see the first two images in this post? Those were Fattal. The problem is that it’s really easy to get stupid with this TMO.

Fattal (like the other local contrast operators) is dependent on the final output size of the image. When testing this operator, do it at the full resolution you will want to export. The results will not match up if you change size. I’m also going to focus on using only the newer v.2.3.0 version, not the old one.

Here is what the default values look like on our image:

Default Fattal applied

The defaults are pretty contrasty, and the color seems saturated quite a bit as well. Maybe we can get something useful out of this operator. Let’s have a look at the parameters.

Alpha

The default is 1.00.

This parameter is supposed to be a threshold against which to apply the effect. According to the wikidot, decreasing this value should increase the level of details in the output and vice versa. Here is an example with the Alpha turned down to 0.25:

Fattal - Alpha decreased to 0.25 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Increasing the Alpha value seems to darken the image a bit as well.

Beta

The default value is 0.90.

This parameter is supposed to control the amount of the algorithm applied on the image. A value of 1 is no effect on the image (straight gamma=1 mapping). Lower values will increase the amount of the effect. Recommended values are between 0.8 and 0.9. As the values get lower, the image gets more cartoonish looking.

Here is an example with Beta dropped down to 0.75:

Fattal - Beta decreased to 0.75 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Color Saturation

The default value is 1.0. This parameter does exactly what’s described. Nothing interesting to see here.

Noise Reduction

The default value is 0.

This should suppress fine detail noise from being picked up by the algorithm for enhancement. I’ve noticed that it will slightly affect the image brightness as well. Fine details may be lost if this value is too high. Here the Noise Reduction has been turned up to 0.15:

Fattal - Noise Reduction increased to 0.15 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

My Final Version

This TMO is sensitive to changes in its parameters. Small changes can swing the results far, so proceed lightly.

I increased the Noise Reduction a little bit up front, which lightened up the image. Then I dropped the Beta value to let the algorithm work to brighten up the image even further. To offset the increase, I pushed Alpha up a bit to keep the local contrasts from getting too harsh. A few minutes of adjustments yielded this:

My Fattal output - Alpha 1.07, Beta 0.86, Saturation 0.7, Noise red. 0.02 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Overall, Fattal can be easily abused. Don’t abuse the Fattal TMO. If you find your values sliding too far outside of the norm, step away from your computer, get a coffee, take a walk, then come back and see if it still hurts your eyes.

Drago

Drago is another of the global TMOs. It also has just one control: bias.

Here is what the default values produce:

Default Drago applied

The default values produced a very washed out appearance to the image. The black points are heavily lifted, resulting in a muddy gray in dark areas.

Bias is the only parameter for this operator. The default value is 0.85. Decreasing this value will lighten the image significantly, while increasing it will darken it. For my image, even pushing the Bias value all the way up to 1.0 only produced marginal results:

Drago - Bias 1.0 (mouseover to compare defaults)

Even at this level the image still appears very washed out. The only other parameter to change would be the pre-gamma before the TMO can operate. After adjusting values for a bit, I settled on a pre-gamma of 0.67 in addition to the Bias being set to 1:

My Final Version

My result: Drago - Bias 1.0, pre-gamma 0.67 (mouseover to compare defaults)

Durand

Most of the older documentation/posts that I can find describe Durand as the most realistic of the TMOs, yielding good results that do not appear overly processed.

Indeed the default settings immediately look reasonably natural, though it does exhibit a bit of blowing out in very bright areas - which I imagine can be fixed by adjustment of the correct parameters. Here is the default Durand output:

Default Durand applied

There are three parameters that can be adjusted for this TMO, let’s have a look:

Base Contrast

The default is 5.00.

This value is considered a little high from most sources I’ve read. Usually recommending to drop this value to the 3-4 range. Here is the image with the Base Contrast dropped to 3.0:

Durand - Base Contrast decreased to 3.5 (mouseover to compare defaults)

The Base Contrast does appear to drop the contrast in the image, but it also drops the blown-out high values on the house to more reasonable levels.

Spatial Kernel Sigma

The default value is 2.00.

This parameter seems to produce a change to contrast in the image. Large value swings are required to notice some changes, depending on the other parameter values. Pushing the value up to 65.00 looks like this:

Durand - Spatial Kernel Sigma increased to 65.00 (mouseover to compare defaults)

Range Kernel Sigma

The default value is 2.00.

My limited testing shows that this parameters doesn’t quite operate correctly. Changes will not modify the output image until you reach a certain threshold in the upper bounds, where it will overexpose the image. I am assuming there is a bug in the implementation, but will have to test further before filing a bug report.

My Final Version

In experiment I found that pre-gamma adjustments can affect the saturation in the output image. Pushing pre-gamma down a bit will increase the saturation.

My Durand results - pre-gamma 0.88, Contrast 3.6, Spatial Sigma 5.00 (mouseover to compare defaults)

I pulled the Base Contrast back to keep the sides of the house from blowing out. Once I had done that, I also dropped the pre-gamma to 0.88 to bump the saturation slightly in the colors. A slight boost to Spatial Kernel Sigma let me increase local contrasts slightly as well.

Finally, I used the Adjust Levels dialog to modify the levels slightly by raising the black point a small amount (hey - I’m the one writing about all these #@$%ing operators, I deserve a chance to cheat a little).

Reinhard ‘02

This is supposed to be another very natural looking operator. The initial default result looks good with medium-low contrast and nothing blowing out immediately:

Default Reinhard ‘02 applied

Even though many parameters are listed, they don’t really appear to make a difference. At least with my test HDR. Even worse, attempting to use the “Use Scales” option usually just crashes my LuminanceHDR.

Key Value

The default is 0.18.

This appears to be the only operator that does anything in my image at the moment. Increasing it will increase the brightness of the image, and decreasing it will darken the image.

Here is the image with Key Value turned down to 0.05:

Reinhard '02 - Key Value 0.05 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Phi

The default is 1.00. This parameter does not appear to have any affect on my image.

Use Scales

Turning this option on currently crashes my session in LuminanceHDR.

My Final Version

I started by setting the Key Value very low (0.01), and adjusted it up slowly until I got the highlights about where I wanted them. Due to this being the only parameter that modified the image, I then started adjusting pre-gamma up until I got to roughly the exposure I thought looked best (1.09).

Final Reinhard '02 version - Key Value 0.09, pre-gamma 1.09

Reinhard ‘05

Reinhard ‘05 is supposed to be another more ’natural’ looking TMO, and also operates globally on the image. The default settings produce an image that looks under-exposed and very saturated:

Default Reinhard ‘05 applied

There are three parameters for this TMO that can be adjusted.

Brightness

The default value is -10.00.

Interestingly, pushing this parameter down (all the way to its lowest setting, -20) did not darken my image at all. Pulling it up, however, did increase the brightness overall. Here the brightness is increased to -2.00:

Reinhard '05 - Brightness increased to -2.00 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Chromatic Adaptation

The default is 0.00.

This parameter appears to affect the saturation in the image. Increasing it desaturates the results, which is fine given that the default value of 0.00 shows a fairly saturated image to begin with. Here is the Chromatic Adaptation turned up to 0.60:

Reinhard '05 - Chromatic Adaptation increased to 0.6 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Light Adaptation

The default is 1.00.

This parameter modifies the global contrast in the final output. It starts at the maximum of 1.00, and decreasing this value will increase the contrast in the image. Pushing the value down to 0.5 does this to the test image:

Reinhard '05 - Light Adaptation decreased to 0.50 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

My Final Version

My Reinhard '05 - Brightness -5.00, Chromatic Adapt. 0.60, Light Adapt. 0.75 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Starting from the defaults, I raised the Brightness to -5.00 to lift the darker areas of the image, while keeping an eye on the highlights to keep them from blowing out. I then decreased the Light Adaptation until the scene had a reasonable amount of contrast without becoming overpowering to 0.75. At that point I turned up the Chromatic Adaptation to reduce the saturation in the image to be more realistic, and finished at 0.60.

Ashikhmin

This TMO has little in the way of controls - just options for two different equations that can be used, and a slider. The default (Eqn. 2) image is very dark and heavily saturated:

Default Ashikhmin applied

There is a checkbox option for using a “Simple” method (that produces identical results regardless of which Eqn is checked - I’m thinking it doesn’t use that information).

Simple

Checking the Simple checkbox removes any control over the image parameters, and yields this image:

Ashikhmin - Simple (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Fairly saturated, but exposed reasonably well. It lacks some contrast, but the tones are all there. This result could use some further massaging to knock down the saturation and to bump the contrast slightly (or adjust pre-gamma).

Equation 4

This is the result of choosing Equation 4 instead:

Ashikhmin - Equation 4 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

There is a large loss of local contrast details in the scene, and some of the edges appear very soft. Overall the exposure remains very similar.

Local Contrast Threshold

The default value is 0.50.

This parameter modifies the local contrast being applied to the image. The result will be different depending on which Equation is being used.

Here is Equation 2 with the Local Contrast Threshold reduced to 0.20:

Ashikhmin - Eqn 2, Local Contrast Threshold 0.20 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Lower values will decrease the amount of local contrast in the final output.

Equation 4 with Local Contrast Threshold reduced to 0.20:

Ashikhmin - Eqn 4, Local Contrast Threshold 0.20 (mouseover to compare to Eqn 4, Local Contrast Threshold 0.50 [default])

My Final Version

After playing with the options, the overall best version I feel is had by just using the Simple option. Further tweaking may be necessary to get usable results beyond this.

Pattanaik

This TMO appears to attempt to mimic the behavior of human eyes with the inclusion of terminology like “Rod” and “Cone”. There are quite a few different parameters to adjust if wanted. The default TMO results in an image like this:

Default Pattanaik applied

The default results are very desaturated, and tends to blow out in the highlights. The dark areas appear well exposed, with the problems (in my test hdr) being mostly constrained to highlights for this example. On first glance, the results look like something that could be worked with.

There are quite a few different parameters for this TMO. Let’s have a look at them:

Multiplier

The default value is 1.00.

This parameter appears to modify the overall contrast in the image. Decreasing the value will decrease contrast, and vice versa. It also appears to slightly modify the brightness in the image as well (pushing the highlights to a less blown-out value). Here is the Multiplier decreased to 0.03:

Pattanaik - Multiplier 0.03 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Local Tone Mapping

This parameter is just a checkbox, with no controls. The result is a washed out image with heavy local contrast adjustments:

Pattanaik - Local Tone Mapping (mouseover to compare to defaults)

Cone/Rod Levels

The default is to have Auto Cone/Rod checked, greying out the options to change the parameters manually.

Turning off Auto Cone/Rod will get the default manual values of 0.50 for both applied:

Pattanaik - Manual Cone/Rod (0.50 for each) (mouseover to compare to defaults)

The image gets very blown out everywhere, and modification of the Cone/Rod values does not significantly reduce brightness across the image.

My Final Version

Starting with the defaults, I reduced the Multiplier to bring the highlights under control. This reduced contrast and saturation in the image.

My final Pattanaik - Multiplier 0.03, pre-gamma 0.91 (mouseover to compare to defaults)

To bring back contrast and some saturation, I decreased the pre-gamma to 0.91. The results are not too far off of the defualt settings. The results could still use some further help with global contrast and saturation, and might benefit from layering or modifications in GIMP.

Closing Thoughts

Looking through all of the results shows just how different each TMO will operate across the same image. For exmaple, here are all of my final results in a single image:

For some reason, I personally like the results from Mantiuk ‘06. The problem is that it’s still a little more extreme than I would care for in a final result. For a really good, realistic result that I think can be massaged into a great image, I would go to Mantiuk ‘08 or Reinhard.

I could also do something with Fattal, but would have to tone a few things down a bit.

While you’re working, remember to occasionally open up the Levels Adjustment to keep an eye on the histogram. Look for highlights blowing out, and shadows becoming too murky. All the normal rules of image processing still apply here - so use them!

You’re trying to use HDR as a tool for you to capture more information, but remember to still keep it looking realistic. If you’re new to HDR processing, then I can’t recommend enough to stop occasionally, get away from the monitor, and come back to look at your progress.

If it hurts your eyes, dial it all back. Heck, if you think it looks good, still dial it back.

If I can head off even one clown-vomit image, then I’ll consider my mission accomplished with this post.

I’ve just written a new post that looks at multiple exposure image merging use Enfuse instead of going through a full-blown HDRi. Find it here:
Automatic Exposure Blending with Enfuse (HDR-ish)

A Couple of Further Resources

Here’s a few things I’ve found scattered around the internet if you want to read more.

The Open Source Photography wikidot page has some information as well
Cambridge in Colour user David has written about many of the operators:
A little Finnish exploration of global vs. local operators

G'MIC Image Averaging Made (Relatively) Easy

Fri, 10 May 2013 09:23:00 -0500

I hesitate to mention G’MIC in a title sometimes because I feel that whatever I write is not going to do it justice. For this post, I couldn’t resist.

I really should have posted this a while ago when I first saw it, but to be honest it slipped under my radar. So I’m trying to catch up and make amends.

David Tschumperlé was kind enough to post today a link to some incredible work done by Jérome Ferrari with more averaging images. (It is seriously incredible).

A neat result using -compose-edges in G'MIC

This time everything was done entirely in G’MIC. The images are aligned on the eyes automatically using a little cropping and phase correlation, then scaled to fit both eyes. The results are fantastic.

They are also way faster than doing it my way (aligning eyes and scaling to fit by hand in GIMP).

Head on over and check it out:

Averaging face photos : eye alignment

Also, be sure to check the follow up where there are some slight distortions applied to align the mouths as well.

Noise Removal in Photos with Median Stacks (GIMP/G'MIC & Imagemagick)

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:58:00 -0500

In my recent experiments and playing around with even more image averaging in Imagemagick, I decided to have a look at some other methods for calculating pixel values. This time I focused on stacks of images of the same thing.

Why the same thing?

f/8 @ ¹⁄₁₀₀ sec., ISO 25,600 (mouseover to compare straight out of the camera)

Because the (uninspired) above image was shot at ISO 25,600. Go look at it again.

To be fair, I cheated a little bit… The relatively noise-free image you see above shot at ISO 25,600 is actually combined from 10 identical shots.

The trick is that I combined all of the shots using a median evaluation in Imagemagick. This basically means that for every pixel in the image, there were 10 pixel values to choose from. Imagemagick automatically picked the pixel value that was closest to the middle.

So if we had a list of 7 values, for example, that looked like this:

120, 120, 125, 137, 150, 151, 160

Then the median value is just the number in the middle of the list:

120, 120, 125, 137, 150, 151, 160

If there were an even number of values, the median is calculated as the average of the two numbers in the middle (usually).

This is different from the averaging I had done previously, where the pixel value was an average of all the values at a given pixel location (though both methods could be used to reduce noise in the final result).

Here, let’s look at a couple of 100% crops side by side between my median stack example and a base image:

Pretty neat, right? (Seriously, look at that last image - you can’t even make out “Fast Focused Fearless” in the single shot)

There’s a few obvious caveats, though. This is only really effective for static scenes (we’ll see why shortly), and the images must be aligned very well for it to work without smearing any fine details. So it should be shot from a tripod or very stable place to minimize movement between shots, or the shots should be aligned in post (using Hugin’s align_image_stack - see here for an example of how to do it).

How to do it

There are two ways you can go to achieve this. The fast way, and the slow way.

First make sure your images are well aligned - shoot on a tripod if at all possible, and/or align the images with software as needed. Take as many as you feel like waiting on.

The fast way is with Imagemagick. Once you’ve aligned all your images (or they are spot on already), put them into a directory. Then in that directory:

convert *.jpg -evaluate-sequence median OUT.jpg

The slow way is using G’MIC in GIMP. Load up each of your aligned images as a layer in GIMP, then run G’MIC.

Then go to Layers → Blend [median] and make sure the Input Layers are All visibles, and optionally output to New layer(s).

Be prepared to wait, I’ve found the G’MIC version of this blend is 10x+ longer than doing it through Imagemagick. (Though I did poke David about this - so the G’MIC team might optimize this blend mode later).

Removing People

Using a Median filter to combine multiple images has been used to remove spurious objects from a scene. A common example is if you desire to get a shot of a famous landmark or tourist area, where there tends to be a lot of people around.

You can just shoot multiple shots (try for an odd number), and combine them with a median filter to remove the spurious objects throughout the scene.

For instance, here’s my well-used space marine traversing my desktop:

As you can see, the final frame is after combining all of the images with a median evaluation. Voila! No more space marine!

In Conclusion

This is a really neat method to use, once you realize it’s available to you, and where it can be best utilized.

If you’re shooting static scenes (stock photography, still life, etc.), there’s really no reason not to go ahead and set your camera to fire off a handful of frames quickly (burst mode!). Setup on a tripod, burst away, and you can significantly reduce the noise in your images with little effort.

If you want to capture scenes with many people/objects moving about, and want a clean image of an environment, just setup on a tripod again, and snap away. With enough frames, it’ll make combining the images and removing those objects very easy to do.

[Addendum] Just a couple of quick things that a few people have pointed out:

1. Can’t I just use a lower ISO and longer exposure? Yes - but what happens when you’ve pushed your ISO down as far as it can go on your camera? With this method, you can remove even more noise and make images that are cleaner than is possible with a single shot with your camera.

2. This is not far off from what astrophotographers will also do to clean up ^signal⁄_noise in their images - stack multiple images to clean up the noise. In fact - there is specialized software just for this type of image stacking that I should go try out! :)

Bouncing Baby Beverly Tutorial (Making Babies Fly)

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:37:00 -0500

Way back in November, 2011 I had written a tutorial for PetaPixel that walked through how I created the image of my daughter bouncing out of her crib:

Bouncing Baby Beverly by Pat David, on Flickr

I realized that the tutorial only existed over on PetaPixel, and that I should probably just put a copy of it here for anyone interested. So here it is.

My original post of Bev with more examples can be found here.

An earlier post here on PetaPixel showcased the wonderful image created by Indylab of a flock of cell phones and the method used to create it. In a rather snarky comment, I said to get back to me when they started tossing babies, and linked to my daughter merrily jumping in her crib with her toys. Mike was kind enough to approach me about writing up a small walk-through on how I created my image, and who can honestly turn down a chance to show off their baby daughter looking so cute?

Conception

I had this image in my head for quite some time before I actually got a chance to shoot it. It was the result of two things mainly:

A desire to practice post processing images for compositing.
A desire to buy a tripod.

My wife let me buy a tripod (for other long-exposure experiments including light painting), but only because I justified it with “a neat idea” for a picture with our daughter (the “I have a great idea for a photo of our daughter, but it will require me to buy more camera gear” defense).

My desire to attempt this shot was born out of how cute I think my daughter is, and her personality is almost always explosively positive and joyful. So in my head I was imagining her just bursting with happiness so much that she literally would be jumping right off her crib. It only logically follows that if she was jumping out of that crib, her stuffed animals would be as well!

Execution

I only had a rudimentary vision of what I wanted the final image to look like, but it was enough to nail down the overall idea. In thinking about framing up the image, I liked the idea of her crib being squared up straight on in the image. I wanted the focus to be on her and her animals, and didn’t want anything else detracting from that.

I set up my tripod and camera (Oly E-P1 w/ 17mm f/2.8) in her room and framed up my shots. I had a DIY softbox for my flash precariously balanced on the bureau off screen to the right (wirelessly triggered), and a large window directly behind the camera lighting the scene.

To start things off I needed a single image of the scene without any of the flying objects in it. This image would be the base I would use to later mask out anything I didn’t want (namely, me holding her). I used a spare outtake shot of one of the stuffed animals that was nowhere near my scene as my base.

Next set of images were of me holding her over her crib in various positions. Luckily she’s a really good sport about it, and a lot of tickling and kisses between takes didn’t hurt (hint: most models do not take kindly to this, use caution).

Multiple takes were done in order to have the highest chance of a good image of her, and to give me multiple textures to use in post later to assist in masking me out of the image. The trick is to pre-visualize what level of work will be required in post, and to accommodate that when shooting.

For instance, I knew it would be a pain to clean up the edges around her clothing where I was holding her later, so I tried to minimize my hands and arms obscuring her too much.

The rest of the images were quite easy - throw stuffed animal into frame, and fire! Rinse, repeat as necessary (again, multiple shots really pays off here - each animal probably had about 8 or so images made).

The trick to making life easier in post is to make sure that the lighting and exposure is controlled to be as consistent as possible between shots - you really want everything lit with a consistent power and direction.

Post Processing

This is really where the vision begins to come together for me. I’ll usually fire up my image editor (GIMP in my case, PS for those of you with a little extra cash), and set my first image of just the background environment as my base layer.

This first image with nothing on it becomes the background against which I will begin masking out objects I do not want from subsequent layers. I loaded up each of my other shots as layers in the image to get a rough idea of placement within the scene (some stuffed animals would overlap each other in some shots - I picked through all the images until I found ones that I liked).

Then I start working on removing myself from the image. With an environment background this is relatively quick to add a layer mask in GIMP and paint over myself on the image to show the base image through in a big, rough way (the only place I slowed down was nearing the edges).

The devil is in the details, they say, and nowhere is this more apparent than when trying to make a clean edge mask from a background.

There really is no quick and easy shortcut to getting good results here - a small radius brush and patience is your friend. Too hard a brush and the edge looks fake immediately, too soft a touch and the edge looks fuzzy and fake immediately. Somewhere in between is a happy medium, and that’s what I was aiming for.

Luckily, I remembered to take multiple shots, so in places where the edges were not cleaning up as well as I would have liked I “borrowed” portions of the other shots to make the edge cleaner (the side of her body by the bib is from another shot, as is her sleeve). When working on edges like this it really does pay off to have multiple takes to draw from!

Once I had blocked myself out of the image, I continued the process by adding layer masks to each of the stuffed animals, and painting them back into the visible image (by modifying the layer masks). No overlapping animals made this a bit easier, but you’ll notice that something key is missing from this version of the image.

Shadows!

That whole devil and details thing again. The trick now was only to create some fake shadows for Beverly and her animals that didn’t have shadows (the doll at top left already had one).

The shadows are key in lending a sense of realism to the final product. They were made by simply approximating the shape of the shadow, filling with an appropriate shadow color (sampled from other shadows on the back wall), and blurring to taste. After that I just adjusted opacity by eye until it all seemed reasonably well blended.

Overall I was happy with how this image turned out, and it really was fun creating it (despite what looks like a lot of tedious work). I’ve since done others along a similar vein, but this first one still makes me smile when I look at it…

Using Imagemagick to Create Contact Sheets (Montage)

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:12:00 -0500

In my previous post on postprocessing my Open Source portrait, I had shown a couple of contact sheets that I had generated to help me narrow down which images I liked. That contact sheet looked like this:

Contact sheets are a great holdover from the days of film, when you wanted a big overview of all the shots on a strip of film. After developing the film, you could just lay a sheet of photo paper under the enlarger, lay your strips of film on top, put a glass plate over the whole thing to hold them down, and then expose with white light for a small amount of time.

This would produce a single sheet with all your images as thumbnails:

David Hume Kennerly [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This is probably redundant these days with the ability to look at a directory listing as thumbnail images, but I still find uses for this type of image.

My personal photos are kept on a backup server. That computer has no monitor, keyboard, or mouse. The main way I access it is through shares on my network. If I’m off-site, I’ll access my network using SSH.

The upside is that it’s wayyy faster than using a GUI. The downside is that there’s no GUI…

The machine I’m SSH’ing into does have my Dropbox account linked, though. So what I do is run Imagemagick Montage on the machine I remote into, and have it generate a “contact sheet” for me, placing it into my Dropbox folder.

Wait a few minutes, and voila! Instant contact sheet for me to peruse on my local machine. Here is what my montage command looks like:

 montage -verbose -label '%f' -font Helvetica -pointsize 10 -background '#000000' -fill 'gray' -define jpeg:size=200x200 -geometry 200x200+2+2 -auto-orient P21603{65..70}.JPG ~/Dropbox/contact-dark.jpg

Yes, it looks scary. I promise you, it’s not. As usual, let’s have a look at the command line option by option to see whats going on…

 montage -verbose -label '%f' -font Helvetica -pointsize 10

Fire up the montage command. Set it to -verbose output to see whats going on.

Label all the thumbnails with the filename, using the font Helvetica at a point size of 10. See, not too bad so far!

-background '#000000' -fill 'gray'

Set the background color to black (#000), and the fill color for the label text to gray.

-define jpeg:size=200x200

This one is interesting. I found that if I tried to run the command on a full directory of jpegs, I would quickly run out of memory. This is because imagemagick will read in each file and keep the full size image in memory until it’s done. Holy Mackerel!

So this option tells imagemagick to resize the jpeg as soon as it’s read in, and to only keep the smaller version in memory. This significantly speeds up the process of generating the contact sheet.

-geometry 200x200+2+2

This just tells imagemagick to set each thumbnail size on the final output to be 200x200 pixels, with a 2px border around them.

-auto-orient

Rotate any images to their correct orientation as specified in their metadata.

P21603{65..70}.JPG

Now this is interesting. I’m not sure if this will work in Windows, but it does on a BSD/OSX/*nix shell. I can specify a numerical range of images that I want to be in my final output.

The above command will basically be expanded so that the input files are:

P2160365.JPG
P2160366.JPG
P2160367.JPG
P2160368.JPG
P2160369.JPG
P2160370.JPG

If you wanted to just do all the images in the directory, you could use the normal glob syntax for all JPG images:

*.JPG

I did this to limit the final size of the output contact sheet to a range of images. For both final size as well as memory limits on my machine (especially if I had hundreds of images in my directory.

I could also have done it by using the glob syntax. For instance, if I wanted all the images in the 600-699 range, I could have used:

P21606*.JPG

Or any variation on that (I’m not going to get into the syntax here, but there are plenty of references around for it).

~/Dropbox/contact-dark.jpg

Output the final image “contact-dark.jpg” to my Dropbox folder.

That’s about it. That command puts out a nice contact sheet for me to quickly eyeball and find images that I like. From there I can narrow it down and look more closely at the final picks.

I could even go so far as to use this command as part of a shell script that can recursively walk through all of the folders of my photos, and to output contact sheets for each one if I wanted. I may get into that at another time…

Getting Around in GIMP - Blue Channel Check Layer (Retouching)

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:24:00 -0500

In my previous post for the Open Source Portrait (Postprocessing), I had mentioned during the skin retouching in GIMP section that there was a method that I had used in the past for helping to make skin imperfections visible for healing.

It is a similar method described by Calvin Hollywood (again), that he calls “Check Layers”. He explains what they are and how he uses them in the video below:

If you don’t want to watch the video, the basic idea came about from my experience when converting images to B&W. That is, the Blue channel of a color image is not flattering at all for skin (unless you have flawless skin). Conversely, the Red channel usually has very pretty skin tones (and hence it’s common to overlay a Red channel on your image and set it to Overlay blend mode to enhance this).

What Calvin Hollywood shows in his video is using a Photoshop adjustment layer to turn the image into grayscale, and to turn down the contribution from the Red channel, while increasing the Blue channel. This results in a more contrasty image that favors the blue channels, and will make skin imperfections much more visible.

The problem is that we don’t have adjustment layers in GIMP…

The Solution

Well, I had to play around a bit to get things working, but I finally got there.

The trick was to remember that I wanted a view of the Blue channel, in monochrome, and in a way that any touchups I did to the base image would be instantly reflected in my grayscale Blue channel view.

Here’s how to do it (manually, I have also written a script-fu you can download to do this automatically - see below):

Start with your base layer (or a duplicate).
Add a new layer over it, fill it with pure Red (255,0,0), layer mode set to Subtract.
Add another new layer, fill it with pure Green (0,255,0), layer mode set to Subtract.
Add a new layer over it, fill it with pure Yellow (255,255,0), set layer mode to Subtract.

Reader Sebastian pointed out in the comments the (now) obvious fact that Yellow is the complement of blue, so this saves having to make 2 layers of red and green - we can just subtract the complement of blue: Yellow.

Add another new layer, fill it with White (255,255,255), layer mode set to Color.
Add another new layer, fill it with Grey (127,127,127), layer mode set to Dodge.
Now work with your healing brush on your base layer, and changes will show in realtime.

When I’m done adding layers, this is what my layer palette would look like:

After adding all my layers

I can now work with a healing/clone brush on my base layer, and I’ll see the changes reflected in real time on my canvas in GIMP.

If I want to see the progress of my work on the full color image, I can use a simple shortcut: Shift-Click (⌘-Click) on the base layer visibility to isolate it as the only visible layer, and again to turn all layers back on.

Here is a quick video of me walking through using this method:

A nice bonus to this method is that it will also work above a set of Wavelet Decompose scales, meaning you can use a normal wavelet workflow, and still use this “Check Layer” to get a view of what you’re doing against the Blue channel.

Finally, it can be tedious to create all of these layers manually each time you want to use it, so I’ve written a Script-Fu to automate it. You can find it at registry.gimp.org:

Download the Script-Fu from the GIMP Registry

The Open Source Portrait (Postprocessing)

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:42:00 -0500

In my previous post I walked through the concept and shoot of my portrait of Mairi. At this point all I’ve got are a bunch of RAW (and jpg) files of the shoot. I know that I forgot to mention it in the last post, but for goodness sake if you can shoot RAW - do it. (It saved my butt with this image, as you’ll see below).

Also, you’ll be able to download my RAW file, and JPG output from RawTherapee below.

The previous tutorial in this series is here:
The Open Source Portrait (Equipment & Environment)

This is a long post. Seriously, this is the longest post I’ve ever written. I’m walking through many of the things I had previously written tutorials for, and apply them to a process this time so you can see them as part of a workflow. So, here’s a Table of Contents so you can jump to the section you need:

Adjust Exposure

GIMP Retouching

In Summary

The End

File downloads:

Download the .ORF RAW file [Google Drive]
Download the full resolution JPG from RawTherapee.
Download the Full Resolution .XCF file [.7zip - 265MB]
If you want to use the .XCF file just to see what I did, I recommend the ½ resolution file, as it’s smaller.
Download the ½ Resolution .XCF file [.7zip - 60MB]

These files are being made available under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license (CC-BY-SA-NC). You’re free to use them, modify them, and share them as long as you attribute me, Pat David, as the originator of the file. You’re not allowed to use these images for Commercial purposes.

And to whet your appetite, here is the final result of all of the postprocessing of my portrait (mouseover to compare it to no retouching):

The final result I'm aiming for Mouseover to compare to unretouched version

Picking Your Image

This is a hard thing to quantify, as each of us is driven by our own vision and style. In my case, I wanted something a little more somber looking with a focus on her eyes (they are the window to the soul, right?). There’s just something I like about big, bright eyes in a portrait, particularly in women.

I also personally liked the grey sweater against the grey background as well. I felt that it put more focus on the colors of her skin, hair, and eyes. So that pretty much narrowed me down to this contact sheet:

Narrowing it down to this set.

Looking over the shots, I decided I liked the images with the hood up, but her hair down and flowing around her. This puts me in the top two rows, with only a few left to decide upon. At this point I narrowed it down to one that I liked best - grey sweater, hood up but not pulled back against her head, hair flowing out of it, and big eyes.

This is pretty common, I’d imagine. You can grab several frames, but in the end hopefully just the right amount of small details will come together and you’ll find something that you really like. In my case it was this one:

I finally decided on this shot based on the color, hair, eyes, and slight smile.

Now hold on a minute . The image above is the JPG straight out of the camera. As you can see, I’ve underexposed this one a little bit, and the colors are not anywhere near where I’d like them to be. If you’re following along don’t download this version of the image. I’ll have a much better starting JPG after we run it through some RAW development first!

If you’re impatient, jump to that section and get the image there.

Raw Processing

There are a few RAW conversion options out there in the land of F/OSS. Here’s a small list of popular ones to peruse:

One of the reasons I love using F/OSS is the availability (usually) of the software across my OS’s. In my case I went with RawTherapee a while back and liked it, so I’ve stuck with it so far (even though I had to build my own OSX versions).

So, my workflow includes RawTherapee at this point. You should be able to follow along in other converters, but I’m going to focus on RT because that’s what I’m using. If you shoot only in JPG (seriously, use RAW if you can), you can skip this section and head directly down to GIMP Retouching.

Load it up

After starting up RawTherapee, you’ll be in the File Browser interface, waiting for you to select a folder of images. You can navigate to your folder of images through the file browser on the left side of the window. It may take a bit while RawTherapee generates thumbnails of all the images in your directory.

RawTherapee file browser view (Navigate folders on the left pane)

Once you’ve located your image, double clicking it in the main window will open it up for editing. If you’re using a default install/options on RT, chances are a “Default” profile will be applied to your image that has Auto Levels turned on.

The base image with ‘Default’ profile applied (auto levels)

Chances are that Auto Levels will not look very good. My Default processing profile usually does not look so hot (no noise reduction, auto levels, etc.). That’s ok, because we are going to fix this right up in the next few sections.

Adjust Exposure

I like to control the exposure and processing on my RAW images. Auto Levels may work for some, but once you get used to some basic corrections and how to use them it’s relatively quick and painless to dial-in something you like quickly.

Again - much of what I’m going to describe is subjective, and will depend on personal taste and vision. This just happens to be how I work, adjust as needed for you own workflow. :)

To give me a good starting point I will usually remove all adjustments to the image, and reset everything back to zero. This is easy to do as my Default profile has nothing done to it other than Auto Levels.

Auto Levels values on the Exposure panel

A quick and easy way to reset the Exposure values on the Exposure panel is to use the Neutral button on that panel (I’ve outlined it in green above).

You can also hit the small “undo” arrows next to each slider to set that slider back to zero as well (for some reason the Neutral button doesn’t want to reset the Saturation slider to zero, so I’ll do that manually.

At this point the image exposure is set to a baseline we can begin working on. For reference, here is my image after zeroing out all of the exposure sliders and the saturation:

With all exposure adjustments (and saturation) set to zero

Exposure Compensation

The first thing I’ll begin adjusting is the Exposure Compensation for the image. You want to be paying careful attention to the histogram for the image to know what your adjustments to Exposure Compensation are doing, and to keep from blowing things out.

I personally begin pushing the Exposure Compensation until one of the RGB channels just begins butting up against the right side of the histogram. Here is what the histogram looks like for the neutral exposure:

Neutral exposure histogram

After adjusting Exposure Compensation I get the Red channel snug up against the right side of the histogram:

Exposure Compensation until the values just touch the right side

If you go a little too far, you’ll notice one of the channels will spike against the side, and if you really go too far, you’ll get a small colored box in the upper right corner indicating that channel has gone out of range (is blown out).

So here is what my image looks like now with only the Exposure Compensation adjusted to a better range:

Exposure Compensation adjusted to 2.40

The Exposure panel in RT now looks like this (only the Exposure Compensation has been adjusted):

Exposure Compensation set to 2.40 for this image

If the highlights in your image begin to get slightly out of range, you may need to make adjustments to the Highlight recovery amount/threshold, but in my case the image was slightly under-exposed, so I kept it zero.

There is also a great visual method of seeing where your exposures for each channel are at, and to avoid hightlight/shadow clipping. Along the top of your main image window, to the right, there are some icons that look like this:

Channel previews, Highlight & Shadow clipping indicators

The Channel previews let’s you individually toggle each of the R,G,B, and Luminosity previews for the image. You can use these with the Highlight and Shadow clipping indicators to see which channels are clipping and where.

Highlight and Shadow clipping indicators will visually show you on your image where the values go beyond the threshold for each. For highlights, it’s any values that are greater than 253, and for shadows it’s any values that are lower than 8.

To illustrate, here is what my image looks like in RT with the Exposure Compensation set to 2.40 from above:

With Highlight & Shadow clipping turned on

I don’t mind the shadows clipping in the dark regions of the image, though I can make adjustments to the Black Point (below) to modify that. The highlight clipping on her face is of more concern to me. I certainly don’t want that!

At this point I can dial in my Exposure Compensation for the highlights by backing it down slightly. As I ease off it I should be seeing the dark patch for Highlight Clipping growing smaller. I’ll stop when it’s either all gone, or just about all gone.

I wasn’t too far off in my initial adjustment, and only had to back the Exposure Compensation off to 2.30 to remove most of the highlight clipping.

Settings so far (everything else zero)…

Exposure Compensation

2.30

Black Point

At this point I will usually zoom a bit into a shadow area of my image that might include dark/black tones. The blacks feel a little flat to me, and I’m going to increase the black level just a bit to darken them up.

I want to be zoomed in a bit so I can determine at which point the black point crushes any details that I want to be visible still. You want your blacks to be dark if possible, but you want to keep details in the shadows if possible (it’s really, really subjective where this point is, but I’ll err on the conservative side since I am still going to process colors a little bit in GIMP later).

Starting with a Black point of zero:

I will increase the Black point while keeping an eye on those shadow details, increasing it until I like how the blacks look and I haven’t destroyed detail in the dark tones. I finally settled on a Black value of 150 as seen here:

Black value set at 150 (still keeping sweater details in the shadows). Mouseover to compare to previous.

Watch out for Shadow Recovery when you first start adjusting the Black Point. It’s default might be a different value than zero (mine is at 50), and the Neutral button won’t set it back to zero (resetting it will give it back to it’s default value of 50). You may want to push it manually to zero, and if you feel you want to bump shadow details a bit, then start pushing it up.

I know things look noisy at the moment, but we’ll deal with that in the next section (there is no noise reduction being applied at this point).

Settings so far (everything else zero)…

Exposure Compensation	2.30
Black	150

Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation

For this image I didn’t feel the need to modify these values, but this is purely subjective (again). If you do modify these values, keep an eye on the histogram and what it’s doing to keep things from getting out of range/whack again.

White Balance

Hopefully you had the right White Balance set during your shoot in camera. If not, it’s ok - we’re shooting in RAW so we can just set it as needed now.

I happen to have had my in-camera WB set to Flash, so the embedded WB settings in my RAW file metadata are pretty close. In my shot, however, you’ll notice that there is a bit of a white window visible in the left of the frame. I happen to know that the window is quite white, and should be rendered as such in my image.

As a side note, what I really should have done was to get myself a good reference for balancing the white balance, and to shoot it as part of my setup. Something like the X-Rite MSCCC ColorChecker Classic, or even a WhiBal G7 Certified Neutral White Balance Card. These are a little pricey, but any good 18% grey card will do, really. I just happen to know that my window borders are a pure white, so I’m cheating a bit here…

So here is what our image looks like at the moment:

Image so far, with White Balance set to Camera (Default)

The White Balance for your image can be adjusted from the Color panel:

Default Color panel showing Camera white balance

You can try out some of the presets in the Method drop-down - there are the typical settings there for Sunny, Shade, Flashes, etc… In my case I am going to use the Spot WB option. Clicking that button will let me pick a section of my image that should be color neutral.

In my case, I know that the window border should be white (and color neutral), so I will pick from that area on my image. Doing so will shift my WB, and will produce a result that looks like this:

WB based on white window border (mouseover to compare Camera based)

I also happen to know that the grey colored walls in the background are close to neutral, but with the slightest hint of blue in them. If I used the grey wall instead of the white window, I would introduce the slightest warm cast to the image. I tried it (choosing a section of the grey wall on the right side of the background), and actually prefer the slightly warmer color, personally:

WB based on the grey wall background (right side of image). Mouseover to compare to window WB

The difference is ever so slight, but it is there. In my original final image, I went with the balance pulled from the wall, so I will continue with that version here. If you’re curious, here is what my WB values look like:

After setting Spot WB to the window

Seriously, though, don’t rely on luck. Get a grey/color card to correct color casts if you can…

Settings so far (everything else zero)…

Exposure Compensation	2.30
Black	150
WB Temperature	7300
WB Tint	0.545

Noise Reduction & Sharpening

Chances are the RAW image is going to look pretty noisy zoomed in a bit. This isn’t unusual since we are dealing with RAW data. There are two noise reduction (NR) options in RT, and we are going to want to use both.

Impulse Noise Reduction

This NR will remove pixels that have a high impulse deviation from surrounding pixels. Basically the “salt and pepper” noise you may notice in your images where individual pixels are oddly brighter/darker than the surrounding pixels.

If I zoom into a portion of my image (not far from where I was looking at shadows for setting a black point), I’ll see this:

Closeup crop with no Impulse Noise Reduction

I’ll normally play a bit with the Impulse NR to alleviate the specks while still retaining details. As with most NR methods - going a bit too far will obliterate some details with the noise. The trick is to find a happy medium between the two. In my case, I settled on a value of 55 (the default is 50):

Impulse NR set to a value of 55 (mouseover to compare)

I could have gone a bit further (and have in others from this series), and pushed it up to the 60-70 range, but it’s a matter of taste and weighing the tradeoffs.

Luminance/Chrominance Noise Reduction

These two NR methods will suppress noise in the luminance channel (brightness), and the blue/red chrominances.

I will use a light hand with these NR values. The defaults are 5 for each, and it should make a noticeable difference just with the default values. If you push the Luminance NR too far, you’ll smear fine details right off your image. If you push the Chrominance NR too far, you’ll suck the life out of the colors in your image.

Not surprisingly, it’s another trade off. In my case, I pushed the L/C NR just a tiny bit past the default to 6 and 6 respectively.

You’ll be able to see the effect of chrominance NR by looking at the flat colored grey wall in the background. Just don’t forget to check other areas of your image with the settings you choose. For me it was a close look at her iris, where pushing the chrominance NR too far lost some of the beautiful colors in her eye.

Compare the same crop from above with and without Luminance/Chrominance noise reduction applied:

With Luminance & Chrominance NR set to 6 (mouseover to compare w/o)

If you’ve read my previous article on B&W conversion, you’ll know that I don’t mind a little noise/grain in my images at all, so this level doesn’t bother me in the least. I could chase the noise even further if I really wanted to, but always remember that doing so is going to be at the expense of detail/color in your final result. As with most things in life, moderation is key!

Sharpening

If you are going to sharpen your image a bit, this is probably the best time to do so. The problem is that usually sharpening is the last bit of post-processing you should do to your image, due to it’s destructive nature. Plus, lately I’ve grown accustomed to sharpening by using an extra wavelet scale during my skin retouching in GIMP (you’ll see below in a bit).

So, I’ll avoid sharpening at this stage. If I was going to use it here at all, it would be just very, very light. Also, if you do any sharpening at this stage, try to make sure that it happens after any noise reduction in the pipeline.

Settings so far (everything else zero)…

Exposure Compensation	2.30
Black	150
WB Temperature	7300
WB Tint	0.545
Impulse NR	55
Luminance NR	6
Chrominance NR	6

Lens Correction

This is actually a section that deserves its own post, detailing methods for correcting for lens barrel distortion with Hugin. RawTherapee actually has an “Automatic Distortion Correction” that will effect pincushion distortion in your images.

In my case, I was shooting at the long end of the lens at 50mm, and the distortion is minimal. So I didn’t bother with correcting this (it might have been needed at a shorter focal length, and being closer to the subject, though).

In Summary

That about wraps up the RAW “development” I’m going to do on this image. I try to keep things minimal where possible, though I could have gone further and adjusted color tones and LAB adjustments here as well. In fact, with the exception of Wavelet Decompose for skin retouching, and some other masking/painting operations, I could do most of what I want for this portrait entirely in RawTherapee.

I know that this reads really long, but the truth is that once I am accustomed to a workflow, this takes less than 5 minutes from start to finish (faster if I’ve already fiddled with other images from the same set). All I really modified here was Exposure, White Balance, and Noise Reduction.

Finally, as I hinted at earlier, here is the final version after doing all of these RAW edits, as we get ready to bring the image into GIMP for further processing:

This is the one to download if you want to follow along in GIMP below. Just click the image to open in a new window, then save it from there.

GIMP Retouching

Well, here we are. Finally. It’s the home stretch now, so don’t give up just yet!

If you didn’t follow along with the RAW processing earlier, you can download the full resolution JPG output from Raw Therapee by clicking here:

Download the full resolution JPG from RawTherapee.
Armed with our final results from RawTherapee, we’re now ready to do a little retouching to the image.

The overall workflow and the order in which I approach them is dependent on my mood mostly. Most times, I enjoy doing skin retouching, so I’ll often jump right in with Wavelet Decompose and play around. Really, though, I should start shifting Wavelet Decompose to a later part of my workflow, and fix other things like removing objects from the background and fixing flyaway hairs first.

This way, I can directly re-use wavelet scales for a slight wavelet sharpening while I have them.

Looking at this image so far, I can spot a few broad things that I want to correct, and I’m going to address them in this order:

Touchup flyaway hairs
Crop & remove distracting background elements
Skin retouching with Wavelet Decompose
Contour paint highlights
Apply some color curves

Touchup Flyaway Hairs

If you can have the model bring a hairbrush with them to a shoot - DO IT. Seriously. Your eyes and carpal tunnel will thank me later.

Even with a brush or hairstylist/make-up artist the occasional hair will decide to rebel and do its own thing. This will require us to get down to the details and fix those hairs up.

Luckily for me, Mairis hair mostly cooperated with us during the shoot (and where it didn’t I kind of liked it). To illustrate this step, though, I’m going to clean up some of the stray hairs on the left side of the image (the right side of her face).

Luckily for me, the background is a consistent color/texture. This means cloning out these hairs shouldn’t be too much of a problem, but there are still some things you should keep in mind while doing this.

Here is the area that I’d like to clean up a little bit:

Sometimes you just have to work one strand of hair at a time…

I will usually use a hard-edged brush because a soft-edge will smear details on its edges, and can often be spotted pretty easily by the eye. This works because the background is relatively constant in grain and color.

I’ll sample from an area near the hair I want to remove, and set the brush to be “Aligned”. I also try to keep the brush size as small as I can and still remove the hair.

The thing to keep in mind is how the hair is actually flowing, and to follow that. I will often follow outlying strands of hair back to where they start from the head, and begin cloning them out from there.

I also try not to get too ambitious (some stray hairs are sometimes fine). Removing too many at once can lead to unrealistic results, so I try to be conservative, and to constantly zoom out and check my work visually.

Try not to leave hairs prematurely cut off in space if possible, it tends to look a bit distracting. If you want to remove a hair that crosses over another strand that you may want to keep, make sure to adjust the source of the clone brush so you can do it without leaving a gap in the leftover strand.

Here is a quick 5 minute touchup of some of the stray hairs (mouseover to compare to the original):

Occasionally, you’ll need to fix hairs that are crossing over other hair (sort of like a virtual “brushing” of the hair). In these cases, you really have to pay careful attention to how the hair flows and to use that as a guide when choosing a sample point with either the clone or heal brush.

If this sounds like a lot of work - it is. Thankfully, once you’ve become accustomed to doing it, and doing it well, you’ll find yourself picking up a lot of speed. It’s one of those things that’s worth learning to do right, and to let practice speed it up for you.

I actually like the cascading hair around her face opening up to a pretty color, so that’s about as far as I’m going to go with stray hairs on this image.

Fixing the Background & Cropping

With the limited space I had to shoot this portrait, it’s no surprise that I had gotten some undesirable background elements, like the window edges.

There’s a couple of ways I could go about fixing these - I could fix the background in place, or I can crop out the elements I don’t want.

In my final version shown in the previous post, I wanted to crop tighter, so it worked out well to remove the window on the left. To illustrate how we can remove the window, I’m going to leave the aspect ratio as it is, and walk through removing the distracting background elements.

Removing Background Elements

Because most of the background is already a (relatively) solid color, this isn’t too hard. There’s just a couple of simple things to keep in mind.

The way I’m going to approach this is to make a duplicate of my current layer, and to move the duplicate into place such that the background will cover up parts of the window I want to remove. Then I’ll mask the duplicate layer to hide the window.

I start by choosing an area of the background that’s similar in color/tone:

Thankfully the background is relatively consistent.

I’ll then move the duplicate layer so that the green area covers up the window to the left:

Position the duplicate layer so the green area now covers up the window

Here is what this looks like in GIMP, with the duplicate layer set to 90% opacity over the base layer (so you can see where the window edge is):

Moving the duplicate layer over to cover the window

Now I’ll add a black (fully transparent) layer mask over the duplicate layer, and I’ll paint white on the mask to cover up the window edge (with a soft-edged brush). This give me results that look like this:

After applying a transparent mask, and painting white over the window edge

The problem is that the background area from the duplicate is a bit darker than the base layer background, and the seam is visible where they are masked. To fix this, I can just adjust the lightness of the duplicate layer until I get a good match.

I used Hue-Saturation to adjust the lightness (because I wasn’t sure if I would need to adjust the hue slightly as well - turns out I didn’t). I found that increasing the Lightness value to 3 got me reasonably close:

After increasing duplicate layer Lightness to 3

To further fix the lower part of the window, I just repeated all the steps above with another duplicate of the base layer, just shifted to cover the lower part of the window. I had to mask along her sweater. Here is the result after repeating the above steps:

After repeating above steps for the lower left corner

The results are ok, but could be just a little bit better. Visually, the falloff of light on the background doesn’t match what’s happening on her body, so I added a small gradient to the lower left corner to give it a more natural looking light falloff:

Adding a gradient to the lower left background helps it look more natural

Fixing the slight window/shadow on the right is easily done with a clone/heal tool combination. The final result of quickly cleaning up the background is this:

Finished cleaning up the background

I could have spent a little more with this, but I’m happy with the results for the purpose of this post. If your cloning efforts leave obvious transitions between tones, the Heal tool can be helpful for alleviating this (especially when used with large brush radii, just be prepared to wait a bit).

With the background squared away, we can move on to one of my favorite things to play with, skin retouching!

Skin Retouching with Wavelet Decompose

I had previously written about using Wavelet Decompose as a means for touching up skin. As I said in that post, and will repeat here:

The best way to utilize this tool is with a light touch.

Re-read that sentence and keep it in mind as we move forward. Don’t make mannequins.

Ok, with a layer that contains all of the changes we’ve made so far rolled up, we can now decompose the image to wavelet scales. In my case I almost always use the default of 5 scales unless there’s a good reason to increase/decrease that number.

For anyone new to this method, the basic idea of Wavelet Decompose is that it will break down your images to multiple layers, each containing a specific set of details based on their relative size, and a residual layer with color/tonal information. For instance, Wavelet scale 1 will contain only the finest details in your image, while each successive scale will contain larger and larger details.

The benefit to us is that these details are isolated on each layer, meaning we can modify details on one layer without affecting other details from other layers (or adjust the colors/tones on the residual layer without modifying the details).

Here is an example of the resulting layers we get when running Wavelet Decompose:

Wavelet scales from 1 (finest) to the Residual

After running Wavelet Decompose, we’ll find ourselves with 6 new layers: Residual + 5 Wavelet scales. I am going to start on Wavelet scale 5.

If you hold down Shift and click on a layer visibility icon, you’ll isolate just that single layer as visible. Do this now to Wavelet scale 5, and let’s have a look at what we’re dealing with.

I usually work on skin retouching in sections. Usually I’ll consider the forehead, nose, cheeks to smile lines, chin, and upper lip all as separate sections (trying to follow normal facial contours). Something like this:

Rough breakdown of each area I’ll work on separately

I’m going to start with the forehead. I’ll work with detail scales first, and follow up with touchups on the residual scale if needed to even out color tones. Here is what Wavelet scale 5 looks like isolated:

Forehead, Wavelet scale 5

It may not seem obvious, especially if you don’t use wavelet scales much, but there’s a lot of large scale tonal imperfections here. Look at the same image, but with the levels normalized:

These are the tones we want to smooth out

Normalizing the wavelet scale lets you see the tones that we want to smooth out.

My normal workflow is to have all of the wavelet scales and residual visible (each of the wavelet scales has a layer blending mode of Grain Merge). This way I’m visually seeing the overall image results. Then I will select each wavelet scale as I work on it.

I’ll normally use the Free Select Tool to select the forehead. I’ll usually have the Feather edges option turned on, with a large radius (maybe 1% of the smallest image dimensions roughly - so ~35 pixels here). Remember to have your layer selected that you want to work on.

With my area selected, I’ll often run a Gaussian Blur (IIR) over the skin to smooth out those imperfections. The radius you use is dependent on how strong you want to smooth the tones out. Too much, and you’ll obliterate the details on that scale, so start small.

Here is my selection I’ll work with (remember - my active layer is Wavelet scale 5):

Forehead with selection (feather turned on to 35px)

Now I’ll experiment with different Gaussian Blur radii to get a feel for how it will effect my entire image. I settled on a high-ish value of 35px radius, which gave me this as a result (mouseover to compare to original):

Forehead, Wavelet scale 5 after Gaussian Blur (IIR) 35px radius

Just with this small change to a single wavelet scale, we can already see a remarkable improvement to the underlying skin tones, and we haven’t hurt any of the fine details in the skin!

In some cases, this may be all that is required for a particular area of skin. I could push things just a tiny bit further if I wanted by working globally again on a finer wavelet scale, but I’ve learned the hard way to back off early if possible.

Instead, I’ll look at specific areas of the skin that I may want to touch up. For instance, the two frown lines in the center of the forehead. I may not want to remove them completely, but I may want to downplay how visible they are. Wavelet scales are perfect for this.

Small frown lines I want to reduce

Because each of the Wavelet scales are set to a layer blend mode of Grain Merge, this means that any area that has a completely grey color will not effect the final image. This means that you can paint with medium grey RGB(128,128,128) to completely remove a detail from a layer.

You can also use the Blur/Sharpen brush to selectively blur an area of the image as well. (I’ve found that the Blur tool works best at smaller wavelet scales - it doesn’t appear to make a big difference on larger scales).

So, if we look at Wavelet scale 5 where the frown lines are, we’ll see there’s not much there - it was already smoothed earlier. If we look at Wavelet scale 4 though, we’ll see them prominently.

I’ll use the Heal Tool to sample from the same wavelet scale in a different location, and paint over just the frown lines. I’ll work on Wavelet scale 4 first. If needed, I can also move down to Wavelet scale 3 and repeat the same procedure there.

A couple of quick passes just over the frown lines, and the results look like this:

Cloning over frown line on scale 4 & 3 (mouseover to compare)

I could continue over any other blemishes I may want to correct, but small individual blemishes can usually be fixed with a little spot healing quickly.

Moving on to the nose, the tones have different requirements. Overall, the tones on Wavelet scale 5 are similar to the forehead. In this case, a similar amount of blurring as the forehead on scale 5 will nicely smooth out the tones. Here is the nose after a slight blurring (mouseover to see original):

Nose with 35px Gaussian blur on Wavelet scale 5 Mouseover to compare to original

There is a bit of color in the nose that is slightly uneven that I’d like to fix. This is relatively easy to do with wavelet scales, because I can modify the underlying color tones of the nose without destroying the details on the other scale layers.

In this case, I’ll work on the Wavelet residual layer.

I’ll use a Heal Tool with a large, soft brush. I’ll sample from about the middle of the nose, and clean up the slightly redder skin by healing new tones into that area. I’ll follow the contours of the nose and the way that the light is hitting it in order to match the underlying tones to what is already there.

After a little work these are the results (mouseover to compare to original):

Healing on the Wavelet residual scale to even tones Mouseover to compare to original

Next I’ll take a look at the eyes and cheek on the brighter side of her face.

Overall tones are good here, just some slight retouching required

The tones here are not bad, particularly on scale 5. After making my selection, I’ve applied a blur at 25px just to smooth things a bit.

A slight 25px blur to smooth overall tones Mouseover to compare to original

The dark tones under/around the eyes is a bit different to deal with. As before, I’ll turn to working on the Wavelet residual layer to brighten up the color tones under the eyes.

I use the Heal Tool to sample from a brighter area of skin near the eye. Then I’ll carefully paint into the dark tones to brighten them up, and to even the colors out with the surrounding skin.

Carefully cloning/healing brighter skin tones under the eyes Mouseover to compare to original

Wavelets are amazing for this type of adjustment, because I can brighten up/change the skin tones under the eyes without effecting the fine skin details here like small wrinkles and pores. The textual character remains unchanged, but the underlying skin tones can be modified easily.

The same can be done for the slightly red tones on the cheek, and at the edge of her jaw. Which I did.

I’m purposefully not going to modify the fine wrinkles under the eyes, either. These small imperfections will often bring great character to a face, and unless they are very distracting or bad, I find it best to leave them be.

A good tip is that even though these small imperfections may seem large when you’re pixel peeping, get into the habit of zooming out to a sane zoom level and evaluate the image then. Sometimes you’ll find you’ve gone too far, and things begin to creep into mannequin territory.

Don’t make mannequins!

In Summary

This entire post is getting a little long, so I’m going to stop here with the skin retouching breakdown.

Also, that’s honestly about it as far as the process goes. Just repeat on the areas that are left (right cheek, chin, and upper lip). You can just apply the processes I described above to those other areas, in the same way.

To summarize, here are the tools/steps I’ll use with Wavelet Decompose to retouch skin:

Area selection with Gaussian blur to even out overall tones at a particular scale
Paint with grey, Clone, Heal on wavelet scales to modify specific details
Clone/Heal on wavelet residual scale to modify underlying skin tones/colors (but leave details intact)

Here are the final results after using only Wavelet Decompose (mouseover to compare to original):

After retouching in Wavelet Scales only Mouseover to compare to original

Spot Touchups

There may be a few things that still need a little spot touchup that I didn’t bother to mess with in Wavelet scales.

In my case, I’ll clone/heal out some small hairs along the jaw line, and touch up some small spots of skin individually. This is really just a light cleaning, and I usually do this at the pixel level (obnoxiously zoomed in, and small brush sizes).

I also use a method for checking the skin for areas that I may want to touchup, but might not be immediately visible or noticeable. It uses the fact that the Blue channel of an image can show you just how scary skin can look (seriously, color decompose any image of skin, and look at the blue channel).

I want to outline the idea, but this post is going on far too long already. I’ll follow up this post immediately with the method of using the Blue channel as a “check layer” (Calvin Hollywood recently illustrated the idea in Ps).

You can find the detailed tutorial for "check layers" here at this post now.

Contour Painting Highlights

One of the downsides of using Wavelet scales for modifying skin is that if you’re blurring on some of the scales, you’ll sometimes decrease the local contrast in your image. This isn’t so bad, but you may want to bring back some of the contrast in areas you’ve touched up.

I’ll utilize something I refer to as “Contour Painting” (I had previously written about using this method for enhancing a pinup image).

What I’m going to do is basically add some transparent layers over my image, and set their layer blend modes to “Overlay”.

Then I’ll paint white over contours I want to enhance, and adjust the opacity of the layer to taste. (This is highly subjective, so I’m going to just show a quick idea of how I might approach it - you can get as nuts with this as you like…).

Here I’ve added a new transparent layer on top of my image, and set the Layer Blend Mode to Overlay. Then I painted white onto contours that I want to highlight:

Painting on the Overlay layer along contours to highlight

It looks strange right now, but I’ll add a large radius Gaussian Blur to smooth these tones out. I used a blur radius of 111 pixels. Here is what it looks like after the blur:

Blurring the Overlay layer with Gaussian Blur (111 pixel radius)

Finally, I’ll adjust the opacity of the Overlay layer to taste. I’ll usually dial this way, way down so that it’s not so obvious. Here, I’ve dialed the opacity back to about 20%, which leaves us with this (mouseover to compare):

After setting the Overlay layer to 20% opacity (still a little high for me, but it's good for illustration) Mouseover to compare to original

I will sometimes add a few more of these layers to enhance other parts of the image as well. I’ll use it (reall, really, really lightly!!!) to enhance the eyes a bit, and in this case, I used an even larger layer to add some volume and highlights to her hair as well.

Here is the results after adding some eye and hair highlight layers as well (mouseover to compare no highlights):

Face, eyes, and hair contour painting result Mouseover to compare to original

Color Curves

Finally, I like to apply some color curves that I have around and use often. I’ve been heavily favoring a Portra emulation curve from Petteri Sulonen that he calls Portra-esque, especially for skin. It has a very pretty rolloff in the highlights that really renders pretty colors.

If I feel it’s too much, I can always apply it on a duplicate of my image so far, and adjust opacity to suit. Here is the same image with only the Potra-esque curve applied:

Image so far, with a Portra-esque color curve applied Mouseover to compare to original

If you’re curious, I had written up a much more in-depth look at color curves for skin here: Getting Around in GIMP - More Color Curves (Skin). You can actually download the curves for Portra, Velvia, Provia emulation on that page.

Sharpening

Finally. The last step before saving out our image!

For sharpening, I actually like to use one of the Wavelet scales that I generated earlier. I’ll just duplicate a low scale, like 2 or 3, and drag it on top of my layer stack to sharpen the details from that scale.

In this case, I liked the details from Wavelet scale 2, so I duplicated that layer, and dragged it on top of my layer stack. The blend mode is already set to Grain Merge, so I don’t have to do anything else:

Wavelet scale 2 copied to the top of the layer stack for sharpening Mouseover to compare to original

Finally at the End

If you’re still with me - you really deserve a medal. I’m sorry this has run as long as it has, but I wanted to try to be as complete as I could.

So, for a final comparison, here is the image we finished with (mouseover to compare to what we started with before retouching in GIMP):

Our final result Mouseover to compare to original (from RT)

Not too bad for a little bit of fiddling, I think! I know that this tutorial reads really, really long, but I promise that once you’ve understood the processes being used, it’s actually very quick in practice.

I hope that this has been helpful to you in some way! If you happen to use anything from this tutorial please share it. I’d love to see what others do with these techniques.

If you appreciate any of the stuff I'm writing, please consider donating a little (even 50¢ is great), or possibly clicking something else on the page... :) If not, would you consider linking/favoriting/+1/whatever you kids do these days and let others know about it? I would seriously appreciate it!

The Open Source Portrait (Equipment & Environment)

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:34:00 -0500

As promised, I thought it might be fun/helpful to walk through a portrait shooting session from start to finish using only Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS). This is my personal workflow, and hopefully I can do the subject some justice.

A Model Idiot.

I’m going to walk through the creation of a portrait of my friend Mairi that I did not too long ago. I had been wanting to shoot with Mairi for a while, and only recently got a chance to sit down and actually do it quickly. For reference, here is one of the final results that I’ll be walking through the process for:

Mairi 6 - possibly my favorite from the shoot.

I say “quickly” because this image was almost spur-of-the-moment, shot in a less than ideal location with about 10 minutes of setup to dial everything in (oh - and was shot while I was keeping an eye on my 2 year old daughter who was running around playing).

The next tutorial in this series is here:
The Open Source Portrait (Postprocessing)

The Idea

Before we even sat down, I already had a rough idea of how I wanted to light this portrait. I knew I wanted a big, diffuse key light set up to be close to a Rembrandt style of lighting, and that I wanted to possibly include a second light for fill to brighten up the shadows just a bit.

This is actually a common theme for me, as I had built a softbox that I could hold in my left hand, while shooting with my right. Because I had been using wider angle lenses for a long time, it became a sort of habit for me to light in this manner (just look at the majority of the shots in my Off Camera Flash set on Flickr to see what I mean).

If you remember my previous post, Visualize Photography Lighting Setups in Blender, you’ll see a rough initial idea based around a softbox at ~60° elevation, and ~60° off axis to camera left (300° frame from below).

Virtual lighting diagram - see 300°.

The only difference this time was that I knew from experience that a single softbox will leave one side of my subject quite dark, so I wanted to try filling in those shadows with my second flash (they could also have been filled with a reflector as well).

The Equipment

I don’t really have much in terms of equipment that is specifically for shooting portraits. This is the gear I use when I’m doing off-camera flash work.

Almost all of my photography gear…

I know it might seem redundant, but for the sake of completeness and to document this as well as I can, I’m going to walk through the list of what I’m using.

The product links below will take you to their respective Amazon page. Just to be clear, I am using my affiliate code in these links. This means that if you click a link and buy anything on Amazon afterwards, I’ll receive a percentage of the sale. This actually doesn’t affect anything for you (the price is still the same, etc.) - just that you’ll be supporting me if you do. I just wanted to let you know, so you can make the choice to click (and if you do - thank you!).

Camera

My new toy from this past Christmas is the Olympus OM-D E-M5. I got mine with the Olympus 12-50mm F3.5-6.3 because, seriously - if I’m going to get a weatherproof camera, I might as well have a lens with the same protection (as part of a kit it’s a good price - I probably wouldn’t have bought this lens separately, I’m more of a prime shooter normally).

The camera is not the important part of the equation here, though. More important is getting a focal length that would produce pleasing compression without flattening things out too much. Here’s a good comparison of what different focal lengths will do to the perspective of your subject from photographer Stephen Eastwood:

Comparison of compression effects from focal lengths. (via Stephen Eastwood)

With my old 17mm pancake lens, I would be looking at distortion like the 2^nd row middle, but at the long end of my zoom (50mm), I’m shooting more for 1^st row, far right. Traditionally, you’ll want to be around 85mm (short-telephoto) or higher for portraits.

Speedlights/Flashes

I wanted to learn to do off-camera lighting from the basics, and to work my way up from there. If you’re interested in doing something similar, I can’t recommend David Hobby’s blog Strobist enough.

He even has an amazing series of tutorials to walk you through the basics of learning to use flashes called Lighting 101/2. The entire series is well worth the time to read through. Seriously. Go read it.

With that being said, I knew I only needed a dependable manual flash to learn with (no need for TTL metering/control for me). In checking around, it appeared that the best price/performance ratio I could find for a manual flash was the Yongnuo YN-560 Speedlight Flash. At the time I bought mine, they were only about $75 USD, and are a great value (I’ve never had a problem with reliability on mine).

(This flash may have been replaced with the Yongnuo YN-560 II, which is identical with the exception of the LCD screen on the back in lieu of LED status lights).

One of the nice features of this flash is that it does have an optical slave, meaning that it will fire when it detects another flash firing nearby. This is how I got my fill flash to fire without needing another set of radio triggers.

Speaking of radio triggers…

Wireless Triggers

Of course, the speedlights and camera wouldn’t work well together without some way for the camera to trigger the flashes. A few years back my friend Sean gave me his old Cactus v4 triggers as a hand-me-down, so I decided to stay with the brand when I picked up some new ones. I went with these, the Cactus V5 Wireless Flash Triggers.

You don’t have to have a wireless trigger to fire the flash, you could also go the wired route using a PC-sync cord (the YN560 will accept these, you’ll just need a hotshoe-sync cord adapter if your camera doesn’t already have a PC jack), or if your camera/flash system are integrated (built-in commander mode, etc.).

You could conceivably also use these with the pop-up flash on the camera. Just set the camera flash to the lowest possible setting, and use it to activate the Yongnuo in slave mode.

Lighting Modifier (DIY Softbox)

I’m firmly in the Do-It-Yourself camp when it comes to lighting modifiers (or I’m cheap - read it how you want). The biggest problem is that costs can spiral out of control if you get a nasty case of GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), and I’d rather spend money on things I can’t easily build myself. (This list of softboxes on Amazon shows most 24" softboxes in the +$30 USD range).

Luckily, a simple softbox is something I can build myself…

Here’s another view of my DIY softbox (with measurements):

This was constructed with foam-core board that can be picked up just about anywhere for pretty cheap. I believe I paid something like $7 USD for each board, and needed 2 to cut all my pieces.

I only had to cut 4 identical trapezoids (24" base x 16" height x 4" top), and then a single 4"x4" square for the end. The whole thing is held together with clear packing tape. I traced my flash head on the square piece and cut out with a simple X-Acto knife.

The fabric on the front was just an old white sheet I had laying around, but any lightweight, white fabric can do. This was also just taped to the front. You could get fancy and tape a tissue inside as a second diffusion panel, but I didn’t bother.

Udi over at DIY Photography has a great post detailing how to build 24 different softboxes if you want other inspirations.

The Environment

I envy photographers sometimes when I get a chance to see these wonderful studio spaces they have access to for shoots. Maybe if I was doing this as part of my income, then I could justify the expense required for those spaces, but instead this is purely a hobby. Oh, and check the previous section about me being cheap.

With that in mind, this is the space I had available to shoot my portraitcaption=“The only space to shoot in. I like a challenge!” :

The only space to shoot in. I like a challenge!

This is actually a very pretty corner to shoot in during the late afternoon. The sun is just behind that corner, and gets diffused nicely in this spot. If the subject is back in the corner, there’s a nice ratio of light coming from the windows on either side to produce pleasing light.

You’ll notice a microphone stand in the image. That became my impromptu light stand when I taped the softbox to the side of it. I had Mairi sit in the chair, and then adjusted the height/angle of the box before taping it in place.

The small blue bucket on the desk is one of the places I had originally set my bare flash down for fill light.

The First Pass

Initially, I had Mairi backed into the corner, and the lights arranged around her. This didn’t work out as I had hoped.

The reason was that the spill light from the softbox and bare flash were casting shadows on the walls that I didn’t like. The relative exposure of the corner was also pretty bright compared to my subject, which didn’t really give much separation at all from the background.

So how to fix this? Well, Strobist has a nice lesson about flash positions and their relative effect on the resulting image (scroll down to the “Light Position: Distance” section). In particular, the ratio between the flash-to-subject distance, and the flash-to-background distance. When they are close, you’ll get a background exposed similar to your subject.

Here, have a look at one of the images from that lesson, that shows the light being about the same distance from the subject as the subject from back wall:

Flash to subject ~5 feet, with the wall ~6 feet behind the subject.

Strobist shows this great example below of changing this ratio for a different effect:

~1:1 ratio on left, ~7:1 ratio on right

On the left, David moved the flash to be ~25 feet from the subject, with the wall about 31 feet from the flash (approximately a 1:1 distance ratio). After adjusting aperture to get the correct exposure for the subject, you’ll see how light the rear wall is.

On the right, the flash was pushed in very close to the subject, ~1 foot. While the rear wall was about 7 feet away from the flash. Once the aperture is adjusted to correctly expose the subject you can see how dark the rear wall became. The ratio is now about 7:1.

This is basically the Inverse Square Law for light intensity (don’t click the link unless you really, really want to read more about it).

So with that in mind, I corrected my problems by simply moving everything away from the corner. Honestly, this was just trial and error until I started seeing the rear wall being exposed about where I wanted it relative to Mairi.

The Second Pass

With Mairi moved out of the corner, and the flashes still maintaining the same relative distance to her, I was able to drop the exposure of the corner walls down a bit, and I avoided any strange shadows as well. How simple! (You can see my first pass tries in the contact sheet towards the end of this post).

Here is approximately what my final setup looked like:

All positions are approximate from my memory, tweak as needed. :)

The keylight is the softbox, which is about 18 inches from the models face (just barely out of frame of the camera).

The keylight is set to about 1/2 power (these flashes are GN58 by the way). Remember, if you can get the diffuse light source closer, it will have a much larger apparent size (if it’s far away, it will begin to act like a bare flash again - harsh shadows).

The bare fill flash on the table to the camera right is set to about 1/4 power, and has a zoom head that is set to about 100mm. If you’re following along, you’ll just need to adjust these power ratios for a proper exposure, but those are my settings if it helps to get you started.

I know this probably reads a bit long, but the truth is that all the steps to get to a final lighting position setup took about 5-10 minutes total. Keep in mind, this was my first time lighting like this in the space, and any future shoots will be even faster (and cleaner once I put away all the kids toys and clutter!).

The Shoot

Once I had the lighting and positioning dialed in, the shoot was a (relative) breeze. I had a couple of things going for me that made it so easy, though. Mairi is a friend of mine, and this was much more like hanging out and joking while I occasionally snapped a photo. She has also modeled in the past, so was absolutely comfortable in front of the camera, and knew how to move and pose for different shots already.

What if the model is not already a friend and/or experienced, though?

This section is not intended to be comprehensive, more of my ramblings around my general thoughts at the time. I'm not covering some essentials like model releases and other things. To be honest, this section (poses/directions/etc.) deserves a writeup of it's own.

Mood/Music/Atmosphere

I think that the overall atmosphere and mood is vitally important to helping the model do their best (and by extension to get good photos). You want them to feel relaxed and at ease (usually).

If you have some way to play music, ask them to bring something they like along. It might also help to let them know what type of shoot you’d like to do, and to plan music appropriately (Vibrant and full of energy? Somber and serious? Easy and lighthearted? Pick music that matches the mood you want to capture).

It’s probably also a good idea to cover basic essentials as well, including restroom/changing room for privacy (if needed), as well as refreshments (avoid snacks or have a mirror handy - no need to spend all your time editing food out of teeth - or discoloration).

I’d also spend some time just putting the equipment down and chatting with your subject (if possible). Build a rapport and get to know each other a bit before you even pick up the camera.

Plan

It will help you immensely if you have at least a rough idea of what types of shots you’d like to try to get ahead of time. Communicate this to your subject if possible before the shoot as well. Having examples of poses and other visual aids will be helpful as well (other photos, magazine clippings, etc. for instance).

For Mairi, I only actually had two shots in mind up front:

The only two poses I had anything to do with.

Every other shot was her moving through various poses without any direction from me except for the occasional request to direct her gaze somewhere.

Shoot

Don’t forget to keep talking with the subject (put yourself in their shoes - just sitting there while you shuffle around clicking away and no feedback kind of sucks). Direct them as needed. And don’t forget to come out from behind the lens occasionally.

If you want them to do something specifically, try to show them if possible. Don’t touch them. (Seriously, don’t). If you absolutely have to adjust a hair or piece of clothing, make sure to ask them first.

Finally, a couple of tidbits I picked up from around the web that I thought were neat.

If you want to try and get a natural look, try having the subject look down for a moment and then ask them to bring their head and eyes up to position (asking them to look directly into the lens can capture some wonderful eyes sometimes, especially if you fire off a shot before their head is all the way up into position).

If you want to relax them and possibly catch some nice candid moments, try asking them to do something silly (like faking a cough).

A simple joke can work wonders here too (keep it clean, don’t be a creep).

I know that the final images from this session I produced were all more somber, but of all the shots I took, most of them had her laughing and cracking up from some stupid comment/joke I made during the shoot.

So you can get a better feel of how the shoot went, here’s a couple of sample contact sheets (chronologically ordered):

Mairi in a dark sweater (notice the first 6 shots are close to the corner).

Mairi in a light grey sweater. By the time we got to these, I had the lighting dialed in for what I wanted.

You can clearly make out in the first contact sheet my first pass lighting with Mairi much closer to the corner. I didn’t like the spill lights on the background, so moved her out of the corner more, which evened out the background, and darkened it a bit for me.

In Summary

Whew! That ran longer than I thought it would. If you’ve read this far, I applaud you.

So, that’s basically it for the actual shoot. We worked through a few different poses, I snapped a bunch of photographs, and we had a few laughs. The next part will deal with what comes next - culling all those shots to the keepers, and deciding how to approach post-processing those into portraits I like.

Also, I think I may just go ahead and make a RAW file available in the next session so anyone following along at home has something to work with.

In the next post, I’ll be developing my image from my RAW file in Rawtherapee, bringing that image into GIMP for retouching, and finally exporting the end result.

If you want to get a head start on some of the things I’ll be talking about in the next post, check out: Getting Around in GIMP - Skin Retouching (Wavelet Decompose) I hope this has been at least interesting for you, and remember to check back in a bit for the last part of this Open Source Portrait walkthrough!

The next tutorial in this series is here: The Open Source Portrait (Postprocessing)

Calvin Hollywood Freaky Details in GIMP

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:07:00 -0600

This article (possibly updated) is now available on pixls.us:
PIXLS.US: Freaky Details

German photographer/digital artist/photoshop trainer Calvin Hollywood has a rather unique style to his photography. It’s a sort of edgy, gritty, hyper-realistic result, almost a blend between illustration and photography.

As part of one of his courses, he talks about a technique for accentuating details in an image that he calls “Freaky Details”.

Here is the original video I saw him describing this technique in from Scott Kelby’s blog, Photoshop Insider during a guest appearance:

[Update] I’ve been told there are problems loading the page with IE if I include the video I first saw this technique on. So, to make sure everyone can see this tutorial, the original video is on this page towards the end (it’s the only video on the page)…

Go check it out, then come back to read the rest of the tutorial!

And here is a more current Youtube video from Calvin that describes this technique using a different image:

In my meandering around different retouching tutorials I came across it a while ago, and wanted to replicate the results in GIMP if possible. There were a couple of problems that I ran into for replicating the exact same workflow:

Lack of a "Vivid Light" layer blend mode in GIMP
Lack of a "Surface Blur" in GIMP

Those problems have been rectified (and I have more patience these days to figure out what exactly was going on), so let’s see what it takes to replicate this effect in GIMP!

Replicating Freaky Details

Requirements

The only extra thing you’ll need to be able to replicate this effect is G’MIC for GIMP.

You don’t technically need G’MIC to make this work, but the process of manually creating a Vivid Light layer is tedious and error-prone in GIMP right now. Also, you won’t have access to G’MIC’s Bilateral Blur for smoothing. And, seriously, it’s G’MIC - you should have it anyway for all the other cool stuff it does!

Summary of Steps

Here’s the summary of steps we are about to walk through to create this effect in GIMP:

Duplicate the background layer.
Invert the colors of the top layer.
Apply "Surface Blur" to top layer.
Set top layer blend mode to "Vivid Light".
New layer from visible.
Set layer blend mode of new layer to "Overlay", hide intermediate layer.

There are just a couple of small things to point out though, so keep reading to be aware of them!

Detailed Steps

I’m going to walk through each step to make sure it’s clear, but first we need an image to work with!

As usual, I’m off to Flickr Creative Commons to search for a CC licensed image to illustrate this with. I found a great photo to use in this tutorial from Mark Shaiken (Shakeskc) on Flickr - a wonderful portrait of a firefighter!

After a Call by Mark Shaiken on Flickr. (cc-by-nc-sa)

This is a great image to test the effect, and to hopefully bring out the details and gritty-ness of the portrait.

1./2. Duplicate background layer, and invert colors

So, duplicate your base image layer (Background in my example).

Layer → Duplicate (Shift-Ctrl-D,Shift-⌘-D)

I will usually name the duplicate layer something descriptive, like “Temp” ;).

Next I’ll just invert the colors on this “Temp” layer.

Colors → Invert

So right now, we should be looking at this on our canvas:

The inverted duplicate of our base layer.

What the Layers dialog should look like

Now that we’ve got our inverted “Temp” layer, we just need to apply a little blur.

3. Apply “Surface Blur” to Temp Layer

There’s a couple of different ways you could approach this. Calvin Hollywood’s tutorial explicitly calls for a Photoshop Surface Blur. I think part of the reason to use a Surface Blur vs. Gaussian Blur is to cut down on any halos that will occur along edges of high contrast.

There are three main methods of blurring this layer that you could use:

Straight Gaussian Blur (easiest/fastest, but may halo - worst results)
Filters → Blur → Gaussian Blur
Selective Gaussian Blur (closer to true “Surface Blur”)
Filters → Blur → Selective Gaussian Blur
G’MIC’s Smooth [bilateral] (closest to true “Surface Blur”)
Filters → G’MIC → Repair → Smooth [bilateral]

I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to try some different methods and choose one they like. (At this point I personally pretty much just always use G’MIC’s Smooth [bilateral] - this produces the best results by far).

For the Gaussian Blurs, I’ve had good luck with radius values around 20% - 30% of an image dimension. As the blur radius increases, you’ll be acting more on larger local contrasts (as opposed to smaller details) and run the risk of halos. So just keep an eye on that.

So, let’s try applying some G’MIC Bilateral Smoothing to the “Temp” layer and see how it looks!

Run the command:

Filters → G’MIC → Repair → Smooth [bilateral]

The values I used in this example for Spatial/Value Variance.

The values you want to fiddle with are the Spatial Variance and Value Variance (25 and 20 respectively in my example). You can see the values I tried for this walkthrough, but I encourage you to experiment a bit on your own as well!

Now we should see our canvas look like this:

Our ‘Temp’ layer after applying G’MIC Smoothing [bilateral]

Layers should still look like this.

Now we just need to blend the “Temp” layer with the base background layer using a “Vivid Light” blending mode…

4./5. Set Temp Layer Blend Mode to Vivid Light & New Layer

Now we need to blend the “Temp” layer with the Background layer using a “Vivid Light” blending mode. Lucky for me, I’m friendly with the G’MIC devs, so I asked nicely, and David Tschumperlé added this blend mode for me.

So, again we start up G’MIC:

Filters → G'MIC → Layers → Blend [standard] - Mode: Vivid Light

G’MIC Vivid Light blending mode, pay attention to Input/Output!

Pay careful attention to the Input/Output portion of the dialog. You’ll want to set the Input Layers to All visibles so it picks up the Temp and Background layers. You’ll also probably want to set the Output to New layer(s).

When it’s done, you’re going to be staring at a very strange looking layer, for sure:

Well, sure it looks weird out of context…

The layers should now look like this.

Now all that’s left is to hide the “Temp” layer, and set the new Vivid Light result layer to Overlay layer blending mode…

6. Set Vivid Light Result to Overlay, Hide Temp Layer

We’re just about done. Go ahead and hide the “Temp” layer from view (we won’t need it anymore - you could delete it as well if you wanted to).

Finally, set the G’MIC Vivid Light layer output to Overlay layer blend mode:

Set the resulting G’MIC output layer to Overlay blend mode.

The results we should be seeing will have enhanced details and contrasts, and should look like this (mouseover to compare the original image):

Our final results (whew!) (mouseover to compare original)

Summary

Well, that feels a bit longer than I had anticipated (maybe these just feel longer when I’m writing them?).

This is not an effect for everyone. I can’t stress that enough. It’s also not an effect for every image. But if you find an image it works well on, I think it can really do some interesting things. It can definitely bring out a very dramatic, gritty effect (it works well with nice hard rim lighting and textures).

For instance, because I couldn’t help myself, I color graded the results just a bit to something I like a bit more (muted colors, portra-esque curves):

I thought a slightly desaturated version suited the subject... (mouseover to compare original)

Finally, a BIG THANK YOU to David Tschumperlé for taking the time to add a Vivid Light blend mode in G’MIC.

Try the method out and let me know what you think or how it works out for you! And as always, if you found this useful in any way, please share it, pin it, like it, or whatever you kids do these days…

And if you want more from Calvin Hollywood, he has a book available on Amazon that covers other techniques as well (in Photoshop, of course):

Calvinize: Signature Techniques of Photoshop Artist Calvin Hollywood

A Quick Look at Quality (Google+ vs. Flickr)

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:35:00 -0600

I had recently taken some photos of my friend Mairi, and wanted to share them. Lately I’ve been using Google+ more and more (they just make it too easy to use), and photographers seem to be one of the larger groups of users.

So I decided to see what my images would look like on Google+ as compared to Flickr (my mainstay), or even 500px. I’ve been a Flickr user for years (I think the $25USD/year for a Pro account is a pretty good deal for what it offers), and it’s been my reference for a while.

So, let’s take a look!

Reference

I’m using a recent photo of my friend Mairi as a reference. Specifically, the final 100% jpg output at full size when I was done playing with it in GIMP.

My reference image.

This is the same image I initially uploaded to Google+ and Flickr in full resolution, at 100% JPG quality, optimized, progressive, DCT Floating Point, Subsampling 4:4:4.

I resized the image in GIMP before uploading here to 550px wide, and used Sinc (Lanczos3) resizing (don’t worry, I’m just putting this up here for reference), and exported as PNG using RIOT.

Method

So what I did was, after uploading the full quality image in it’s final form to both Google+ and Flickr, I then went and re-downloaded the image from the same services. Google+ will resize your images to a maximum side dimension of 2048px for you (unless you upload directly through picasaweb/Picasa).

So I used the 2048px size as the output from both Flickr and Google+ (they both provide a resized version of your image at those dimensions). I brought them into GIMP, and compared them by setting one layer over the other in Difference blending mode.

To emphasize what I was seeing, I ran a simple Colors → Auto → Normalize against the difference results.

Here’s the resulting Difference:

Of course, anytime you run an image through a compression algorithm, there are bound to be differences in the results. It’s important to keep in mind, too, that the Flickr file at 2048 pixels clocks in at about 1.4 MB in size, while the Google+ version is half that at 745 KB.

Here is a 200% crop of an area of interest from Flickr (mouseover for comparison to Google+):

200% crop from Flickr (mouseover to compare Google+)

Here’s another 200% crop of the background grain from Flickr (mouseover to compare Google+):

200% crop of background grain from Flickr (mouseover for Google+ comparison)

Results

To my eye, the extra compression that Google+ is adding to the images is not good. There’s some aliasing effects along sharp edges that I don’t like, and areas of smooth color + grain fare very poorly. There’s also some softening/smearing that occurs at the Google+ compression stage that I don’t like.

Take this with a grain of salt, of course. These images are being viewed again at 200%, and pixel-peeping. For instance, here are both images resized to 550 pixels wide (Flickr first, mouseover to compare to Google+):

Flickr image at 550 pixels wide (mouseover to compare Google+)

And here is a simple 100% crop of a similar area of interest from earlier (again, Flickr first, mouseover for Google+ comparison):

I think given the choice I would opt for the Flickr version every time. It’s a bigger file, but even at 2048 pixels, it’s still not likely to exceed 2 MB for an image. A small price to pay to keep the viewing quality of the image a bit higher…

Mairi

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 12:04:00 -0600

I finally got a chance recently to quickly photograph my friend Mairi.

Mairi 6 by Pat David on Flickr

She’s a beautiful woman who happens to be a keen-eyed photographer as well. The best part, though, is that she has modeled in the past, which made her the perfect person to shoot with! Seriously. The value of having someone who knows what to do in front of the camera is amazing.

This was the one pose I wanted. Mairi 4 by Pat David on Flickr

For example, the image above, Mairi 4, was one of two images that I asked her to pose specifically for (Mairi 9 is the other one). All of the others were taken with no direction from me, and just letting her do her thing.

The only other pose I had anything to do with... Mairi 9 by Pat David on Flickr

This shoot was also fun because it was no stress, just to try some things out. I don’t have a studio, but I do have a room with big windows on three sides, and a nice gray colored wall in a corner. When we started, it was still sunny out, and the windows acted as giant, diffuse light sources. Unfortunately, I only managed to get one image I liked shooting in natural light…

Mairi by Pat David on Flickr

I had a rough idea of how I wanted to light the image with flashes, though. I have a pair of Yongnuo YN-560 Speedlight Flashes that I’ve been using for a while to learn (strobist) lighting with. They are fully manual flashes (which is perfect for me - I like the control for these types of shoots).

Shooting bare flashes is really, really harsh, though. A while back when I got my first flash, I threw together a quick DIY softbox from some foamboard and an old white pillowcase. Pretty much the same build as this one on diyphotography.net. Total cost? About $8. This thing has been worth it’s weight in gold for me!

Mairi 2 by Pat David on Flickr

My first test shots were a little too close to background (didn’t want the wall to get so much spill light), and there was a bare flash camera right that wasn’t dialed in yet.

Still, I liked the result in this image. I thought the juxtaposition of the dark left, brighter right on the rear wall vs. the lighting on her face was visually interesting. So a happy little stroke of serendipity.

Of course, after having recently written a rather long-winded tutorial on B&W conversion, I couldn’t help myself while I was working with a moody single light source…

Mairi 3 B&W by Pat David on Flickr

Eventually I got my lighting dialed in to where I wanted it. I moved the Mairi and the softbox (taped to an old microphone stand!) further away from the rear wall in order to darken it. This finally got the results I was looking for…

Mairi 5 by Pat David on Flickr

At this point I just let Mairi do her thing, and she moved easily through a handful of poses for me. The whole thing was very organic and fun! The amazing thing is that we shot all of these images (almost 200!) in about one hour.

Mairi 8 by Pat David on Flickr

I realized a couple of neat things while working on these images. My workflow is pretty much entirely all Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS).

I manage all of my files through regular file management tools and the command line (though there are great pieces of software out there for it). The three main pieces of software I’ve been using lately are:

Exiftool by Phil Harvey This is usually because I lose EXIF data between Rawtherapee and GIMP, but also for bulk file manipulations like sorting into folders/etc...
Rawtherapee for developing my RAW files. (no Darktable build for windows yet, and I like my tools to be consistent across environments)
GIMP - do I really need to say anything here?

I figured that with a fully F/OSS workflow, it might be nice to do another tutorial series on the entire process from setup, to lighting, to shooting, to developing, and finally to retouching in GIMP!

I guess what I mean to say is, the next set of Getting Around in GIMP tutorials will be based on fashion/portraiture workflows and retouching from beginning to end. Stay tuned!

Getting Around in GIMP - Black and White Conversion (Part 5)

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:36:00 -0600

So here we are at the end (not really, but too much more and we’ll be just beating a dead horse).

What I feel many of posts become…

My intention at this point is to document some sort of workflow that might prove useful to others (and myself - you’d be surprised at how much I learn writing these posts…). So I’ll touch on the final topic I wanted to talk about, blending different bits from various layers and working through a couple of examples.

The rest of the tutorials in this series are here:

Bits and Pieces

If you’ll recall in Part 3 of this series, I had created a small Script-Fu to automatically decompose an image into various color component decompositions. I think this is a handy script to use if you’re still finding your own workflow for grayscale conversions.

What’s nice about it is that it will automatically generate a handful of automatic conversions for you as layers on your image. This way, you can visually inspect the results and find areas from each conversion that you like. Then you can use Layer Masks (you can go review my old Layer Masks tutorial to brush up if you’d like) to isolate specific areas and to blend it with others.

Enough talk, let’s dive into an example…

Pretty Women

Well, pretty woman, but I couldn’t resist a Sweeney Todd reference.

What a sweet looking portrait (IMG_8405a) by Alaskan Dude on Flickr

This image is from Flickr user Frank Kovalchek (Alaskan Dude). In trying to get interesting images for these tutorials, I’ve searched the Creative Commons licensed images on Flickr, and he shows up a lot. Frank, if you read this - thank you for sharing!

So, I thought this might be a nice image to convert. To get a feel for what is possible quickly, I’m going to run my Color Decompose script, which gives me this:

One of the reasons I chose this image is that it allows us to investigate a couple of points mentioned earlier in this series. I want to keep as high a tonal density as possible in the image to help impart a sense of texture and detail. I also want to highlight some parts of the image for their best qualities.

The Scarf

So in this image, I want to keep the texture and detail of the scarf while at the same time to emphasize and accentuate the quality of the models skin. So I want to inspect these results with an eye towards these qualities (this is all highly subjective, of course, but gives us a good place to start from).

So I ask myself:

“Which of these results produces the best quality/texture in the fabric of the scarf?"

I narrowed it down to the Luma Y709F, Luma Y470F, and HSL-L. Of those, I personally like the look of the Luma Y709F. So this becomes my base layer that I will start building on. (Part of the reason is that aesthetically I want focus on the models face, but still retain texture and detail of the scarf around her).

The Luma - Y709F as a "base" layer - chosen for the fabric texture.

At this point I’m more worried about the tones being there rather than a final result. Remember, we’re building up the image here, and can make further corrections or enhancements later.

The Skin

Now I want to consider the model herself. There is fine detail in her skin now, but I’m looking to emphasize her overall. I’d like to get the skin a little brighter and in a higher key, to offset the dark background and the scarf.

I’d also like to get it a little smoother/softer looking. Keeping that in mind, have a look at the different channel decompositions above. Not surprisingly, the Red channel looks quite pretty. This is fairly common that the red channel will be complimentary to (Caucasian) skin. (There’s even a trick to using a red channel as an overlay on a color image to “enhance” the skin).

So I’m going to try this and see how I like it. I’ll place the Red channel over the Luma Y709F channel, and change the blending mode to Overlay.

Luma Y709F base, with a Red channel over (set to blending mode: Overlay). (Mouseover for comparison).

My Layers should now look like this:

Visually this appears to have a little more impact, but the skin might be blown out a little too much. I could adjust the opacity on the Red layer at this point to attenuate it’s influence until I find a result I am happy with.

Remember, part of the reason this may seem to have more impact could be due to a higher contrast at the moment. Sometimes it’s best to stand up and look away from the image for a while before committing to a change…

The problem is that the ratio of adjustment between the scarf and the skin might not be what I want. Adjusting the opacity might reduce the effect on the skin, but at the same time will reduce the effect on the scarf by an equal amount. What I need is some way to apply the effect stronger to the scarf or skin.

Well, this is exactly what Layer Masks are for!

Masks

I could add a mask to the red channel, then paint in a mask by hand that isolated the face, and gave a little less opacity to the scarf. It’s a lot of tedious, detailed work.

If only there were already a grayscale mask that isolated the face and scarf a bit. Wouldn’t that be great?

Well, scroll back up and look at the RGB - Blue and RGB - Green layers. One of these looks like they would be great at isolating the face/hair from the scarf!

So that’s exactly what I’m going to try. I’ll copy one of those channels (I’ll try the RGB - Green and see how it looks), and apply it as a layer mask to the RGB - Red channel Overlay.

So, select the RGB - Green channel, and copy it.

Edit → Copy

Add a layer mask to the RGB - Red channel. (You can initialize the mask to white.)

Right-Click Red Layer → Add Layer Mask…

The mask should be automatically selected when you create it (white border), if not, click on the mask to select it.

Then paste the copied RGB - Green layer.

Edit → Paste It should now be a Floating Selection.

Anchor the layer by right clicking on the Floating Selection layer, and choosing Anchor Layer.

When you’re done, your Layers should look like this:

Now remember, a layer mask will be more transparent the darker the color in it. The lighter areas will show more of the layer it is applied to. So in this case, lighter areas will allow more of the RGB - Red layer to show, while darker areas will show through to the layer below, Luma Y709F.

Our image at this point should look something like thiscaption=“Red Overlay masked with the Green channel (mouseover to compare w/o mask).” :

Red Overlay masked with the Green channel (mouseover to compare w/o mask).

What this has done is to isolate the models face from the surrounding scarf a bit. You can now modify the opacity of the layer, or adjust the values of the mask using Levels or Curves to adjust the intensity of the result.

You should notice that if you modify the opacity of the RGB - Red layer, the effect will mainly be on the skin of the model thanks to our mask.

Having a look at the results, you’ll notice that the scarf has become a little more flat, and the models face has brightened up. I actually like the depth that the Red overlay layer had on the scarf, and think it’s a little strong on the models face.

To test something out, I’m going to try Inverting the layer mask. With the RGB - Red layer mask selected (remember - it will have a white outline in the layers window), I’ll just invert the colors with:

Colors → Invert

The result should look like this:

Inverted mask results (mouseover to compare the non-inverted mask).

Here’s what the layer palette looks like now:

I actually like this result at this point. The overlay and mask added some nice depth to the scarf fabric, and there is still a bit of nice effect on the skin of the model as well. I could go further and adjust the layer mask levels to decrease/increase the masking on the models skin, but I think we can leave this one as is for the moment.

Let’s compare the results to a straight desaturation:

Straight Desaturation (mouseover to compare our final result).

A little fussier than a straight desaturation to get here, but I think the results are much nicer and is visually more interesting. I would probably fiddle a bit with the levels of the layer mask to adjust the contribution from the mask to the face/scarf, but this is a good starting point.

Methuselah

Well, this isn’t the actual Methuselah, but it is a similar species of Bristlecone Pine (it might be the exact same species, but I’m no botanist). Once again, Flickr user Frank Kovalchek shows up in a CC-BY search for trees!

Bristlecone pine hanging on for dear life at 10,000 feet by Alaskan Dude on Flickr

As before, I started with decomposing the image to different channels to see if there would be any interesting results I liked. I liked the initial result from Luma - Y709F again, but thought I would take a different path this time.

I want the main focus of this image to really be the texture of the gnarled old tree itself, and secondary the lighting of the day across the ground. Inspecting the results of my decomposition, I like the results of the green channel best on the texture of the tree. It is almost the exact same result as from the Luma Y709F.

Green channel of RGB decomposition

The things I personally don’t like about the green channel is that the sky is too bright for me, and the ground could be a bit darker compared to the tree. There’s also a nice feeling of light on the ground where the sunlight is reflected to the back right of the tree in the image.

Having found a nice layer for the tree texture, I am now looking for something that represents the ground and sky a little closer to what I’d like. I like a slightly darker sky, and for that the Red channel seems like a good compromise (the Blue channel was a little too noisy for me).

On inspection, I also like the Red channel for it’s results on the ground near the tree (slightly darker, and retaining the reflection from the sun).

Red channel of RGB decomposition (mouseover to compare to Green channel)

So what I’d like to do is use the Red channel as a base for the sky and ground, and use the Green channel for the tree itself. Once again, layer masks seem like a good approach!

So I’ll set my Green channel above my Red channel on my layer palette, and I’ll add a layer mask to the Green channel, initialized to Black (full transparency). This lets all of the underlying Red channel show through.

Red channel, with Green channel over + mask

Now with the Layer Mask active (see the white outline in the above image - if it’s not active, click on it), I can paint with a white color to allow that portion of the Green channel to show over the Red channel beneath it. Because I want to use the Green channel just for the tree, that is where I will paint.

There’s a couple of ways you could produce the mask. As we saw earlier, I could use another channel and fiddle with the levels a bit to really get a good mask, but in this case I felt like painting. I wanted to talk about this because it’s a nice way to visually inspect what your masking will do to the image, and you can tweak it as you go. You could use a different color than white to reduce the effect, as well as adjust brush dynamics for a more “painterly” feel and approach.

Here is my quick painted mask, to illustrate:

It’s just a quick mask, don’t judge me…

And here is what my layers currently look like:

To compare what we’ve done so far, here are my results from the steps above:

Final blend of Red/Green channels with mask (mouseover to compare to straight desaturation)

I could call this one done, though there is a bit of noise in the upper-left corner of the sky from the Red channel. I could fix this by adding another layer masked just for the sky (which would allow me to adjust the levels of the sky relative to everything else to taste). I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader, but a good hint would be to start with the Blue channel to build the mask…

Bonus!

As a bonus, I was smart enough this time to actually save my GIMP workspace while I was fiddling with this tree, so I am offering the .xcf file for anyone to use/follow along:

Download the file from my Google Drive:

Getting Around in GIMP BW 5.bz2

The filetype is .bz2, and should open in GIMP directly with no problems.

Grain

Following the ideas from the phenomenal tutorial by Petteri Sulonen on Digital Black and White, he speaks a bit about grain in B&W images. There are a few different synthetic methods of adding grain to an image, but visually I have also never really been impressed with the results too much.

Petteri was kind enough to make available a grain-field that he processed himself from scanned film. You can apply this as an overlay layer on your image, and adjust opacity to suit. I personally agree with him about grain lending a “structure” to a final image, but it’s up to you if you want to include it.

Here is a 100% crop of the image above with the grain field laid over it in Overlay blend mode at 100% opacity:

Petteri's grain field applied (mouseover to compare without)

You can download the full-size png of Petteri’s grain field from here:

Download the original size file here

In Summary

I could keep doing this all day long, but I’ll stop here. I think there’s enough information here to begin experimenting and finding a workflow that works well for you. This is an important point - I’m just showing you the methods I’ve found for conversion, it’s up to you to take that info and to make it your own!

The End

Holy crap. That was a seriously long inspection of B&W grayscale conversion in GIMP! We’ve come a long way since November 14, 2012, when I started writing these. In my head, I honestly believed I could get the entire topic covered in a couple of weeks (as opposed to almost 3 months!).

If you’ve followed me all the way through these, I feel like I should send you a merit-badge for patience and perseverance! This final installment puts me at just shy of 10,000 words on B&W conversion alone.

I hope in the end that anyone reading this has gotten some useful information somewhere.

← Part 4 (c2g, Pseudogrey, Layers)

Focus Stacking Macro Photos (Enfuse)

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:08:00 -0600

I recently got a new camera to update my aging (gracefully!) Olympus E-P1. Deciding to stay with the µ⁴⁄_3^rds (or µ43^rds, or micro four-thirds - I just wanted to play with some HTML entity codes), I found a really tasty new Olympus OM-D E-M5 waiting for me for Christmas! In deciding which kit lens to go ahead and get with it, the Olympus M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 12-50mm F3.5-6.3 EZ was a no brainer. Water-resistant (to match the camera), and a neat macro function!

This article is about focus stacking, for exposure blending, see here: Automatic Exposure Blending with Enfuse (HDR-ish)

Well, I couldn’t help but snap a couple of macro shots of my trusty Warhammer 40k Space Marine to play with this newfangled lens.

The problem, if you haven’t done macro photography before, is that the depth of field will become razor-thin. You can alleviate it a bit by closing down the aperture a bit, but at some point you’ll hit diffraction limits (and reduced sharpness).

Focus Stacking

So, what if you want a deeper depth of field in your shots? Well, there’s a neat technique called “Focus Stacking” where you will take multiple images, with the only thing that varies between them is the focal point. Look again at the lead image, and specifically notice how the focus plane shifts along the length of the gun body.

Basically, compose and capture an image with the focus at one point, then focus a little further into your image, repeat as often as needed to have the range you want all in focus.

Focus stepping across my subject.

The problem, of course, is that you now have multiple images, all with different focus planes. How can you combine them all into one image where the different in-focus areas are all combined?

Well, we’re going to use the open source Enfuse to do this dirty work for us. First, though, we need to make sure the images are properly aligned first…

Hugin Align Images

Well, Enfuse will work best if the images that are going to be combined are all as perfectly aligned as possible. To do this, we’re going to use align_image_stack from Hugin.

Hugin is a really useful tool to have installed if you haven’t already. To follow along with any of this, you’ll need to install it anyway - so go do that now. Once installed, you can invoke the align_image_stack script from the bin/ directory of wherever you installed Hugin. It will look something like this (on Windows at the moment, so this is what the Windows command will look like on my machine):

C:\Program Files\Hugin\bin\align_image_stack -m -a OUT FILE1 FILE2 FILE3

Don’t Panic. To follow along, basically, put all of your focus stacked images into a single directory. Open a command prompt, and navigate to that directory.

Assuming your Hugin installed in the same place as mine, you can run the command as I show above. The -m switch will optimize the field of view for all images except the first. The -a OUT will prefix all the output files as OUT…tif, and FILE1 FILE2 etc… are the names of each of your focus stacked images you are starting with.

When it’s done, you’ll have a few new images in your directory named OUT000#.tif. These are your newly aligned output images, and will be what we work with from here on out.

Enter Enfuse

At this point you’ve got your images aligned perfectly (hopefully), and now all that is left is to mask each image so only the sharpest, in-focus portions show through. This is exactly what we are going to get Enfuse to do for us.

Enfuse can be run from the command line (the same bin/ directory where align_image_stacks was located) as part of a Hugin installation, or there is a GUI called EnfuseGUI that will expose all the options along with fast previews.

The EnfuseGUI interface.

I’ll cover both here just to be thorough.

From the manual for Enfuse, there is a section that specifically addresses focus stacking. In particular, they refer to a bare-bones call for Enfuse to stack the images:

enfuse \
    --exposure-weight=0 \
    --saturation-weight=0 \
    --contrast-weight=1 \
    --hard-mask \
    ... \
    --output=output.tif \
    input-<0000-9999>.tif

The same options entered in EnfuseGUI are located at “Fusion options”:

Base focus stacking parameters in EnfuseGUI.

Exposure and Saturation weighting should be set to 0, while Contrast weighting should be set to 1 and Force hard blend masks should be checked. These options will not be changed as you dial in your focus stacking parameters.

You can actually go ahead and run it at this point to see what your output will look like. It should run reasonably quick, and you can investigate the results. The nice thing about EnfuseGUI is that you can generate a fast preview of the results using the Preview button instead of a full run (this is very useful while you tweak parameters to see what type of effect they’ll have).

EnfuseGUI preview of base focus stacking parameters.

If you’re happy with these results, then stop here. That’s it! Quick, relatively painless, and you’re happy with the results. Go have a beer! (Seriously, many people will be fine with these results, and don’t have to head any further).

If you’re curious whats happening behind-the-scenes, you can pass the option:–save-masksto have Enfuse save each of the masks that it creates. Below, for example, are the masks that were generated for the above image. You can clearly see the in-focus plane in white in these masks:

Masks generated by Enfuse (white areas in-focus).

Enfuse Expert Options

If you’re still here, I am going to assume that you are less than satisfied with the results.

If you pay careful attention to high-contrast edges in your image, you may notice some faint “ghosting” on either side. On the dark side of a high contrast edge, you may notice a faint, light seam, and vice-versa on the light side. There may also be some slight “smearing” in areas that obscure some details.

One of the options that I find to produce slightly better results are to use the L* channel of LAB colorspace as the grayscale projector to Enfuse (don’t worry about the technical stuff - basically use the L* channel in LAB to create the masks as opposed to averaging).

Using L* from LAB to create masks

If you notice some haloing effects around high contrast edges, you can mitigate them a bit by increasing the size of the box Enfuse uses to evaluate contrast detection. The option to adjust this box size is: –contrast-window-size=XWhere X ≥ 3. The documentation points out that values larger than 5 might produce blurry images, but I would experiment with values all the way up to 9 to see how it effects your final output.

There is another good option to tweak your final output, and that is to enable the Laplacian Edge Detection algorithm. Laplacian Edge Detection can be enabled by passing a positive value to: –contrast-edge-scale=XWhere X typically ranges between 0.1 - 0.5 (pixels), and 0.3 is suggested as a good starting point.

Unfortunately, due to a bug in EnfuseGUI, the GUI won’t accept values that are commonly used for the correct parameter. The GUI only accepts integer values, with no way to pass a decimal value (0.3 for instance).

No problem! We can just switch gears here at this point and fall back to the trusty command line. So at this point, besides the base parameters, I am going to add in contrast-edge-scale to enable the Laplacian Edge Detection algorithm:

enfuse \
    --exposure-weight=0 \
    --saturation-weight=0 \
    --contrast-weight=1 \
    --hard-mask \
    <span style="color:#00FF00;">--gray-projector=l-star \</span>
    <span style="color:#00FF00;">--contrast-edge-scale=0.3 \</span>
    --output=output.tif \
    input-<0000-9999>.tif

You can compare the results of adding in the l-star option and using the Laplacian edge detection at 0.3 pixels below:

Base stacking parameters detail (mouseover for contrast-edge-scale=0.3)

In Summary

Whew! That was a lot of information. Let me summarize the steps here. Assuming you have all of your stack images in the same directory:

Use Hugin's align_image_stack to make sure all of your images are perfectly aligned.align_image_stack -m -a OUT FILE1 FILE2 FILE3
Try Enfuse with the base focus stacking parameters to see if you are happy with the results.enfuse --exposure-weight=0 --saturation-weight=0 --contrast-weight=1 --hard-mask --output=base.tif OUT*.tif
You can also try a different type of grayscale conversion, I've found the L* channel from LAB to be pretty good overall ( --gray-projector=l-star ).enfuse --exposure-weight=0 --saturation-weight=0 --contrast-weight=1 --hard-mask --gray-projector=l-star --output=base.tif OUT*.tif
If there are halos around high contrast edges, you can try increasing the contrast-window-size a bit. ( --contrast-window-size=5 ).enfuse --exposure-weight=0 --saturation-weight=0 --contrast-weight=1 --hard-mask --contrast-window-size=5 --output=base.tif OUT*.tif
If details are smeared, try using Laplacian Edge Detection instead. (Adding --contrast-edge-scale=0.3 to the base command), and possibly removing --contrast-window-size.enfuse --exposure-weight=0 --saturation-weight=0 --contrast-weight=1 --hard-mask --contrast-edge-scale=0.3 --output=base.tif OUT*.tifModify the value between 0.1 and 0.5 to see which result is best for you.

Thoughts

If you want a truly sharp macro shot with a large, smooth depth of field, you’ll be taking a lot of photos. Seriously. I’ve seen 100+ images used for a single macro shot. Look at these:

Red eyes by Gilles San Martin, on Flickr. 52 image stack.

Xylotrechus arvicola by Gilles San Martin, on Flickr. 55 image stack.

Try keeping an overlap between each of your shots. It’ll avoid any seams in the final result. Remember, Garbage in - Garbage out.

The documentation offers a good tip as well - if the in-focus to out-of-focus transition is too sharp, try taking another image at the transition area with a larger aperture to allow a smoother, more natural falloff to occur.

Thats it! Hopefully this will be helpful to somebody, somewhere! If you found this walkthrough helpful in any way, please feel free to share it with others

Some References

The Enfuse documentation (section on Focus Stacking)
How to obtain a greater depth of field in macro photography - EDU PÉREZ (Internet Archive)
EnfuseGUI

Getting Around in GIMP - Black and White Conversion (Part 4)

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:04:00 -0600

The first part of this tutorial looked at GIMP desaturate to convert to grayscale, the second part investigated using the Channel Mixer to decompose to grayscale with varying contributions from red, green, and blue, and the third part looked at decomposing an image into its constituent color channels in various modes.

This part of the tutorial will focus on a couple of semi-automated methods for converting to black and white, as well as utilizing GIMP layer blending modes.

The rest of the tutorials in this series are here:

Pseudogrey

I had previously written about achieving True Pseudogrey in GIMP, including writing a quick script-fu to automate the process.

The basic approach in Pseudogrey is that you can achieve a much higher density of tones converting to B&W by allowing single pixels to stray just a tiny bit away from pure gray (basically add an imperceptible amount of red, green, or blue in order to provide a finer gradation of luminosity values). I refer you to the original post for the full technical explanation.

The results from using Pseudogrey will follow the same model as for Luminosity desaturation, but will produce a larger range of luminosity tones (1786 possible shades vs. 256).

There are a couple of ways to convert your images to pseudogrey. You can use the script-fu I wrote previously by downloading it from one of the places below:

You can download the Script-Fu for Pseudogrey here:

Pseudogrey on GIMP Registry

or you can get it here:

Pseudogrey on Google Drive

Alternatively, if you’ve installed G’MIC (which you really, really should do), then you’ll find it under the Black & white options. There will be an option for Pseudo-gray dithering at different levels.

If set to 1, it should yield the same type of result as my script-fu (technically, G’MIC pseudogrey dithering should be more accurate, though). Higher levels will allow stronger color casts to be applied to each pixel to increase the luminosity range even further.

GIMP desaturate (L) vs. Pseudogrey Level 1 (R). Notice the banding is mostly gone.

Pseudogrey is especially helpful in areas with very slight tonal value changes, as this is often where banding will become visible in an 8-bit image. In the example above, the left image shows banding that is mostly eliminated with just a single pseudogrey level on the right.

Sometimes the converted image will look good to you just as it is, but more often than not I will use a Pseudogrey conversion as a base layer under further manipulations. I’ll just adjust the opacity of the layers above it to allow a bit of the Pseudogrey layer to show through (or a lot, depending on my mood/taste).

GEGL C2G

The Generic Graphics Library (GEGL) is the underlying graphics engine for GIMP going forward. There is one neat function in GEGL specifically for B&W conversions, and that is Color2Grayscale (c2g). It can be called from the Tools menu in GIMP:

Tools → GEGL Operation...

In episode 84 of Meet the GIMP, Rolf covers c2g briefly. Paul Bou also looks at using c2g for B&W conversions in a little more detail, and Joel Cornuz also asks if c2g could be the “ultimate” B&W converter.

I don’t know if c2g is worth all of the hyperbole, but it does some very neat things.

What c2g will do is consider each pixel relative to it’s neighbors within a given radius, and will adjust the value of the pixel to a gray. This gray value is evaluated as a function of perceived luminance weighted against it’s neighbors.

The actual description of what c2g does from GEGL.org is:

Color to grayscale conversion, uses envelopes formed from spatial color differences to perform color-feature preserving grayscale spatial contrast enhancement.

In practice, what c2g will do is attempt to scale the values of pixels in it’s neighborhood (radius) to contain black, white, and gray tones between. This will lead to a much more contrasty image than you started with.

What some people love about c2g is that it will also introduce a nice range of “grain” during it’s conversion. If you don’t care for this noise/grain, then it can be ameliorated by adjusting settings.

Straight desaturation in GIMP (luminosity).

At first glance, GEGL c2g is ugly. The default settings are not conducive to producing a pretty image. Have a look:

c2g conversion, default settings (radius 300, samples 4, iterations 10).

These default settings will (usually) produce a nasty halo effect on edges where the radius is not large enough to fully consider transitions. Look at the edges of the trees/buildings against the sky to see what I mean. There is also (to my taste) and excessive amount of synthetic graininess to the result.

If you’ve got some time (seriously, the conversion is very slow) you can achieve better results by tweaking the parameters.

You can decrease halo effects by increasing the radius over which the algorithm looks at colors. You can decrease graininess by increasing the samples a bit, or by increasing iterations as well. Iterations seem to have a larger effect on overall noisiness in the results, but at the cost of a longer processing time.

Better results after increasing some parameters (radius 750, samples 8, iterations 15).

This looks better. Increasing the radius helps to alleviate some of the halos, and will allow the algorithm to spread out the contrast over a larger area. The increase in samples and iterations also helped to keep the noise down to a more manageable level. At this level, some may prefer to keep the noise as a sort of “digital grain” in their image.

If you are willing to wait a bit more, you can refine the results even further:

Something I might use! (radius 1500, samples 8, iterations 20).

At this point, the noise is nicely suppressed while the halos have mostly been eliminated. The overall image is still has more contrast than a straight luminosity desaturation, but it’s contrast that has been weighted for the surrounding pixels as well.

Basically, if a luminosity desaturation will choose a pixel value based on a color brightness approximation to your eye, c2g will choose the pixel value based on the value of surrounding pixels.

Perhaps you are familiar with this optical illusion showing the effect on perceived luminosity relative to nearby brightness?

Square A and B are the same shade of grey!

Squares A & B are the same exact shade of grey (open the image in GIMP and check for yourself if you don’t believe me. :) ). The reason we perceive B as lighter than A is due to the way our eyes are perceiving nearby colors (and our expectations that are strengthened by the checkerboard pattern).

Running this image through c2g will align the pixel values closer with what our eye might expect to see:

After letting c2g do it’s thing.

After running through c2g, if you check the value average over a few pixels in the squares, you’ll now see that the values have been shifted so that, in fact, square B will be lighter than square A (also the overall contrast has been increased as well).

In short, c2g can be very handy for bringing out micro-contrasts in an image (or increasing global contrast at large radius settings). I rarely use c2g by itself anymore these days, and instead use the results to further refine my images if I feel I want more contrast in some areas (along with a layer mask).

Layer Blending Modes

I’m a little hesitant to cover this particular area of conversion, only because it is not one that I use normally in my workflow. Occasionally I will try this method out, but then usually revert to layering other layers with different results and masking as desired.

The best thing about an approach like this is that you can get instantaneous feedback on the results in your image directly on the canvas.

The basic idea is to use one of GIMPs layer blending modes to convert the image to grayscale, and then to modify an underlying color version of the image to adjust tones.

There’s a few different ways to approach this:

Value

Open your image. Add an all black/white layer underneath it. Set the original (color) image to layer blend mode Value.

This will use the Value of your color layer, but the hue and saturation will be from the layer beneath it (all black/white). Basically, remove Hue/Saturation from your image, and only show its Value.

Now, you can adjust the colors of the original color layer, and effect what the final Value will be. You can adjust any of the color channel contributions like normal, and you’ll be presented with an immediate view on your canvas of what the results will look like. You can use Levels, Curves, or Hue/Saturation/Lightness to make the adjustments. (Really any method that you like that will adjust the colors of the image).

Saturation

In this method, you’ll add a black (or white) layer above your base color layer, and set the layer mode of the black/white layer to Saturation.

This will use the Saturation of the upper layer, and the Hue/Value from the lower (color) layer.

As before, you can now proceed to adjust the colors of the color layer to taste, and you will see the results of your modifications directly on your canvas.

Color

This is similar to the Saturation approach above, but in this case you’ll set the black/white layer to layer mode Color.

This will use the Color from the black/white layer, and the Hue/Saturation from the layer below it (color).

Now adjust colors of the color layer to taste.

Amelia Bellamy-Royds notes in this Flickr thread that the Color option appears to only operate on the Red channel, but I haven’t fully tested this yet to see what is going on.

Hue/Saturation

You can also achieve similar results directly from a color layer by invoking the Hue/Saturation dialog.

Just set the Master saturation to 0, then you can adjust each of the RGB/CMY channels separately to modify the results (and still get live updates in your canvas on screen).

Play With It

The key to the layer blending modes (and Hue/Sat adjustments) is to experiment a bit to get accustomed to what your changes are affecting. Start with single channel adjustments and a goal in mind. If you want to darken up the blues in the sky, play with that channel a bit in one of these blending modes and see how it affects things.

You’ll have a similar level of control that you would achieve with using Channel Mixer, but with the added benefit of having a full-canvas preview of the effect (as opposed to the small preview window in Channel Mixer).

Nearing the End

I think I’m running out of gas here, but the good news is that the end of the tunnel is in sight (or a train is speeding my way). Either way, the end is near (the next time I attempt tackling a subject like this, please remind me about publishing this series…). If you’ve followed me this far, you deserve a medal, or a certificate or something!

Stay Tuned

In the last installment in this series, I’ll have a look at combining everything we’ve seen so far, and to look at ways to blend them together. This is more often my general workflow these days.

← Part 3 (Decompose) Part 5 (The End) →

(Abandoned) Splendid China Florida

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:53:00 -0600

I was fortunate enough on a recent family trip to stay in a vacation home in Kissimmee, FL for a week. We had passes to Disney, and made good use of them. With kids, though, late nights were not going to be possible.

Luckily for me, on the drive to the house itself, there was a rather large property off the road that was surrounded by a wall that was just barely containing some wild overgrowth. Obviously an abandoned property, it piqued my interest enough to have me take a quick gander at Google maps to see what lay beyond the wall.

Imagine my surprise when I realized that just a few blocks from where I was staying was the rotting carcass of the Splendid China theme park!

The Splendid China themepark map.

This was too good of an opportunity to pass up (I am drawn to shooting abandoned places, but lack a good selection to choose from where I live). Some of my favorite photography is from abandoned places (thank you Opacity.us!), so I had to give it a try.

Splendid China - Potala Palace by Pat David on Flickr.

It was about 8:30 PM before I finally made it inside, and found myself on the back side of the Potala Palace (seen above). It was cold (around 40° F), and I was lucky enough to have a full moon to light my way. The area is not fully developed around the park, so it was extra quiet and still in the night.

The paths were still relatively clear of undergrowth, but I still had to be careful when walking around (there were some small “lakes” and other water features scattered around, so keeping to the path seemed like a good idea).

Monument by Pat David on Flickr.

The monument above actually had a small moat surrounding it (just past the underbrush in the foreground). I had a chance to stroll through the paths in the bright moonlight, and I had a particular destination I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss. The Imperial Palace/Forbidden City!

Meridian Gate - Forbidden City by Pat David on Flickr.

Everything in the park is ¹ ⁄ _10^th scale, and was handbuilt by artisans imported from China for the job. What’s amazing is that in some of these photos you can clearly see that the roof tiles, for instance, were all tiny, individual, actual tiles scaled down! The craftsmanship was truly remarkable here.

Meridian Gate detail - Forbidden City by Pat David on Flickr.

Despite the best efforts of vandals, the buildings were in remarkably good shape. There was some graffiti, and some vanadalism to the structures, but overall they seem to have held up well after almost a decade of neglect!

Hall of Supreme Harmony - Forbidden City by Pat David on Flickr.

To put the scale in perspective, look at the image below. You’ll find a standard electrical outlet box on the ground to the right of the staircase.

Hall of Supreme Harmony - Forbidden City by Pat David on Flickr.

Forbidden City by Pat David on Flickr.

Overall it was a fantastic evening spent strolling through the grounds of this abandoned park. I stayed mostly to the edges and back parts of the property as I didn’t want to alert anyone to my presence. I also tried to stay as respectful as possible and to not damage anything. Just being there and able to shoot some photographs was more than enough for me.

I’ll leave you with a few more images. Feel free to check out the rest of the set on Flickr!

Splendid China - Wooden Pagoda by Pat David on Flickr.

Splendid China - White Pagoda by Pat David on Flickr.

The white pagoda had a lot of graffiti on it, and the trees mostly obscured it from view.

The Great Wall by Pat David on Flickr.

The top portion of the Great Wall was actually built from millions (no exaggeration) of tiny, scaled down bricks!

Splendid China - Pagoda by Pat David on Flickr.

Most of these images were shot in the 30+ second range for exposure, and I still under-exposed by a stop or two! What this tells me is that I need faster lenses…

Getting Around in GIMP - Black and White Conversion (Part 3)

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 14:57:00 -0600

In the first part of this tutorial we had a look at using the Desaturate command to convert images to grayscale. The second part of this tutorial examined the use of Channel Mixer to adjust the contributions of each Red, Green, and Blue channel to the final grayscale result. This part of the tutorial will focus on decomposing the entire image to its component parts for (possibly) further manipulations.

The rest of the tutorials in this series are here:

To get a good grasp of what we are about to do, it helps to remember the very first part of this tutorial when we looked at what goes into producing a color pixel on your screen (you remember the R, G, B sub-pixels, right?).

I've also written a small Script-Fu helper script to decompose an image layer to all the different color mode decompositions I'm listing here. Find it at the end of the page!

Decomposing Colors

Previously, in the Channel Mixer we saw that we can adjust the contribution of each of the RGB channels to our final grayscale conversion. From that post, you should have seen that you can isolate a specific channel by setting its value to 100, and leaving the others at 0.

Chad White by Ryan Abel on Flickr (CC-BY)

If you wanted each of the RGB channel contributions isolated into its own layer, it would be tedious to do it manually for each channel. Luckily for us, GIMP has a built in command to automatically Decompose your image into different channels:

Colors → Components → Decompose...

This command will let you decompose your image into each of its constituent channels.

The Decompose dialog.

The options you have to choose from include the Color model to decompose to, and whether to create a new image with the decomposed channels on layers. If you don’t check Decompose to layers you’ll end up with a new image for each channel (chances are you’ll want to start out leaving this checked).

The most important option is which Color model you’ll want to decompose to. Up to now we’ve mostly been focusing on RGB, but there are other modes that might be handy as well. Briefly, the modes most useful might be:

RGB(A)

This is the Color mode that we’ve been focusing on mostly up to now, and is usually the most helpful in terms of having multiple sources to draw from. This will separate out Red, Green, and Blue Channels into layers for you (and Alpha if your image has it).

RGB decomposed (in order): Red, Green, and Blue

HSV/HSL

Hue, Saturation, and Value/Lightness is another useful decomposition, though usually only for the Value or Lightness for our purposes.

Hue, Saturation, Value (HSV) Channels

The Value in HSV is derived according to the formula:

Value, V = MAX(R,G,B)

Which is basically just the largest value of R,G, or B.

Hue, Saturation, Lightness (HSL) Channels

The Lightness in HSL is derived according to this formula:

Lightness, L = ^{[ MAX(R,G,B) + MIN(R,G,B) ]} ⁄ ₂

Lightness is really just the average of the largest and smallest component of RGB.

While Hue and Saturation may seem interesting, it should be fairly obvious that the channels most useful for what we want to do would likely be Value or Lightness. Overall Lightness will tend to be a bit brighter than Value.

LAB

There is far too much information concerning the LAB colorspace to really go into much detail here. Suffice it to say that the L in LAB is for Lightness, while A and B are for color opponents (A = Green↔Red, B=Blue↔Yellow).

When I get out of the B&W world later, there are some neat tricks you can do in LAB colorspace for adjusting the color toning of your images I’ll try to cover.

The LAB colorspace is based on a perceptual model (similar to the relative luminance from the last post). In fact, the Lightness in LAB is calculated using the cube root of the luminance from that function.

LAB Channels

As you can see, the only channel of any use for our B&W conversion is really the Lightness, L channel.

CMY(K)

Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and (K, Black) is often discussed in terms of printing, but can be useful in digital manipulations as well. In particular, the CMY conversion will produce three channels of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. When you do the decomposition in GIMP, you’ll need to invert the channel colors to really inspect what they produce (Colors → Invert).

CMY conversion (inverted from direct conversion)

CMYK produces a similar result, but adds another channel to control the level of black in the result. As with the CMY decomposition, you’ll need to invert the Black, K channel.

CMYK conversion, with the Black, K channel inverted.

YCbCr

Anyone who does video processing might recognize this colorspace representation, as it shows up often in digital video. YCbCr is a means for encoding the RGB colorspace, and produces three channels, a Luma, Y and two channels of Red (Cr) and Blue (Cb) chroma differences.

YCbCr (ITU R470 256) decomposition.

If you use this decomposition, try to use the 256 variants of the ITU recommendations to allow the decomposition to utilize the full 256 values available (the non-256 versions will pad 16 to the range - only allowing values to go from 16-240).

So Now What?

Having looked at this, let’s summarize some of the most useful Colors → Components → Decompose results:

RGB - All
HSV/HSL - V(Value) and L(Lightness)
LAB - L
CMY - All
CMYK - K
YCbCr - Y(Luma)

This gives us a total of 12 different types of color mode conversions that may be useful to us in generating a B&W image. It helps to visually be able to see all of the options at once to get a better feel for what is going on:

Chances are that one of these conversions might prove useful to you as a direct B&W conversion. If so - perfect!

Personally I am gravitating towards the Red channel, or the Cyan channel if I had to choose one. I like having the texture and tones of the shirt be a little darker to differentiate it from the pants. This is a very subjective call, of course. :)

It helps to notice that the first 6 conversions above are all color channels (RGB and CMY). This means that they will vary from image to image depending on dominant colors.

The last 6 conversions are all brightness values based on different functions for achieving the result (blacK, Value, Lightness, L, Y (luma)).

Looking Forward

Chances are better that some parts of some conversions will be useful. I personally am rarely satisfied with any of the straight conversion options on their own, but would like to pick and choose which parts of the image contain the best detail and tones from different conversion options (this includes any of the procedures we’ve seen up to now, by the way). Then I combine them as needed to fill out the tonal details in my final result.

Combining these methods that we’ve seen so far is the basis for the last part of this tutorial, so stay tuned!

The Script

While writing this post, I had to decompose our base image into each of the different channels to create images. It was tedious, having to choose each color model manually, and decomposing to another image with layers.

So I wrote a script to automate this process for me. It will basically take the active layer in an image, and decompose it to each of the useful color channels listed above, each as its own layer. (It will also invert some of the layers that need it).

Once you’ve placed it in your Scripts folder, the command can be found here:

Colors → Color Decompose…

You can find your Scripts folder by going to: Edit → Preferences
Then from the Preferences dialog, down to:
Folders → Scripts

You can download the Script-Fu for Color Decompose here:

Color Decompose on GIMP Registry

or you can download it here:

Stay Tuned

We’ve got Pseudogrey and Layer Modes coming up for other options to get you to your perfect B&W conversion! A little later we’ll see how to combine all the results we’ve seen so far into our final image for manipulation.

← Part 2 (Channel Mixer)Part 4 (Layers/c2g) →

Getting Around in GIMP - Black and White Conversion (Part 2)

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:41:00 -0600

In the first part of this tutorial we had a look at using the Desaturate command to convert images to grayscale, and how the different options in that command work to produce their results.

The rest of the tutorials in this series are here:

We saw how the Desaturate command can use straight numerical evaluations for conversion (Lightness and Average) as well as using the relative luminosity model for how our eyes will perceive brightness based on color.

These are fantastic and easy to use conversion options that require no extra work on your part to get to a grayscale image. Almost every other option from here on out will require you to make choices and adjustments to get your results.

This time around we are going to have a look at another very widely used method for converting to grayscale, the Channel Mixer.

Channel Mixer

Using Desaturate let you convert to grayscale based on pre-defined functions for calculating the final value, but what if you wanted even further control? What if you wanted to decide just how much the red channel should influence the final gray value, or to have more control over the ratios and weightings of each of the different channels independently? That is precisely what the Channel Mixer will allow you to do.

For the examples below, I’m going to mix it up with a different color gradient test map, blue to blue HSV gradient, with a gradient to black vertically. This represents our entire colorspace (feel free to download this image to follow along).

Gradient representing all colors and shades in our colorspace. To compare using Desaturate: Original - Lightness - Average - Luminosity

So let’s have a look. The Channel Mixer can be invoked from:

Colors → Components → Channel Mixer…

When it opens you’ll be presented with the main window:

Now, you can use the Channel Mixer in your full color mode if you’d like, but I’m not going to go into that here. We want to get a grayscale conversion, so you can check the option for Monochrome (this will grey out the Output channel option in the dialog). This will turn your preview into a grayscale image.

I’ll come back to the Preserve Luminosity option shortly.

Warning: Math Ahead

If all you did was check the Monochrome option, and if you left the Red channel slider at 100, then you’ll be seeing a representation of your image with no Green or Blue contribution (ie: you’ll basically be seeing the Red channel for your image):

Basically just the Red Channel

What this means is that with Green and Blue set to 0, it will look at the value of the Red in your pixel, and map it directly to a grayscale value. If your pixel RGB values were: 200, 150, 100, then the Value for the pixel would become 200, 200, 200.

The sliders represent a percent contribution to the final value .

For instance, if you set the Red and Green channels to 50(%), you should see something like this:

Red at 50%, Green at 50%, Blue at 0%

In this case, Red and Green will contribute 50% of their values (and nothing from Blue) to the final pixel gray value. Considering the same pixel from above: 200, 150, 100, we would get:

(200 × 0.50) + (150 × 0.50) + (100 × 0) (100) + (75) + (0) = 175

So the final grayscale pixel value would be set to: 175, 175, 175.

Preserve Luminosity

‘These go up to 11.’ - Nigel Tufnel

The astute will notice that the sliders actually have a range from -200 to 200. So you may be asking - what happens if two channels contribute more than what is possible to show?

For instance, what if both the Red and Green channels were set to contribute 100%?

(200 × 1.00) + (150 × 1.00) + (100 × 0) = 350

Well, Channel Mixer will allow us to set these values, but we can’t very well set the grayscale pixel value to be 350. So anything above 255 will simply end up being clipped to 255 (effectively throwing away any tones above 255 - bad!).

This means that you have to be careful to make sure that each of the three channels contributions don’t exceed 100 between all of them. 50% Red, 50% Green is ok - but 50% Red, 50% Green, AND 50% Blue (150%) will clip your data!

This is where the Preserve Luminosity option comes into play. This option will scale your final values so the effective result will always add up to 100%. So, the scale factor from above would be calculated as:

¹⁄_{(1.00 + 1.00 + 0)} = 0.5

So in our case above, the 350 would be scaled in half (0.5), giving the actual final value as 175. If Preserve Luminosity is checked, all the values will be scaled by this amount. (No clipping = good).

This is not to say that you need to always use Preserve Luminosity, just stay aware of the possible effects if you don’t.

Speaking of Luminosity

You’ll notice that Channel Mixer basically gives you control over each channels weightings, and in the previous post I showed the function used for desaturating according to relative luminance. If you wanted to replicate the same results that Desaturate → Luminosity produce, you can just set the RGB sliders to the same values from that function (21.3, 71.5, 7.2).

Replicating the luminosity function.

If you’re just getting started with Channel Mixer, this makes a pretty nice starting point for you to begin fiddling.

Begin Fiddling

It’s tough to find representative images to demonstrate using Channel Mixer, but I managed to find a very pretty landscape by Cyndi Calhoun on Flickr called Garden of the Gods - Looking North (cc-by):

Garden of the Gods - Looking North

If possible, you’ll want to keep in mind the primary RGB influences in different portions of your image as a means for approaching your adjustments. For instance, this image (not coincidentally) happens to have strong Red features (the rocks), Blue features (the sky), and Green features (the trees).

I am going to want to try to keep any of the individual channels from getting so bright you lose detail (blowouts), or from crushing shadows too much. Remember, you want to try and keep as much tonal detail as possible!

So I’ll use the luminosity function as a starting point…

Straight conversion using the luminosity function.

It’s not a bad start at all, but I feel like the prominence of the red rocks in the sunlight has been dulled quite a bit. It’s a central feature of the image, and should really draw the eye towards it. So we need more pronounced reds to make the stone pop a little bit more.

I’ll turn on Preserve Luminosity, and begin bumping the Red channel to taste.

Red channel bumped up to 66.1

This gives a little more prominence to the red stone, I think.

The Green channel feels like it might be ok to me, but for comparison, try lowering it to about half of the Red channel value. (Remember - Preserve Luminosity is checked - so the final values will scale to give Red values twice the weight as Green now).

Green channel value at ~half of Red.

If you’re wondering why the red rocks got brighter, consider the math. Previously, Red and Green were very near each other in value (around 70), so both colors had approximately equal weight (There was more red than green in the rocks, obviously). When Green got its influence cut in half, red scaled to take a much larger influence, and because there was more red than green, the final value will end up higher.

So, if we look at the RGB values of the rock, we’ll find that it’s roughly like this (we’re ignoring Blue at the moment because for this example it’s staying constant):

226, 127

If both Red and Green have equal weighting, the final pixel value will be:

(226 × 0.5) + (127 × 0.5) = 176.5

Now if Green is only half as strong as Red, the value will be:

^{((226 × 0.5) + (127 × 0.25))} ⁄ _{(0.5 + 0.25)} = 193

I had to divide the result by the influence amount to scale the way Preserve Luminosity would. You can see that the final pixel value will become brighter in this case. This is why the red rocks get brighter when you decrease the Green channel.

It should go without saying, but the Blue channel will have a lot of influence on the sky (and many areas of the image in shadow). So if we wanted the sky to look a little more dramatic, we could remove the Blue channel influence by setting it to 0:

Same as before, but Blue channel set to 0

This will darken the sky up a bit (as well as some shadow areas).

You’ll need to pay attention to what these changes do to your image in closer views sometimes, though. In our case, there is a higher amount of banding and noise in the smooth sky if values get pushed to extremes. So try to approach this with a light hand if possible.

The sliders also allow negative values. This will seriously crush the channel results when applied (and will quickly lead to funky results if you’re not careful). For example, to push the Blue channel even darker in the final result, I’ve set the Blue channel to -20 here:

Red: 66.1, Green: 33, Blue: -20

The sky has become much darker, as have the shadow sides of the rocks. There is an overall increase in contrast here as well, but at the expense of nasty noise and banding artifacts - especially in the sky.

Rules of Thumb
Generally, the Red channel is well suited for contrast (especially in the brighter tones). The Green channel will hold most of the details, and the Blue channel contains grain and (usually) a lot of noise.
In skin, the Red channel is very flattering to the final result, and you’ll often get great results by emphasizing the Red channel in portraits.

On Skin

The Red channel can be very flattering on skin, and is a great tool to keep in mind when producing portraits. For instance, below is the color image of Whitney from the first part of this tutorial:

Whitney in color.

The straight luminosity conversion is below. Mouseover the image to compare it to one where the Red channel is set equal to the Green channel (giving greater emphasis on Reds):

Whitney in Luminosity (mouseover to see Red channel = Green channel).

B&W Film Simulation

Due to the popularity of the Channel Mixer as a straightforward means of conversion with nice control over each of the RGB channel contributions, many people have used it as a basis for building profiles of what they felt was a close emulation to classic black and white films.

I’ve borrowed the table from Petteri Sulonen’s site that shows some commonly used RGB Channel Mixer values to emulate B&W films. These aren’t exact, of course, but some of you may find them useful, so I wanted to include them here.

Agfa 200X	18,41,41
Agfapan 25	25,39,36
Agfapan 100	21,40,39
Agfapan 400	20,41,39
Ilford Delta 100	21,42,37
Ilford Delta 400	22,42,36
Ilford Delta 400 Pro & 3200	31,36,33
Ilford FP4	28,41,31
Ilford HP5	23,37,40
Ilford Pan F	33,36,31
Ilford SFX	36,31,33
Ilford XP2 Super	21,42,37
Kodak Tmax 100	24,37,39
Kodak Tmax 400	27,36,37
Kodak Tri-X	25,35,40

Bonus!

I’ve written and added a Script-Fu to registry.gimp.org that will automatically create new layers for each type of film emulation in the table above, with the proper channel mixer settings. You can also choose to create a “contact sheet” of the converted layers for comparison instead.

Download the B&W Channel Mixer Script-Fu at the registry!

In Summary

There’s a good reason that the Channel Mixer is such a popular means for converting an image to grayscale. It’s flexible, and allows a great level of control over the contributions from each channel that makes up your final image.

Unfortunately, the only way to preview what you are doing is in the tiny dialog window. Even with zooming it can sometimes be frustrating to make fine adjustments to the channel contributions.

I encourage you to give it a try on some of your own photos to see the effects that are produced by emphasizing some channels over others. This will become important later as we look at using entire decomposed channels of data, and ways to blend and mix them to produce our final result.

Stay Tuned

In a few days I’ll be back again to have a look at a slightly more intensive way of approaching your grayscale conversions: Decomposition (RGB, LAB, etc).

Part 3 will show how we can decompose an image and use the different channel layers to build up to a grayscale image! It’s a slightly more intensive process, but the level of control is fantastic and beyond anything we’ve talked about so far.

← Part 1 (Desaturate) Part 3 (Decompose) →

Getting Around in GIMP - Black and White Conversion (Part 1)

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 11:10:00 -0600

This is a long topic, so to keep you from wanting to put your eyes out with a spoon, I’ve tried to break things up a bit. In this first part, I’ll look at using the GIMP Desaturate command to reduce your images to grayscale and to hopefully shed some light on just how the options calculate exactly what level of gray each pixel should be.

The rest of the tutorials in this series are here:

What We’re Trying to Achieve

B&W photography deserves a much longer look than I can afford to bore you with here. However, there are a few things I would like to focus on in regards to preparing your images for B&W.

What you want to keep in mind is that by removing the color information you have effectively left yourself with only tonal data (and composition) to convey your intentions.

This can be both liberating, and confining.

By liberating yourself of color data, you can focus much more clearly on the subjects and composition with whats left. (Indeed, this is often felt to be one of the primary reasons street photography is normally associated with B&W images - with no colors to distract you, the focus is on the subjects and composition even more).

Without color, the form and tones are all that’s left. (Edward Weston, Pepper #30)

Tonality

What I tend to refer to when using this term is the presence and relationships between different values of gray in the image. This can be subtle, with smooth, even differences among values, or much more pronounced.

Contrast

Contrast is the relative different in brightness between parts of an image. High contrast will have a much sharper differentiation between lighter and darker portions of an image, while low contrast will show less differences. Often a straight conversion to B&W can result in gray values that are all very similar, yielding a visually “flat” image.

Globally, it may refer to the overall distribution of lights and darks. Locally the same definition applies, but applied across a smaller section of the image.

Dynamic Range

Dynamic range is just the overall range of values being captured in your image. It represents the maximum dark and light that is captured for a given exposure. (Extending this dynamic range in an image is the topic for a later tutorial).

The Approach

The approach I will take here follows similar approaches I had taken in film days. I’ll attempt to use different methods of grayscale conversion (and blending them) to get to a working image that is as full of tonal detail overall as possible. (Petteri Sulonen refers to this as his “digital negative”) - if you want a great look at a digital B&W workflow, head over and read his article.

Then with the image containing as much tonal detail as possible, I will approach it with adjustments of various types to produce a final result that pleases my eye.

Before we can head down that road, we have to step back and consider the tools we are using. So…

Let’s have a look at how an image gets displayed on your monitor!

Your Pixels and You

We are working in an RGB world when we stare at our monitors. Every single pixel is composed of 3 sub pixels of Red, Green, and Blue.

300X magnification of an LCD panel. (Image from wikipedia)

Now, variations in the brightness of each of the sub-pixels will “mix” to produce the colors we finally see. The scales available to us (in an 8-bit display), are levels from 0-255 for each color (2⁸ = 256). So, if all the sub-pixel values are 0, you get black. If they are all 255, you’ll see white. Any other combination will produce some variation on a color.

70, 203, 74 for instance

or 203, 70, 198

But what about 16-bit images?
Well - the data is still in the image file to correctly describe the colors at 16bit/channel, but most likely what you’ll be seeing on your monitor is an interpolation of the values to an 8-bit/channel colorspace. You should always work in the highest bit depth color that you can, and leave any conversions to 8-bit for when you are saving your work to be viewed on a monitor only.

The thing to take away from this is to realize that when all three color channels are the same value, you’ll get a gray color. So middle gray of 127, 127, 127 would look like this:

127, 127, 127

While this is a little brighter: 225, 225, 225

Very quickly you should realize that a true monochromatic grayscale image can show you up to 256 discrete shades of gray (And for 16-bit, 2¹⁶ will yield 65,536 different shades) going from 0 (pure black) to 255 (pure white). It is this limitation for purely gray 8-bit images that introduces artifacts in some images over smooth gradations (posterization or banding) - and is a good reason to keep your bit depths as high as possible.

In summary, realize that for a purely grayscale image, on an 8-bit monitor, you’ll have 256 (visible) shades of gray to work with. (I say “visible” because if you’re working in higher bit depths, the file will actually have many, many more shades of gray, but you’ll still only be seeing 256 shades on your monitor).

Getting to Gray

There are many different paths to get to a grayscale image, and almost none of them are equal. They will all produce an image based on their different methods, and it will be up to you to decide which ones (or portions of) to keep and build on.

A combination of luminosity desaturation and GEGL Color2Grey (C2G). 12th Annual Dauphin St. Beer Fest - Conversation in Hayleys

For this tutorial I’m going to try to cover as many different methods as possible. This means we’ll be having a look at:

Desaturate Command (Lightness, Luminosity, Average)
Channel Mixer
Decompose (RGB, LAB)
Pseudogrey
Layer Blending Modes
Combining of these methods

One of these methods may work fine for you. Or, if you’re at all like me, it will most likely be a combination of one or more of these methods, blended through a combination of masking and opacity adjustments.

So in the first part of this tutorial we’ll have a look at possibly the simplest and most straightforward method of converting your images to grayscale: Desaturate.

GIMP Desaturate

Perhaps the easiest and most straightforward path to a grayscale image is the Desaturate command. The command can be invoked from the Colors menu:

Colors → Desaturate

There are three options available from this menu:

Each of these options will generate a grayscale image for you, but the difference lies in the way they interperet your image colors into values of gray.

Base RGB gradient of pure colors.

Base RGB (additive color) mix.

Lightness

Lightness will add the largest value of R, G, or B, and the smallest value, and divide the result by 2.

¹⁄₂ × ( MAX(R,G,B) + MIN(R,G,B) )

Straight conversion yields similar values, regardless of color.

(Mouseover for color)

This means that (usually) one channel is actually ignored in the final result. The result will be a straight value conversion regardless of the color in consideration.

Average

Average will use the numerical average of the values of each pixel. (Again, regardless of the color in consideration).

¹⁄₃ × ( R + G + B )

Averaging, the values will tend darker overall.

(Mouseover for color)

Luminosity

Luminosity is the most interesting of the straight desaturating methods. The reason lies in the way that our eyes perceive brightness in colors.

Lightness and Average both evaluate the final value of gray as a purely mathematical function, without regard to the actual colors being used. Luminosity, on the other hand, utilizes the fact that our eyes will perceive green as lighter than red, and both as lighter than blues (relative luminance). This is also why your camera sensor (usually) has twice as many green detectors as red and blue.

(0.2126 × R) + (0.7152 × G) + (0.0722 × B)

This is closer to how our eyes will actually perceive brightness of the colors.

Notice the overwhelming contribution from green. (Mouseover for color)

I am not saying that any one of these is necessarily better for your conversion efforts. It depends on the desired results. However, if you are in doubt about which one to use – this is the best of the three options (to closest emulate what your eye will actually see).

A Couple of Examples

The image below, Joseph N. Langan Park, is an interesting example to see just how much green influences the conversion result in luminosity. Hover over the different conversion types in the caption to see them, and pay careful attention to what Luminosity does with the green bushes along the waters edge.

Mouseover type to see: Original - Lightness - Average - Luminosity

This shot of Whitney shows the effect on skin tones, as well as the change in her shirt color due to the heavy reds present. In just a Lightness conversion, the red shirt becomes relatively flat compared to her skin tones, but becomes darker and more pronounced using Luminosity. Her lips get a bit of a boost in tone in the Luminosity conversion as well.

Mouseover type to see: Original - Lightness - Average - Luminosity

Summary

There is no single right way to approach a B&W conversion overall, but hopefully this will give you some insights into how the GIMP Desaturate commands will view the data in your image.

Remember, the goal is to use these tools to help you obtain an image that has the highest tonal density possible with your source. This image will then be the base for further adjustments of contrast and levels to achieve your final vision. You may find that different portions of your image respond better to different conversion techniques (and that’s fine - I’ll cover that in the last part of this tutorial when we begin mixing these results together).

Stay Tuned

In a few days I’ll be back for Part 2 to tackle another method for generating grayscale images - the Channel Mixer. It’s one of the more popular methods I have seen used by others that offers a lot of power and flexibility in the process.

On to Part 2 (Channel Mixer) →

GIMP Editing Challenge Results

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:50:00 -0500

At the beginning of this month I posted a RAW image of a house that I asked people to process in GIMP to turn it into a black and white image, and to describe their workflows in doing so.

My hope was to be able to expose some new and interesting ways to approach black and white processing in GIMP, and to give everyone a single point of reference to compare the results to.

The challenge base image

I had originally envisioned it as a sort of contest where everyone could vote on their favorites at the end, but it became cumbersome to maintain entries across Flickr and gimpchat.com. So instead I’ve left the posts as they are to hopefully help others to get a look into some cool ways to approach B&W conversions.

I was thinking that this might be a good image to test against because there is bright, just about blown, sunlight on the side of the house, while there are also very dark shadows in some of the windows and bushes. Hopefully a nicely challenging range of luminance and detail to work with!

There were some great responses from everyone who took a stab at it (pun intended - it is Halloween here!). I just wanted to take a moment to highlight a few of the images/processes that I liked personally…

Amelia Bellamy-Royds (AmeliaBr on Flickr)

Amelia did an amazing job, and was much more in line with what I personally was striving for - that is a well processed B&W image with good contrast overall. The shadows didn’t fall into inky blackness, and the highs were not overexposed (beyond what was already blown in the source image).

She describes her methodology and workflow in this comment on the Flickr page.

Basically, she either applied a pure black (or white) layer under the color original, then set the blending mode of the original layer to “Value”, or she desaturated the original, laying it over the original color layer - and then set the blend mode of the desaturated layer to “Saturation”. In both cases she was extracting the Value of the pixel from HSV mode.

This is nice because it then allows her to adjust the levels/curves of the original color layer to affect the final monochrome result. This means she could then independently modify the Red, Green, or Blue curves to adjust their contribution to the final Value result. A fantastic and intuitive way of adjusting the results with instant feedback on the canvas!

Sebastian (absolute_rookie on Flickr)

Sebastian did things a little differently, and I love the result. There’s a lovely feeling of softness in his, and the whole thing felt quite dreamy and is very pleasing to look at. He also details his process in the Flickr thread.

In summary, he opted to expose the RAW image three times (proper, under, over), and to merge the results back together using Luminance HDR (no word on which tonemapping operator he decided to use - Mantiuk maybe?). He then brought the results into GIMP and desaturated there (trial and error).

Starting from the RAW file, and under/over exposing a couple of versions likely helped retrieve some of the blownout highlights and shadow detail - so a great idea to approach it in this way!

Oh, and he also produced a really, really nice color version originally before he generated the black and white. You should check it out!

These were just a couple of the great images that resulted - there were many more, and I certainly don’t want to exclude anyone. I recommend checking out the threads at Flickr and gimpchat to see some other results!

How did mine turn out?

Oh, and if anyone is curious how my own results came out, here is the edit I did the same day I first posted the challenge:

I detailed my process in the Flickr thread as well.

Basically, I started with a Pseudogrey base, then decomposed the original image to RGB layers, and brought each one as a layer separately into my workspace. Then I just used a combination of layer masks and opacity adjustments to tweak the contribution from each channel. (I did a lot of masking/burning/dodging around the bushes in the foreground - they just came out way too flat for me, and I wanted good separation between them and the mid ground).

This has been a really interesting experiment, and I’ve been blown away by the results and responses. I may just have to look around for another RAW image to post and see what everyone does with it as well.

Also, as I said in my first post on this challenge, I have a great big Black and White Conversion tutorial coming soon that will hopefully address all the different ways and methods for approaching a conversion. Stay Tuned!

GIMP Editing Challenge

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 11:26:00 -0500

Over in the GIMP users group on Flickr, there has been a recurring challenge where a theme is chosen, and members will post images based around that theme. Then the users will all vote and choose their favorite, and the winner gets to choose a new theme. It’s usually quite fun, and you get to see some really neat photos from other users.

The Challenge - Convert this to B&W

It occurred to me the other day, though, that it might be even more helpful to those learning to use GIMP to see better what other users workflows might be, and even better to see what the results might look like from different processes.

So I posted a simple challenge that is a little different from the usual one based around a theme. I posted one of my own images, and asked everyone to use the same base image to process according to a different theme (in my case I was curious about B&W conversion workflows).

I also asked that anyone entering the challenge to also document their workflow so others could hopefully learn some new things about the process that is used.

Not everyone that reads the posts here might be on Flickr, so I am posting this here to invite anyone else that wants to try out. (I am figuring this can run for a few weeks - maybe end on Halloween?)

The discussion page on Flickr is here: Flickr.com: Challenge in GIMP - A Couple of Thoughts.

And you can download the full size RAW file (or PNG) here:

If you think you’d like to participate, it might be easiest to just join Flickr, and post your results in that thread (this way you can also vote on your favorite as well). If you don’t want to join Flickr for some reason, you can send your final results to me, and I’ll post on your behalf. (Just don’t forget to include a writeup about the steps you took to produce your image).

I’m hoping this will be fun, and informative. It’s also a sort-of prelude to a tutorial I’m in the process of writing about B&W conversion in GIMP. I’m hoping to have it out before/around Halloween.

Getting Around in GIMP - Heal Selection (Resynthesizer)

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 10:31:00 -0500

Missing Tower! (from Eiffel Tower by Terrazzo on Flickr)

I’ve been reading through a ton of hyperbole about Adobes Photoshop “Content Aware Fill” for some reason lately (“magical”, “incredible”, “amazing” and others are fun to read).

I don’t think I would be too far off in assuming that Adobes implementation is likely based off the wonderful work of Dr. Paul Harrison. Dr. Harrison’s PhD thesis just happened to yield the code that gave GIMP users the Resynthesizer plugin, which has provided us a “Content Aware Fill” for quite a while now (since before 2005).

If you’ve ever spent any time with the Clone Tool or Heal Tool in GIMP, and haven’t tried out Heal Selection with Resynthesizer, then you might find the results of this filter very helpful.

I have since looked at a newer algorithm for doing this, Inpainting [patch-based] in G’MIC. I think it’s now a better option for me, check out the post here: Getting Around in GIMP - G’MIC Inpainting (Content Aware Fill)

What does it do?

The basic premise behind Resynthesizer is that it will sample image textures from a given area, and will build a new texture from that data. The texture will be combined from segments of the selection in a random orientation. The plugin will also clean the feathering between segments to maintain a relatively consistent contrast, thus minimizing its visual impact on the result. (This is a very simplistic explanation of what’s actually going on under the hood - there are some neat pixel neighborhood comparisons going on, actually).

So to illustrate, here is a small 100 × 100 px sample of some water:

A small water sample

Now running Resynthesizer on a larger canvas area (450 × 450) will yield:

After Resynthesizing

This produces a pretty nice new texture! Random enough that there are no discernible repeating patterns that would give it away as a rebuilt texture.

An interesting use of Resynthesizer for seamless textures explored by GimpChat.com user lylejk is described in this thread, for example.

Now, creating good seamless textures is handy, but what does it have to do with healing selections in our image? Well - this same code can be used to fill-in areas of our image from data nearby. This is exactly what the companion Script-Fu “Heal Selection” will do, with some neat options…

Heal Selection

So let’s have a look at healing scenes from an image. Once you’ve installed the plugin and associated Script-Fu, the option will be available from:

Before we fire up the command, though, we just need to look at a couple of things. I’m going to use a cropped portion of a larger image to demonstrate:

Let’s remove this person from the beach

Now, the normal way you might use Heal Selection to remove this person would be to create a selection around them, and then just run the command. So let’s first create a selection around the object we want to remove.

I’ve colored in the selection to make it more visible

With our selection made, we could then start the Heal Selection dialog.

Before we run this, command, though, let’s have a quick look at the options and what they mean.

The Context sampling width will allow you to choose how far out from the edges of your selection to sample for textures to fill with. In my example I am saying to use the surrounding image up to 75 pixels away from the edges to create the new texture that will be used to fill up my selection.

Selection to Fill and the 75px surrounding area to get the texture from.

If I run the command now, then what will happen is that the script will use the surrounding 75px area to build a texture to fill in my selection , and it will randomly fill the selection area for me.

So let’s see how good of a job it will do with these (mostly) default settings:

Holy crap! (mouseover for original)

Well, wow. This has certainly done an admirable job in my opinion! The rebuilt portion of my selection contains enough randomness to blend very nicely without any artifacts to give it away.

The thing you really want to take away from this section is the use of the Context sampling width to adjust how far away from your selection to sample for the new texture. If you make the value too small for a large selection area, it may end up looking funny (due to having a small amount of pixels to sample from in order to fill a large area).

Well, we certainly can’t stop here - so let’s experiment even further with the entire image:

Beach Erosion by Kevin Dooley on Flickr (CC-BY)

I have already removed the person in the lower right frame of the image, and I will also remove the people in the water, and the man on the shore. I’ll leave the small girl there for aesthetic reasons.

You can also select multiple areas to have Heal Selection fix them all at once if you’d like.

For instance, I will choose the man in the red shirt and the people in the water at the same time (don’t forget to remove their shadows and reflections in the water):

I used a 50px sampling width, and selected both the people in the water and the man in the red shirt at the same time (mouseover for original)

If you want to be able to quickly visualize the sampling width, once you’ve made your selection you can grow it to the width you want using:

then just Undo the Grow to get back to your original selection. Heal Selection works wonders provided that you have a relatively consistent type of surrounding textures to work with. It even does wonders where you might not think it would at first.

While playing around for this tutorial, I said “What if I wanted to remove the house in the upper right of the image?”

Well, turns out Heal Selection did a dandy job of fixing that right up for me:

Wow. No more house! (mouseover for original)

One other quick example, a nice serene beach scene (try guessing where the changes were made before you hover your mouse over it):

A nice quiet(?) beach scene... Beach Umbrellas by Randy Pertiet on Flickr

A Few Tips

There’s a few things to keep in mind when using Heal Selection that might help you to achieve better results.

First is that depending on the geometry that you want to heal, the Sample from options will dictate from where around your selection you want to source pixels. The default will be All around, but the other two options can come in handy: Sides and Above and below.

This will restrict Heal Selection to choosing pixels only from either the sides, or above/below the current selection. I’ve found this helpful especially in places where there is a hard delineation in an image (trying to remove an object that crosses over the horizon, for instance).

I’ve used these options oftentimes in order to only partially remove an object from a scene (as part of a longer workflow). This is very handy around areas with a hard delineation.

For instance, remove the lower half of this telescope post to rebuild the brick wall behind it:

As part of a workflow, I only want to remove the post in front of the brick at the moment

Here is using the default Sample from: set to All around:

Notice the inclusion of part of the post in the lower shadow area of the selection. (mouseover for original)

Now if I restrict the sampling area to only the sides of the post, I will only get rock textures to create my fill textures with, which is much more desirable here:

Restricting the sampling to only the sides of the selection (mouseover for original)

This yields much better initial results for me to work with. The same method can be used for vertical edges as well (in which case you’d only sample from above and below).

A second tip that might be helpful is that you can run Heal Selection multiple times if needed in an area. Because the textures are being sampled from the image nearby, the overall grain/quality of the results will be close enough to the original to not stand out (though this entire process is very destructive to an image - so keep that in mind).

For instance, if I wanted to touch up the results from removing the post just a little more, I might want to remove the shadowed rock along it’s top edge. No problem - just re-select a new area, and run Heal Selection one more time:

Second healing run to remove the shadow on the stone (mouseover for original)

Healing Panoramas

Of course, just like Adobes “Content Aware Fill”, we can also use Heal Selection to extend areas of panoramic images where we are lacking source material. For instance, this is not an uncommon result of some panoramas:

ku skyline panorama by David DeHetre on Flickr

Using Heal Selection, we can have Resynthesizer rebuild the missing data for the sky and grass, using the nearby image texture data. In this case I just selected the black background areas, then grew the selection a bit to overlap the actual image.

Then, because I wanted to just sample from areas directly above the grass, and directly below the sky, I set Sample from to Above and below.

Heal Selection with sampling from above and below

This can be especially helpful to those creating 360° panoramas, and either don’t capture a full, clean nadir or need to remove a tripod leg… (I had previously written about this image in my post On Little Planets).

I had captured the full nadir, but needed to remove tripod legs...

With the nadir frames missing, I can just run Heal Selection on the center of this panorama (2048 squared, set the sample width to 75px), resulting in:

Rebuilding grass for this nadir is a strong point of Resynthesizer

Rebuilding a random grass texture to fill in this nadir is an especially strong feature of Heal Selection, and it shows here.

Another note is that Heal Selection will not fill an area with texture if it is transparent. So if you have a layer with transparency in areas that you want to fill, you’ll have to remember to remove the transparency from that layer first:

In Summary

Heal Selection/Resynthesizer is a killer filter. Due to the nature of GIMP plugins and scripts, it might not be immediately obvious to a new user that this is even an option. (We really need a better method of managing scripts and plug-ins in GIMP).

So here is a small list of links that might help:

The Resynthesizer page by Paul Harrison
Resynthesizer entry at the GIMP registry (There is an updated version now. Find it here!)
Windows installers for various GIMP plugins (including Resynthesier/Heal Selection)
Partha Bagchi also maintains a few different GIMP versions and plugins (I use his builds personally - particularly my native OSX version)

[Update 2012-12] Over on the GimpChat forums, I walked through how I would approach an example by “slicing” up the area to heal based on surrounding textures. I thought it might be helpful to others who read this post, so check it out here!

Where it Works Well

Anywhere you have a need to fill from a rebuilt texture, and have at least something nearby to sample from. This could be mitigated through creative use of layers to bring appropriate textures closer to your healing area.

Large areas of similar texture, where you want to remove objects. Sky, grass, walls, etc. work very very well to resynthesize textures to heal your selections.

Where it Needs Help

Edges can be problematic to get an automated healing around. This can be mitigated by creative selections and directions for sampling, though. If your only other option is a lot of time with the clone and heal tool, then this method shouldn’t be any harder or take any longer. (ie: try this first to help you get on your way to a clean heal).

If you’ve had a chance to try this filter out, please feel free to share the links with us in the comments below!

Embedding Fonts with CSS and Base64

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:54:00 -0500

Relevant XKCD

One of my other hobbies besides photography happens to be web programming. I’ve been doing it in one form or another for many, many years (anyone else remember the first time animated .gifs were cool?). As a hobby it has been a ton of fun, and many of the newer capabilities just make it more so.Anyway, in case you hadn’t noticed I at least took the time to use interesting and pretty font faces on this site (in my opinion). It was literally hours of agonizing over different choices, weights, faces, readability, etc. I finally settled on two main fonts for this site that I thought worked reasonably well together:

Yanone Kaffeesatz for titles, and Philosopher for my body text.

Google web fonts is a lifesaver here! So I’m going to skip over a history of web-safe fonts and my using them on this site. Instead, I’ll talk about the new Getting Around in GIMP page.In a nutshell, I wanted to re-design the page to be cleaner and easier for people to use (and prettier as well). One of the things I wanted to try was a neat text-shadow css effect on the headings for each section. The problem was that I wanted to use a free font that I thought would look neat: Bazar, Medium by Olinda Martins.The problem is that nobody was hosting it for direct embedding. I tried uploading it to Google Drive and directly hotlinking to it from here, but Firefox wanted nothing to do with it. I host this blog on Blogger, and there was no way for me to upload a .ttf font file here, either.Then it struck me like a bolt of lightning…I have seen a url for an image be given as a data: reference with base64 encoded data being attached. I figured if it worked for image data, maybe it would work for fonts as well! (I did something similar to this with my Chrome extension Patr for downloading your list of all your photos on Flickr).If you’re not familiar, this is what a base64 encoded data URI will look like:

<img src="data:image/png;base64,<BASE64 ENCODED DATA>" />

Now, could I do the same thing when I define the URL for the font I want to embed? Yes. Yes I can!To embed a font directly into your CSS:

@font-face{
    font-family: Bazar;
    src: url(data:font/ttf;base64,AAEA... ) format('truetype');
}

Call me a geek, but that is seriously cool. No longer do I need to worry about hosting a ttf, otf, woff, eot file somewhere and embedding it - I can embed it directly into the CSS for my page!

More Averaging Photos (Martin Schoeller)

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 15:48:00 -0500

I can’t get enough of playing with this image averaging, it seems.

Reddit user Janne mentioned in a post of mine about the idea of “Averageness”, and linked to the Wikipedia page describing it. This got me thinking about trying these commands on something like faces.

So I needed a set of faces that were all semi-similar enough to create good averages with. Well, if you haven’t seen the work of photographer Martin Schoeller you are missing out! He has a series of close-ups that are shot with very similar lighting styles and compositions of famous people (and not-famous), that is simply mesmerizing to see.

So I grabbed some random images to try this out with:

My random assortment of Schoeller close-ups.

In GIMP to prepare the images all I did was aligned the images based on the subjects eyes (tried to get them on the same level, and the same distance from the centers).

At that point the fun begins! All I had to do was pick and choose whose faces I thought would be fun to see averaged together. To begin with, here is the image matrix from above, but with averages calculated for each row and column appended to it:

Blends averaged on rows and columns.

What I learned from this matrix is that George Clooney and Justin Timberlake make attractive composites (and that Mickey Rourke makes them very scary).

So first I went ahead and just blended all of these faces together to see a total composite average image:

Composite of all of these portraits blended.

While that is interesting, the things that made me laugh out loud were the composites of faces I knew pretty well being put together in funny ways.

For instance, what about a simple two image blend with Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson)?

Harry Granger or Hermione Potter?

Another funny two person blend was George Clooney and Christopher Walken…

George Walken or Christoper Clooney?

Well, what about mixing it up even more? How about just the ladies?

Jolie, Watson, and Blanchett…

Or what about just the younger actors in the list?

Ledger, Radcliffe, Timberlake, and Watson

Or how about the more “distinguished” older gentlemen?

Clooney, Eastwood, Murray, Nicholson, Walken and Rourke.

And finally my personal favorite so far, all of the “dreamy” men as one composite:

My personal favorite - Clooney, Ledger, Timberlake and (Kelly) Slater

Honestly, after setting up the command and getting the images the same size and aligned, it was super easy just to drag and drop the ones I wanted to see mixed up. The variations were way too funny, and I was genuinely surprised at how some of them turned out.

Anyone game to try blending other series and sharing them?

ImageMagick Average Blending Files

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 17:27:00 -0500

Back in 2003 Xeni Jardin posting on boingboing highlighted artist Jason Salavon’s work involving averaging together Playboy centerfolds by decade. The works he produced were haunting and beautiful to me (and a little geeky, too).

Jason Salavon - Every Playboy Centerfold, The Decades (normalized) 2002

Those four images represented the four decades from the 1960’s to the 1990’s (left to right). The prints were made with code that he wrote in C on Unix based SGI machines.

These “Amalgamations” (to coin his phrase), are simply stunning to me. So in the sincerest form of flattery, I had to see if I could replicate the results in some fashion with more modern tools (Jason began his work blending the Playboy images back in 1997).

My first thought was to approach this using GIMP. After a few tries and experimenting I found that a better approach would be to use ImageMagick instead. It’s just better suited for this type of processing.

Let’s have a look at the results before we delve into the ImageMagick commands… My first attempt was to replicate the results against all of the 1960’s centerfolds to see if I could attain something similar (to validate the process):

Results after averaging all the centerfolds.

After running Levels → Auto in GIMP.

Overall I was pretty happy with the results!

In my case I rotated any images that were wider than they were tall to maintain the aspect ratio. While I was testing out the commands I also thought it would be neat to allow the horizontal images to remain that way, and to pad the dimensions to create a square result:

Not rotating the horizontal images, and centering/squaring produces this.

The result here is interesting because we also get a feel for the frequency of using horizontal spreads vs. vertical.

So I can confirm that the method appears to work. Just how do we do this?

ImageMagick Commands

There are two major things to consider when approaching this process:

Are the image sizes the same? If not we will have to resize and expand
Do you want to rotate horizontal images, or leave them as is?

These two options will have an influence on how we approach the commands we use. I will assume (to be safe) that none of my images are quite the same size, and that I do want to rotate wider images.

I also scanned through my images and determined that a the smallest image I wanted (or had available) would be 792x1728 - I will want to shrink all images that are larger than this to fit.

Here is the full command I used:

convert -background transparent *.jpg -rotate "90>" -resize "792x1728>" -gravity center -extent 792x1728 -evaluate-sequence mean output-rotated.jpg

ImageMagick commands are lately best read portion by portion as they operate on your images, so let’s break this down:

convert -background transparent *.jpg

Start the “convert” command up, and set the background color to transparent for my operations. Also, load up all of my jpg files into memory.

-rotate "90>"

If any of the images are wider than they are high, rotate them 90°.

-resize "792x1728>"

Any images larger than 792x1728 should be resized down to fit in these dimensions (maintaining aspect ratio).

-gravity center -extent 792x1728

Keeping the images centered, extend the images so that they fill up the 792x1728 space (the padding will be filled with the background color - transparent).

-evaluate-sequence mean output-rotated.jpg

Finally, once all the images are now rotated and the same size, do an arithmetic mean on their pixels (average), and write the final output to output-rotated.jpg

Another version of the command above can be modified if I do not want to rotate any horizontal images (to create the square version above):

convert -background transparent *.jpg \
-gravity center -extent 1728x1728 \
-evaluate-sequence mean \
output-non-rotated.jpg

In this case I am not rotating anything, and padding all my images with transparency up to the extent size (1728x1728), then running the average. It should be noted that 1728x1728 is ** as large or larger ** than all of my images (otherwise a resize would be required).

More Results

With the command line stuff out of the way, let’s take a look at some more interesting results I obtained playing with these options!

Continuing with the theme of Playboy centerfolds, here are the 1970’s:

1970’s normalized.

And what would decades of Playboy covers look like? (Honestly, the hardest part of creating these at this point is finding a decent archive of Playboy covers to use as source material… I would almost consider springing for the Playboy Cover to Cover Hard Drive - Every Issue From 1953 to 2010 if it wasn’t so damn expensive!)

1950’s

1960’s

1970’s

1980’s

1990’s

It would appear that over the years Playboy finally dialed in their title placement, as well as their model placements on the cover (they really got there in the 80’s best, I think).

Enough with the Playboy, I think. At this point my keywords are going to make my blog look like a spam site. So let’s switch over to something slightly less salacious, and have a look at all the covers of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue! :)

Every cover of the SI Swimsuit edition through early 2000.

And let’s finish up with something just a little more classy. Alberto Vargas may be the most famous name in classic Pin-up paintings, and interestingly the combination of all of his paintings is a little more tame. I came across a nice archive of his work at The Pin-up Files website.

All of Alberto Vargas’ paintings at once.

All of Alberto Vargas' paintings at once.

Gil Elvgren is another famous name in Pin-up artwork. Here’s a taste of what he produces when combined:

Gil Elvgren’s works combined

Gil Elvgren's works combined

And for something just a little more contemporary, here is a blend of all the headshots from Peter Hurley’s sample portfolio of Leading Ladies:

Peter Hurley’s Leading Ladies

Peter Hurley's Leading Ladies

In each of these I brought the final output images into GIMP for adjusting levels. I normally just went ahead and let the Levels tool auto-adjust for me, but I did look at stretching contrast (+hsv) to see the results. In the end I think I preferred the Levels → Auto the best.

Give it a try and let me know how it turns out, I’d love to see some other cool visualizations of sets of photos in this way!

Also, if Jason Salavon ever reads this - thank you for turning me on to a great and interesting processing technique! Your results are amazing!

I’ve also tried my hand at blending a bunch of celebrity faces together as well, have a look here:

More Averaging Photos (Martin Schoeller)

If You Can't Fix It, Fake It

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 15:45:00 -0500

An interesting side effect of posting the Getting Around in GIMP tutorials has been meeting new people who are looking for help with images in some way.

I think my most heartwarming interaction was a mother who wanted some images fixed of her newborn son that had discoloration in the skin. She wanted the skin tones to be matched so that the discoloration wouldn’t be so prominent/noticeable. I was happy to take a few minutes to try and help out (the fix was relatively straightforward), and it was extra meaningful to find out that her little son did not live long after the photos were taken. (That last part in particular was especially poignant to me, being a dad myself).

A recent interesting problem was posted to me where someone had created artwork to be turned into a custom wood puzzle as a gift.

The problem that needed to be fixed was that a photograph created by the puzzle maker was taken with a small P&S camera with (likely) auto white balance under fluorescent lighting.

White balance is absolutely wonky here in this original photograph.

The images came out with a really nasty orange tint to them. So the question posed to me was if my recent post on color curves could help fix them to match the original artwork. In this case, no. Color correction with this heavy of a cast was not going to really be possible. The best effort from the person who sent them to me was to desaturate heavily to try and get the colors of the train closer to the original.

Other attempts at color corrections were too violent for the jpeg to handle, and nasty posterization and banding were very evident. So curves/adjustments were out of the question.

After attempting a desaturate to bring colors more in line with the original artwork.

The desaturation helped with some of the colors, but as a global operation it severely dampened the vibrancy of many of the other colors.

Below is the original artwork prepared by the person who contacted me. This original artwork represents the true colors that they wanted to match in the photograph above.

The original artwork that was printed and mounted onto the wood.

The thing that finally clicked for me in this case was when I was looking at the high quality original artwork as a reference for colors. I was trying to think of a good way to match the colors when I caught myself saying “If only I could just map this original artwork into the photograph”.

That’s when a different part of my brain said: “Well, you can map this original to the photograph: use Hugin!".

I loaded up both the original artwork and the photograph into Hugin. I set the photograph to be anchored for position, and created control points between the artwork and photo.

Once I had all my control points, I optimized the artwork (making sure that none of the checkboxes for the photograph were checked - so only the artwork would be distorted to fit).

I did a set of standard optimizations before deciding that the most important ones are for x-shift and y-shift (allowing skewing of the image).

I was pretty happy with the results, and am amazed yet again at the neat things you can do with some incredible free software:

After remapping the original artwork to fit into the photograph (mouseover for original)

I was glad to be able to help someone out, even if the path to getting there was a little unconventional (all that mattered was the results in this case). In the process, I learned a couple of neat new tricks to keep in my bag for the future!

How Not to Make a Wee Planet in GIMP

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 21:58:00 -0500

Wee Mobile Alabama (Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception) by Pat David

I was fooling around again recently with some “Wee Planet” stereographic panoramas (previously mentioned here), and came across some tutorials on doing this with Photoshop/GIMP using a Polar Coordinate distortion filter.

While this will give you a similar result to what you might see from a true stereographic projection, it is not quite as aesthetically pleasing I feel. This is because the Polar Coordinate transform is not a true stereographic mapping, and will tend to squish objects in a very non-pleasing way.

I’ve assembled a few examples to demonstrate the effect and for comparison. The examples here are from Flickr user gadl (Alexandre Duret-Lutz) and are Creative Commons BY-NC-SA. Thank you Alexandre for making these available!

And really, what better examples to use than from “La Ville-Lumière”, Paris!

Sacré coeur

I once had a wonderful lunch with some friends not far from here in Montmarte…

Starting with the equirectangular panorama projection below:

Equirectangular Sacré coeur by Alexandre Duret-Lutz

Running the image through

Filters → Distorts → Polar Coordinates…
in GIMP yields the results below…

Polar Coordinate Distortion in GIMP

Notice how the Basilica is squashed in this view. In fact, all of the structures above the horizon have been seriously shortened. Because the polar coordinate transformation is essentially just remapping the image to a circle, notice also that the distance from the center to the outer edges is the same as the height of the source image.

Loading the image into Hugin, though, allows us to remap the output to a true stereographic projection:

Stereographic mapping in Hugin

The results here are much more aesthetically pleasing, in my opinion. The local angles are preserved, and the relative prominence of objects above the horizon become much larger.

Here’s another view:

Montmartre s’éveille by Alexandre Duret-Lutz

Notice how squished the lamp post and Basilica are…

This looks much more like a tiny planet.

Here’s a view of Notre Dame at night…

Notre Dame de Paris by Alexandre Duret-Lutz

Polar Coordinate Distortion in GIMP

Stereographic mapping in Hugin

Separation light by Alexandre Duret-Lutz

Polar Coordinate Distortion in GIMP

Stereographic mapping in Hugin

In each of these cases I personally much prefer the stereographic projection.

The only drawback of this method is that it requires a full 360° × 360° full panorama of your scene (for best results). This is not always practical if you’re shooting on the fly. If the scene you want to capture is intended to be a little planet, it’s definitely worth the time to capture a full panorama to map stereographic.

Planet Express Logo (Futurama)

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:45:00 -0500

I’ve got strange habits to fall asleep at night. I personally like to have a movie or tv show I’m really familiar with running to fall asleep to. In college I had a VHS tape(!) of Blade Runner that I would play every, single, night, to fall asleep to. If I assume I made it about halfway through before I fell asleep on average (sometimes I started it at a random point in the middle), that means I have seen Bladerunner about 700 times (give or take about 50) so far!

Lately it’s been Futurama for me.

So, in honor of my 5^th (!!!) time watching the entire series all the way through, I decided to whip up a Planet Express logo based on the one shown in Season 1 Episode 2 “The Series Has Landed”.

Planet Express: Our crew is replaceable. Your package isn't.

The original logo as shown in the show was not perfectly round, so I assumed that was the intent. I also had to fudge a bit in finding a font to match (searching online didn’t turn up any ideas on what it might be closest to). I went with “Franklin Gothic Heavy” as the closest match, then tweaked locations to get it to fit as well as possible.

I used Inkscape to create it, so it should open up fine in that (I am assuming it will open fine in any other vector program as well). (I had also previously used Inkscape to make some Young Frankenstein movie posters.)

If you just want a few sizes of the transparent .png file, you can find it here, or directly:

144×134 pixels
288×268 pixels
400×372 pixels
640×595 pixels
800×744 pixels
4508 × 4191 pixels – 712KB

If you’d like the .svg file for it, you can either download the original size from Flickr, then open the image with 7-zip, or you can download it below:

From Google Drive:

Download the SVG file!

Getting Around in GIMP - More Color Curves (Skin)

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:46:00 -0500

In my previous post on Color Curves for Toning/Grading, I looked at the basics of what the Curves dialog lets you do in GIMP. I had been meaning to revisit the subject with a little more restraint (the color curve in that post was a little rough and gross, but it was for illustration so I hope it served its purpose).

I’m also trying something new for me for a change, and that is a video. I don’t normally like video tutorials personally, but in this case I thought it might help to illustrate the text below. You’ll find the video embedded at the end of the tutorial (or head over there right now to watch it).

This time I want to look at the use of curves a little more carefully. You’d be amazed at the subtlety that gentle curves can produce in toning your images. Even small changes in your curves can have quite the impact on your final result. For instance, have a look at the four film emulation curves created by Petteri Sulonen (if you haven’t read his page yet on creating these curves, it’s well worth your time):

Original

Portraesque (Kodak Portra NC400 Film)

Proviaesque (Fujichrome Provia)

Velviaesque (Fujichrome Velvia)

Crossprocess (E6 slide film in C-41 neg. processing)

I can’t thank Petteri enough for releasing these curves for everyone to use (for us GIMP users, there is a .zip file at the bottom of his post that contains these curves packaged up for us to use). Personally I am a huge fan of the Portraesque curve that he has created. If there is a person in my images, it’s usually my go-to curve as a starting point. It really does generate some wonderful skin tones overall.

The problem in generating these curves is that one has to be very, very familiar with the characteristics of the film stocks you are trying to emulate. I never shot Velvia personally, so it is hard for me to have a reference point to start from when attempting to emulate this type of film.

What we can do, however, is to use our personal vision or sense of aesthetic to begin toning our images to something that we like. GIMP has some great tools for helping us to become more aware of color and the effects of each channel on our final image. That is what we are going to explore…

Disclaimer
I cannot stress enough that what we are approaching here is an entirely subjective interpretation of what is pleasing to our own eyes. Color is a very complex subject and deserves study to really understand. Hopefully some of the things I talk about here will help pique your interest to push further and experiment! :) There is no right or wrong, but rather what you find pleasing to your own eye.

Approximating Tones

What we will be doing is using Sample Points and the Curves dialog to modify the color curves in my image above to emulate something else. It could be another photograph, or even a painting.

I’ll be focusing on the skin tones, but the method can certainly be used for other things as well.

My wonderful model.

With an image you have, begin considering what you might like to approximate the tones on. For instance, in my image above I want to work on the skin tones to see where it leads me.

Now find an image that you like, and would like to approximate the tones from. It helps if the image you are targeting already has tones somewhat similar to what you are starting with (for instance, I would look for another Caucasian image with similar tones to start from, as opposed to Asian). Keeping tones at least similar will reduce the violence you’ll do to your final image.

So for my first example, perhaps I would like to use the knowledge that the Old Masters already had in regards to color, and would like to emulate the skin tones from Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring.

Johannes Vermeer - The Girl With The Pearl Earring (1665)

In GIMP I will have my original image already opened, and will then open my target image as a new layer. I’ll pull this layer to one side of my image to give me a view of the areas I am interested in (faces and skin).

I will be using Sample Points extensively as I proceed. Read up on them if you haven’t used them before. They are basically a means of giving you real-time feedback of the values of a pixel in your image (you can track up to four points at one time).

I will put a first sample point somewhere on the higher skin tones of my base image. In this case, I will put one on my models forehead (we’ll be moving it around shortly, so somewhere in the neighborhood is fine).

Ctrl + Left Click in the ruler area of your main window (shown in green above), and drag out into your image. There should be crosshairs across your entire image screen showing you where you are dragging.

When you release the mouse button, you’ve dropped a Sample Point onto your image. You can see it in my image above as a small crosshair with the number 1 next to it.

GIMP should open the sample points dialog for you when you create the first point, but if not you can access it from the image menu under:

Windows → Dockable Dialogs → Sample Points

This is what the dialog looks like.

You can see the RGB pixel data for the first sample point that I have already placed.

As you place more sample points, they will each be reflecting their data on this dialog.

You can go ahead and place more sample points on your image now. I’ll place another sample point, but this time I will put it on my target image where the tones seem similar in brightness.

What I’ll then do is change the data being shown in the Sample Points dialog to show HSV data instead of Pixel data.

Now, I will shoot for around 85% value on my source image, and try to find a similar value level in similar tones from my target image as well. Once you’ve placed a sample point, you can continue to move it around and see what types of values it gives you. (If you use another tool in the meantime, and can no longer move just the sample point - you can just select the Color Picker Tool to be able to move them again).

Move the points around your skin tones until you get about the same value for both points.

Once you have them, make sure your original image layer is active, then start up the curves dialog.

Colors → Curves…

Now here is something really handy to know while using the Curves dialog: if you hover your mouse over your image, you’ll notice that the cursor is a dropper - you can click and drag on an area of your image, and the corresponding value will show up in your curves dialog for that pixel (or averaged area of pixels if you turn that on).

So click and drag to about the same pixel you chose in your original image for the sample point.

Curves dialog with a value point (217) for my sampled pixel.

Here is what my working area currently looks like:

I have my curves dialog open, and an area around my sample point chosen so that the values will be visible in the dialog, my images with their associated sample points, and the sample points dialog showing me the values of those points.

The basic idea now is to adjust my RGB channels to get my original image sample point (#1) to match my target image sample point (#2).

Because I selected an area around my sample point with the curves dialog open, I will know roughly where those values need to be adjusted. Let’s start with the Red channel.

First, set the Sample Points dialog back to Pixel to see the RGBA data for that pixel.

We can now see that to match the pixel colors we will need to make some adjustments to each channel. Specifically, the Red channel will have to come down a bit (218 → 216), Green down some as well (188 → 178), and Blue much more (171 → 155).

You may want to resize your Curves dialog window larger to be able to more finely control the curves. If we look at the Red channel in my example, we would want to adjust the curve down slightly at the vertical line that shows us where our pixel values are:

We can adjust the red channel curve along this vertical axis (marked x:217) until our pixel red value matches the target (216).

Then just change over to the green channel and do the same:

Here we are adjusting the green curve vertically along the axis marked x:190 until our pixel green value matches the target (178).

Finally, follow the same procedure for the blue channel:

As before, we adjust along the vertical axis x:173 until our blue channel matches the target (155).

At this point, our first sample point pixel should be the same color as from our target.

The important thing to take away from this exercise is to be watching your image as you are adjusting these channels to see what types of effects they produce. Dropping the green channel should have seen a slight addition of magenta to your image, and dropping the blue channel should have shown you the addition of a yellow to balance it.

Watch your image as you make these changes!

Don’t hit OK on your curves dialog yet!

You’ll want to repeat this procedure, but using some sample points that are darker than the previous ones. Our first sample points had values of about 85%, so now let’s see if we can match pixels down below 50% as well.

Without closing your curves dialog, you should be able to click and drag your sample points around still. So I would set your Sample Points dialog to show you HSV values again, and now drag your first point around on your image until you find some skin that’s in a darker value, maybe around 40-45%.

Once you do, try to find a corresponding value in your target image (or something close at least).

I managed to find skin tones withe values around 45% in both of my images:

In these darker tones, I can see that the adjustments I will have to make are for:
Red down a bit (116 → 114),
Green bumped up some (60 → 73),
and Blue slightly down (55 → 53).

With the curves dialog still active, I then click and drag on my original image until I am in the same area as my sample point again. This give me my vertical line showing me the value location in my curves dialog, just as before:

Red down to 114.

Green up to 73.

Blue down to 53.

At this point you should have something similar to the tones of your target image. Here is my image after these adjustments so far:

Effects of the curves so far (mouseover for original).

Once you’ve got things in a state that you like, it would be a good idea to save your progress. At the top of the Curves dialog there is a "+" symbol. This will let you add the current settings to your favorites. This will allow you to recall these settings later to continue working on them.

However, you’re results might not quite look right at the moment. So why not?

Well, the first problem is that Sample Points will only allow you to sample a single pixel value. There’s a chance that the pixels you pick are not truly representative of the correct skin tones in that range (for instance you may have inadvertently clicked a pixel that represents the oil paint cracks in the image). It would be nice if there were an option for Sample Points to allow an adjustable sample radius (if there is an option I haven’t found it yet).

The second issue is that similar value points might be very different colors overall. Hopefully your sources will be nice for you to pick in areas that you know are relatively consistent and representative of the tones you want, but it’s not always a guarantee.

If the results are not quite what you want at the moment, you can do what I will sometimes do and go back to the beginning…

While still keeping the curves dialog open you can pull your sample points to another location, and match the target again. Try choosing another sample point with a similar value as the first one. This time instead of adding new points the curve as you make adjustments, just drag the existing points you previously placed.

It’s an Iterative Process

Depending on how interested you are in tweaking your resulting curve, you may find yourself going around a couple of times. That’s ok.

I would recommend keeping your curves to having two control points at first. You want your curves to be smooth across the range (any abrupt changes will do strange things to your final image).

If you are doing a couple of iterations, try modifying existing points on your curves instead of adding new ones. It may not be an exact match, but it doesn’t have to be. It only needs to look nice to your eyes.

There won’t be a perfect solution for a perfect color matching between images, but we can produce pleasing curves that emulate the results we are looking for.

In Conclusion

I personally have found the process of doing this with different images to be quite instructive in how the curves will affect my image (fixed - because grammar is important!). If you try this out and pay careful attention to what is happening while you do it, I’m hopeful you will come away with a similar appreciation of what these curves will do.

Most importantly, don’t be constrained by what you are targeting, but rather use it as a stepping off point for inspiration and experimentation for your own expression!

I’ll finish with a couple of other examples…

Sandro Botticelli - The Birth of Venus (mouseover for original)

Fa Presto - St. Michael (mouseover for original)

And finally, as promised, here’s the video tutorial that steps through everything I’ve explained above:

From a request, I’ve packaged up some of the curves from this tutorial (Pearl Earring, St. Michael, the previous Orange/Teal Hell, and another I was playing with from a Norman Rockwell painting): Download the Curves (7zip .7z)

True PseudoGrey in GIMP

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:39:00 -0500

I was in the process of including my last tutorial on curves in some forum posts around the internet when I visited gimpchat.com again. After I had posted my link I was perusing the tutorials board when I came across user lylejk’s post about implementing a true pseudo-grey on images in GIMP.

Randi PseudoGrey (mouseover for desaturated 256 value version)

It was an interesting read, but the thing that started me thinking was the implementation. It was a manual implementation in his tutorial, and I figured I could slap together some script-fu to automate the process. The basic premise behind this idea as originally presented by Rich Franzen () is to start with an 8-bit value for a pixel, then successive addition of 1 to either no channels, red, blue, green, red-blue, red-green, or blue-green would encode further grey values.

This will increase the maximum number of unique values in an image to 1786 different values, vs. the 256 different values of a straight 8-bit grayscale image.

This means that in a straight 256 value grayscale image, we could go from value 128 to 129 like so:

128

129

But with PseudoGrey, we can now encode much more information between those two values (thank you Saulgoode for correcting my encoding sequence!):

128, 128, 128

128,128,129

129,128,128

129,128,129

128,129,128

128,129,129

129,129,128

129,129,129

Now, it might be debatable on whether a person could really see a distinction even in 256 values, but the bottom line is that you can have much more data to work from and retain using PseudoGrey. (To illustrate the “debatable” idea - each of the lines above is actually that RGB color as indicated - can you tell the difference between them?)

Whitney PseudoGrey (mouseover for desaturated 256 value version)

The implementation that lylejk sorted out for GIMP is to use a black to white linear gradient as a layer in your image. I personally just created a new layer that was 2048 pixels wide, and about 10 pixels tall, then filled it with a gradient from black to white from/to the extents, taking up the entire layer.

If you do this, then have a look at the colorcube analysis:

Colors → Info → Colorcube Analysis

you’ll notice that your gradient layer should report around 1786 unique colors. (For reference, I’ll fill the layer with the black→white gradient with “Dithering” turned on in the Blend mode).

You now have a smooth black to white gradient with 1786 individual tones. Now you can just do a:

Colors → Map → Samples Colorize…

The Destination image will be your image that you want to convert to PseudoGrey, and your Sample will be your gradient layer. You’ll want to make sure that “Hold Intensity” and “Original Intensity” are both unchecked, and that “Use subcolors” is checked.

Then just hit “Get Sample Colors”, then “Apply” to remap your color image to PseudoGrey.

If you pixel peep your image now, you’ll notice that it’s mostly grayscale values (R,G,B all match values), but you’ll also notice that there will be pixels whose R,G, or B value is just 1 off from the rest! PseudoGrey!

The thing is, this is a bunch of work. So what ruined my lunch hour was whipping up a script-fu to automate this process for me!

This script will create a new layer in your image that is 2048x10 pixels, then fill it with the appropriate black to white gradient. It will then call Samples Colorize… with the correct options for you, and will then remap your current layers colors to Pseudogrey.

You can download the Script-Fu for Pseudogrey here: Pseudogrey on GIMP Registry or you can get it here: Pseudogrey on Google Drive

Update

I forgot to mention this in the post above, but after you run the PseudoGrey script, you can view all the extra tonal data you are saving by running: Colors → Maximum RGB… This will shift all of the subtle color different pixels to their maximum, making them very visible. All of those colored pixels now represent luminosity tones that you are saving above the 256 of a straight grayscale conversion!

Update

I’ve also written up the encoding in pure javascript that run entirely in the browser on your client side (no images are actually uploaded anywhere - it’s converted entirely locally in your own browser). If you want to try it out, see here:
Javascript PseudoGrey Converter

This has a bug that does not produce expected results…

Getting Around in GIMP - Color Curves Toning/Grading

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:15:00 -0500

Color has this amazing ability to evoke emotional responses from us. From the warm glow of a sunny summer afternoon to a cool refreshing early evening in fall. We associate colors with certain moods, places, feelings, and memories (consciously or not).

Book have been written on color, and I am in no ways even remotely qualified to speak on it. So I won’t.

Instead I am here today to maybe help shed some light on the use of the Curves tool in GIMP.

Open up an image in GIMP.

Now zoom in.

Nope - don’t be shy now, zoom in more!

Aaand there’s your pixel.

So let’s investigate what goes into making your pixel.

Remember, each pixel is represented by a combination of 3 colors: Red, Green, and Blue. In GIMP (currently at 8-bit), that means that each RGB color can have a value from 0 - 255, and combining these three colors with varying levels in each channel will result in all the colors you can see in your image.

If all three channels have a value of 255 - then the resulting color will be pure white. If all three channels have a value of 0 - then the resulting color will be pure black.
If all three channels have the same value, then you will get a shade of gray (128,128,128 would be a middle gray color for instance).

So now let’s see what goes into making up your pixel:

The RGB components that mix into your final blue pixel.

As you can see, there is more blue than anything else (it is a blue-ish pixel after all), followed by green, then a dash of red. If we were to change the values of each channel, but kept ratio the same between Red, Green, and Blue, then we would keep the same color and just lighten or darken the pixel by some amount.

Color Curves: Value

So let’s leave your pixel alone for the time being, and actually have a look at the Curves dialog. I’ll be using this wonderful image by Eric from Flickr.

Hollow Moon by qsimple/Eric on Flickr. (CC-BY-NC-SA)

Opening up my Curves dialog shows me the following:

We can see that I start off with the curve for the Value of the pixels. I could also use the drop down for “Channel” to change to red, green or blue curves if I wanted to. For now let’s look at Value, though.

In the main area of the dialog I am presented with a linear curve, behind which I will see a histogram of the value data for the entire image (showing the amount of each value across my image). Notice a spike in the high values on the right, and a small gap at the brightest values.

What we can do right now is to adjust the values of each pixel in the image using this curve. The best way to visualize it is to remember that the bottom range from black to white represents the current value of the pixels, and the left range is the value to be mapped to.

So to show an example of how this curve will affect your image, suppose I wanted to remap all the values in the image that were in the midtones, and to make them all lighter. I can do this by clicking on the curve near the midtones, and dragging the curve higher in the Y direction:

What this curve does is takes the values around the midtones, and pushes their values to be much lighter than they were. In this case, values around 128 were re-mapped to now be closer to 192.

Because the curve is set Smooth, there will be a gradual transition for all the tones surrounding my point to be pulled in the same direction (this makes for a smoother fall-off as opposed to an abrupt change at one value). Because there is only a single point in the curve right now, this means that all values will be pulled higher.

The results of pushing the midtones of the value curve higher (mouseover for original).

Care should be taken when fiddling with these curves to not blow things out or destroy detail, of course. I only push the curves here to illustrate what they do.

A very common curve adjustment you may hear about is to apply a slight “S” curve to your values. The effect of this curve would be to darken the dark tones, and to lighten the light tones - in effect increasing global contrast on your image. For instance, if I click on another point in the curves, and adjust the points to form a shape like so:

A slight ‘S’ curve

This will now cause dark values to become even darker, while the light values get a small boost. The curve still passes through the midpoint, so middle tones will stay closer to what they were.

Slight "S" curve increases global contrast (mouseover for original).

In general, I find it easiest to visualize in terms of which regions in the curve will effect different tones in your image. Here is a quick way to visualize it (that is true for value as well as RGB curves):

If there is one thing you take away from reading this, let it be the image above.

Curves: Colors

So how does this apply to other channels? Let’s have a look.

The exact same theory applies in the RGB channels as it did with values. The relative positions of the darks, midtones, and lights are still the same in the curve dialog. The primary difference now is that you can control the contribution of color in specific tonal regions of your image.

Value, Red, Green, Blue channel picker

You choose which channel you want to adjust from the “Channel” drop-down.

To begin demonstrating what happens here it helps to have an idea of generally what effect you would like to apply to your image. This is often the hardest part of adjusting the color tones if you don’t have a clear idea to start with.

For example, perhaps we wanted to “cool” down the shadows of our image. “Cool” shadows are commonly seen during the day in shadows out of direct sunlight. The light that does fall in shadows is mostly reflected light from a blue-ish sky, so the shadows will trend slightly more blue.

To try this, let’s adjust the Blue channel to be a little more prominent in the darker tones of our image, but to get back to normal around the midtones and lighter.

Boosting blues in darker tones

Pushing up blues in darker tones (mouseover for original).

Now, here’s a question: If I wanted to “cool” the darker tones with more blue, what if I wanted to “warm” the lighter tones by adding a little yellow?

Well, there’s no “Yellow” curve to modify, so how to approach that? Have a look at this HSV color wheel below:

The thing to look out for here is that opposite your blue tones on this wheel, you’ll find yellow. In fact, for each of the Red, Green, and Blue channels, the opposite colors on the color wheel will show you what an absence of that color will do to your image. So remember:

Red → Cyan Green → Magenta Blue → Yellow

What this means to you while manipulating curves is that if you drag a curve for blue up, you will boost the blue in that region of your image. If instead you drag the curve for blue down, you will be removing blues (or boosting the Yellows in that region of your image).

So to boost the blues in the dark tones, but increase the yellow in the lighter tones, you could create a sort of “reverse” S-curve in the blue channel:

Boost blues in darks, boost yellow in high tones (mouseover for original).

In the green channel for instance, you can begin to introduce more magenta into the tones by decreasing the curve. So dropping the green curve in the dark tones, and letting it settle back to normal towards the high tones will produce results like this:

Suppressing the green channel in darks/mids adds a bit of magenta (mouseover for original).

In isolation, these curves are fun to play with, but I think that perhaps walking through some actual examples of color toning/grading would help to illustrate what I’m talking about here. I’ll choose a couple of common toning examples to show what happens when you begin mixing all three channels up.

Color Toning/Grading

Orange and Teal Hell

I use the term grading here because the first adjustment we will have a look at to illustrate curves is a horrible hollywood trend that is best described by Todd Miro on his blog.

“Grading” is a term for color toning on film, and Todd’s post is a funny look at the prevalence of orange and teal in modern film palettes. So it’s worth a look just to see how silly this is (and hopefully to raise awareness of the obnoxiousness of this practice).

The general thought here is that caucasian skin tones trend towards orange, and if you have a look at a complementary color on the color wheel, you’ll notice that directly opposite orange is a teal color.

Screenshot from Kuler borrowed from Todd

If you don’t already know about it, Adobe has online a fantastic tool for color visualization and palette creation called Kuler. It lets you work on colors based on some classic rules, or even generate a color palette from images. Well worth a visit and a fantastic bookmark if you care at all about color.

So a quick look at the desired effect would be to keep/boost the skin tones into a sort of orange-y pinkish color, and to push the darker tones into a teal/cyan combination. (Colorists on films tend to use a Lift, Gamma, Gain model, but we’ll just try this out with our curves here).

Quick disclaimer - I am purposefully exaggerating these modifications to illustrate what they do. Like most things, moderation and restraint will go a long ways towards not causing your viewers eyeballs to bleed. Remember - light touch! So I know that I want to see my skin tones head into an orange-ish color. In my image the skin tones are in the upper mids/low highs range of values, so I will start around there.

What I’ve done is put a point around the low midtones to anchor the curve closer to normal for those tones. This lets me fiddle with the red channel and to isolate it roughly to the mid and high tones only. The skin tones in this image in the red channel will fall toward the upper end of the mids, so I’ve boosted the reds there. Things may look a little weird at first:

If you look back at the color wheel again, you’ll notice that between red and green, there is a yellow, and if you go a bit closer towards red the yellow turns to more of an orange. What this means is that if we add some more green to those same tones, the overall colors will start to shift towards an orange.

So we can switch to the green channel now, put a point in the lower midtones again to hold things around normal, and slightly boost the green. Don’t boost it all the way to the reds, but about 2/3^rds or so to taste.

This puts a little more red/orange-y color into the tones around the skin. You could further adjust this by perhaps including a bit more yellow as well. To do this, I would again put an anchor point in the low mid tones on the blue channel, then slightly drop the blue curve in the upper tones to introduce a bit of yellow.

Remember, we’re experimenting here so feel free to try things out as we move along. I may consider the upper tones to be finished at the moment, and now I would want to look at introducing a more blue/teal color into the darker tones.

I can start by boosting a bit of blues in the dark tones. I’m going to use the anchor point I already created, and just push things up a bit.

Now I want to make the darker tones a bit more teal in color. Remember the color wheel - teal is the absence of red - so we will drop down the red channel in the lower tones as well.

And finally to push a very slight magenta into the dark tones as well, I’ll push down the green channel a bit.

If I wanted to go a step further, I could also put an anchor point up close to the highest values to keep the brightest parts of the image closer to a white instead of carrying over a color cast from our previous operations.

If your previous operations also darkened the image a bit, you could also now revisit the Value channel, and make modifications there as well. In my case I bumped the midtones of the image just a bit to brighten things up slightly.

Finally to end up at something like this.

After fooling around a bit - disgusting, isn't it? (mouseover for original).

Remember - I am exaggerating things here to illustrate a point. Please don’t do this to your photos. :)

If you’d like to download the curves file of the results we reached above, get it here: Orange Teal Hell Color Curves

Remember, think about what the color curves represent in your image to help you achieve your final results. Begin looking at the different tonalities in your image and how you’d like them appear as part of your final vision.

For even more fun - realize that the colors in your images can help to invoke emotional responses in the viewer, and adjust things accordingly. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine some of the associations between colors and different emotions.

Phew! This might just be the longest post I have ever done here! I feel like I am only just scratching the surface of fun things to talk about on this topic, too. I think I should cut myself off here for the sake of (some sort of) brevity, however.

I will be back soon with further discussion on this topic - especially emulation of some different films as well as some well known (and often overused) processes (cough Cross Process cough). I also promise some better examples and more subtle applications in my next post.

In the meantime, have a read about emulating film types: Petteri Sulonen - Simulating Film Effects with Curves I have been absolutely in love with his Portra film emulation color curves for anything with a human being in it.

As always, I welcome any feedback or thoughts in the comments!

Slow Light (Light Painting)

Fri, 25 May 2012 10:02:00 -0500

Still there after all these years by Pat David on Flickr.

A while back I was too cheap (lazy?) to get around to purchasing some speedlights and in typical DIY fashion for me, I figured I could replicate most results using nothing more than a flashlight. So one evening with my friend Sean and his wife, we decided to try out some long exposure light painting ideas.

To be clear, the term “light painting” is often used to describe painting light onto an image where the bulb is visible, and used to create something visual in the final result. This is NOT what I am referring to here. I’ve seen plenty that are nice, but I don’t personally have much interest in doing this:

Light Painting by VFS Digital Design on Flickr.

As far as I’m concerned, the definitive “light painting” of this type was done years ago by Picasso:

Pablo Picasso draws a centaur in the air Vallauris, France, 1949 Gjon Mili

I absolutely love the quality of the light fall-off when using nothing more than a flashlight to illuminate a scene during a long exposure. The ability to move around and to selectively place light wherever you want it at whatever intensity you desire is surprisingly fun once you get started. So let’s get started…

Monica, Tea, and Sean with a flashlight by Pat David on Flickr.

To illustrate what I mean, the lead image and the one above were shot with a 12 & 10 second exposure respectively. In the top one, I had a remote for the shutter (in my right hand) and Seans wife Monica used a small handheld LED flashlight to illuminate us. In the second image of Monica, I started the exposure and Sean used the same flashlight to throw light on different areas (you can even see small trails where the flashlight bulb was visible in the frame).

To be fair, it was a pain to hold those poses as still as we could, but the final result was worth it, I think.

Monica being very patient... by Pat David on Flickr.

There is no vignette applied post in the image above, that is all purely a function of the light falloff of the flashlight as I tried to illuminate Monica.

This technique is especially fun and useful for still life images and static objects. For instance, I could have broken out a light tent/box to illuminate my space marine hack job below, but it was easier just to set the camera on the table with an 8 second exposure, and to use a small LED book reading light that I waved around the miniature to “paint” the light onto it.

Oh God, Not Again by Pat David on Flickr.

As to the technique, it’s not very complicated. The trick is to think about the light you want over a several second long exposure vs. a faster exposure. With more time you can build the light up in intensity and layers to achieve your final result.

I will usually frame up my image with the lights on first, then kill all the ambient lights in the room, and begin the exposure. Having a remote, or setting the shutter to fire on a delay is very helpful to minimize vibrations that would cause ghosting issues. I usually use the 12 second delay on my camera (Olympus E-P1).

Then just begin “painting” the light onto your subject. If you get creative enough, you can recreate results that might not be very easy or possible using any other type of lighting.

It may take a few tries to get a feel for the exposure. I usually count off seconds in my head as I light a portion of the subject to give me a rough estimate to go by, and once I have a look at the results will adjust accordingly. You’ll also probably want to start out by having the source light located in the same general area, then branch out to lighting from two or more directions.

This was lit primarily from two general areas. Oranges No. 3 by Pat David on Flickr.

A few random thoughts…

I personally try to get my exposures around a time that gives me ample time to light the subject the way I want to. Between 10 and 20 seconds is usually pretty normal for me, but I’ve moved up into the 30 second range on occasion. The only thing to watch out for is sensor noise (shooting a dark frame can alleviate this problem later in post).

If you’re shooting a person, they really, really need to hold still.

Be aware of ambient light. This is actually harder than you think. At a 20 second exposure you might be quite surprised at the level of ambient light that can be picked up.

LCS-1 USS Freedom Zippo Light Painted by Pat David on Flickr.

If you’re looking to try a new photography technique one evening, this is a really fun one to try out that doesn’t really require any other equipment (besides a camera and flashlight), and can really produce some neat results. I wholeheartedly encourage you to give it a try!

If you need some more inspiration, you can feel free to check out my Light Painting set on Flickr, or…

As a side note, I started a Flickr group a while back called Slow Light specifically for images lit with a handheld light. If you’re on Flickr come on by and check us out.

As a parting gift, have a gander at one of Denis Savoie’s incredible light painted images in the group.

On the Edge of Perdition by Denis Savoie, on Flickr

ImageMagick Batch Convert Files

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:38:00 -0500

I recently shot a wedding for a friend and found myself with a few hundred images in RAW format, of which I processed the handful that I liked. Due to Flickr increasing the maximum file sizes you can upload to 50MB, I went ahead and saved my final results as lossless PNG images.

However, I also wanted to upload the images to a photo printing service that apparently does not accept PNGs as a valid photo file. (stupid AdoramaPix…).

So the question became, how can I batch convert all of the PNG images into JPG images on the windows command line?

I already had ImageMagick installed (and highly recommend it if you ever need to do batch image processing on your machine). So the question now becomes, how can I use IMs convert command to do this?

The answer is right here:

for %f in (*.png) do (convert %f -quality 100 %~nf.jpg)

What a royal PITA it was tracking this down. In a nutshell:

for %f in (*.png)

For each variable (f in my case) in all the files that end in .png in my current directory…

do (convert %f -quality 100

convert the file with a quality of 100…

%~nf.jpg)

and name the output the original file name plus .jpg as an extension. That last bit was a real pain to get right, and required me looking into the Microsoft documentation of FOR.

So, if you happen to be on windows, and have Imagemagick installed - here is the solution to batch converting images in a directory.

Oh, and you can expand the types of images and lump them all together at once. For instance, instead of *.png, you could have told it to do .png and .tif images:

for %f in (*.png *.tif) …

Hopefully this snippet will be useful to some fellow traveler… (relevant xkcd)

On Little Planets

Tue, 01 May 2012 15:33:00 -0500

Wee Mobile Alabama (Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception), a photo by avhell on Flickr.

I’ve been a fan of shooting panoramic images for as long as I’ve had a digital camera. Usually out of a desire to expand the capabilities of early fixed focal length point and shoot cameras to get a wider view of the world. Taken to its logical extreme, we get images like these!

If this is your first time seeing one of these “Wee Planets”, it may seem a bit strange to wrap your head around (pun intended). This is basically a full 360° by 360° panorama. It might make more sense if you view it projected equirectangular instead:

Equirectangular projection of the same panoramic image

Once all the images are captured to fully view the scene in a full sphere, you can re-map the resulting panorama to any projection type you would like. In the case of the planet, the panorama projection was to be stereographic with one of the poles centered in the resulting image (the ground directly beneath my tripod).

These are a lot of fun to make, and can be quite striking once you are familiar with how they work. In my case I just used my tripod (no panoramic head), and proceeded to shoot 44 different overlapping images, creating a complete map of images surrounding my camera location.

Some people will advocate the use of a panoramic head, like the Nodal Ninja seen on the left. The point of devices like this is to keep nasty parallax issues from cropping up between object of different distances from the lens (there is a point sometimes referred to as the “nodal point” or the “entrance pupil” about which if you rotate, there should be no parallax issues between images - here is a great tutorial on finding one for your camera on a panoramic head).

I was in a park with no objects in my foreground, so I opted to not bother with a pano head, and just went with a normal tripod - figuring I would let the software work it out for me mostly. I am pretty pleased with the results overall (though I did need to manually tweak a few things, it wasn’t too bad).

Speaking of which, the software I’ve been using for years is the open source project Hugin. This is basically my go-to software for just about any advanced image manipulation geometrically. I’ve used it for panoramas, of course, but I’ve also found it really useful for re-projecting other images and for correcting lens distortions when dealing with RAW files from my camera.

Two views of the Van Antwerp Building in Mobile, AL using Hugin

I’m not up to writing a tutorial just yet on how I approach these panoramas, but I will in the future. In the meantime, here is another of my office building (notice how objects/building closer to you will appear more prominently on the “horizon”):

University of South Alabama - Technology & Research Park by avhell on Flickr.

And yet another in a backyard full of beautiful trees:

4^th of July Wee by avhell on Flickr.

For more, check out the Group Pool of “Create Your Own Planets” on Flickr…

Don't Try This at Home

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:30:00 -0500

At least I can say that I haven’t done this (yet) when photographing my daughter.

This is a seriously close call, but she still made it in time!

(via PetaPixel)

Getting Around in GIMP - Polaroid 600 Film Border Script

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:40:00 -0500

Azalea Trail Maids in Mobile, Alabama.

A while back I had written up a post and some Script-Fu for GIMP to emulate the colors I was seeing from very expired Polaroid 600 Instant film. That older post is here:

Getting Around in GIMP - Expired Polaroid 600 Film Effect

I basically loved the nasty color cast and funky things that part of the image did where the developer had dried up in the packets, and there wasn’t enough left to fully cover and develop the entire image area. If you head on over to that post, you’ll find what I did as well as color curves and some other Script-Fu to automatically apply those colors and degradations to your images. It’s also located at the GIMP Plugin Registry right here.

As part of creating that script, I also wanted to create a more realistic looking border script that would emulate the embossed patterns found on the original 600 Polaroid film.

Azalea Trail Maids (from behind) in Mobile, Alabama.

I had a few requirements that I wanted to meet, though. I was still cutting my teeth on Script-Fu, so I wanted it to be a script. I also wanted to make sure that the script could be run on almost any image, regardless of image size, and I wanted the embossing pattern to emulate the real stuff and to scale correctly based on the size of the image.

So I worked on it a while, and then promptly forgot about it.

Well, I recently came across this script again and figured I should get it out into the wild before it completely bit rots on my hard drive. It works, and manages to hit all of my personal requirements, though there were a few more things I wanted to play with.

So, this script will automatically create the correctly sized Polaroid 600 borders for you, and do all scaling so the embossing pattern is the right size as well.

The dimensions of the borders and image area are dependent on your image width.

That previous line is important. This script will not work correctly if your image is wider than taller. To get around this you can just crop your image to make the height taller than width, then move the borders around over your full size image. Just try it, you’ll see what I mean.

The lovely Ariel Fulmer again, image courtesy of Evolutions Photography

You can also run the script on a new, blank image where you can set the dimensions for the image to whatever you’d like (as long as the height is greater than the width), then add any image as a layer to that under everything.

Enough talk. You can find the script for this border effect over on the GIMP Plugin Registry here:

Polaroid Border Creation (based on image width) with Texture

or you can download the script directly.

It might take a few moments to run, but let it do its thing and it should get there.

Hopefully this will prove useful to others! If you have any questions or comments, let me know below.

Visualize Photography Lighting Setups in Blender

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 12:38:00 -0600

The most patient portrait model in the world…

Not too long ago I finally got around to picking up a decent manual flash for exploring lighting and speedlight techniques. I picked up a Yongnuo YN-560 Speedlight Flash for Canon and Nikon, and my friend Sean was kind enough to send me his old radio triggers to play with. I was mostly all set to start exploring the world of off-camera lighting…

I say mostly because though I had a rough understanding of how I wanted to use the light, I was not well versed on what could be done with it. So I spent a bit of time on the Flickr Strobist Group, and read through all of the Lighting courses on the Strobist site. There is an absolute wealth of information on the site, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Having a reference for how the contribution of different types of light will affect the final outcome is very handy for me. I’ve seen people who have taken the time to setup lighting diagrams where they will modify a given light for direction/angle, and cycle through many possibilities to help as a reference (Here is one cheat-sheet from DIY Photography).

This is nice, but what if I wanted to visualize the effect multiple lights will have all simultaneously? I guess I could go and shoot every, possible, variation, but I am really lazy. Plus, I don’t have access to a model with the patience to sit there while I fiddle with multiple lights, multiple times.

It occurred to me that I already had a great tool for doing this visualization already installed on my computer. That tool is Blender 3D. I already had been using this open source 3D modelling tool for some time, and was familiar enough with it to be comfortable emulating my lighting setups. All I needed was a good model. Infinite Realities released a full 3d scan by Lee Perry-Smith that was graciously licensed under CC-BY. This gave me a full 3D scan of a head & shoulders with the UV maps already created for textures, and a normal map to use for bumping. Perfect!

I loaded up the model and textures, and proceeded to create some lights in Blender that would mimic lights I might use in the real world.

I focused first on a softbox. I have a DIY 24" softbox I put together ages ago that I used as a primary light for some time. I wanted to emulate what I was getting as a result from that lightbox, virtually.

24 inch softbox 45° cam left, up 30°

Moi

What’s cool, though, is that I can now add any other type of light that I want easily to see what the effect will look like. Say I wanted to add a kicker behind me on the shadow side of that softbox?

24 inch softbox 45° cam left, up 30° with kicker behind ~ 45°

Or place 2 identical softboxes to either side of the subject…

24 inch softbox left and right of subject.

I can also emulate the effect of other types of light modifiers. If I wanted to use a ringflash only, I could do this…

Ringflash (or beauty dish if I wanted).

Or I could try any combination my heart desires! In this case, what about a clamshell setup, where I vary the power of the lower half of the setup…

Clamshell - top and bottom same power (both 24 inch softboxes)

Clamshell - top full power, bottom 25% (both 24 inch softboxes)

Clamshell - top full power, bottom 30% & kickers

I could go on and on with examples, but I think you get the idea.

Now, I’ll go ahead and leave the .blend file here for anyone to download and use. Don’t forget that you’ll need to grab Blender as well (download Blender here).

Download the .blend (Google Docs - File → Download) [27MB]

A few quick words of note to help out if you’re new to Blender. Right-click will select an object (it will turn orange). The “A” key will select all, and cycle to select none if you hit it again.

The softbox shown in the initial startup is set to always point at the model (so is the camera, btw), and to stay a set distance from them (approximately 2 feet). With the object selected (like the softbox), the “G” key will allow you to move it in a view, and the “R” key will allow you to rotate it in a view. The main window is what the camera is seeing, and there are side and top views right next to it.

Most importantly, the F12 function key will render your image for you!

I did intend to try to make this more user-friendly. The key word there was “intend” as it’s a royal PITA to do so. I may fiddle with it more if there is any response or interest, and try to help out where I can.

Lighting Maps

In the meantime, I generated the obligatory light map cheat sheet from all of the different renders. There are three here, one for the softbox level, at 30°, and at 60°. All of them move the softbox around the subject in 5° increments.

Softbox Level with subject, 5° increment rotation. (Download full size)

Softbox 30° with subject, 5° increment rotation. (Download full size)

Softbox 60° with subject, 5° increment rotation. (Download full size)

Feel free to use these cheat sheets however you see fit! Hopefully this will be helpful to at least a few people who might be brave enough to tackle the Blender interface to try this out. I know it’s been quite helpful for me to be able to quickly setup a scene and visualize what it will look like ahead of time!

Bonus

I’ve zipped up all of the individual .png renders that I used to make the light maps with above. You can use these in your favorite image editors to combine them to see the effects of multiple lights on the model (open one version you like, then add another version as a new layer above it and change it’s blending mode to “Screen”.

Download 0° .zip
Download 30° .zip
Download 60° .zip

These are hosted on Google Docs, so after following the link, hit File → Download.

Enjoy!

Questions or feedback? Let me know in the comments below!

Bonus Bonus!

Jimmy Gunawan has gone ahead and taken this a step further by enabling use of the new Blender Cycles Render engine with this model. If you’re not sure what it’s about - have a look at his youtube video doing the conversion and see how great it is rendering in the viewport the way it does:

You can check out more of his great stuff at Blender Sushi!

Download the cycles version created by Jimmy!

Getting Around in GIMP - Skin Retouching (Wavelet Decompose)

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:07:00 -0600

Image courtesy of (and copyright) Kelly Ealy (mouse over for original).

I have looked around quite a bit for a good method in GIMP to smooth skin for portrait work. I did find a few tutorials, but they all were mainly concerned with using Gaussian blur with a layer mask to “smooth” the skin. The results were almost always less than satisfactory.

(For more examples of this technique at work, have a look at my recent shoot with Mairi! or The Open Source Portrait (Postprocessing))

Then I found the Wavelet Decompose plugin, and the search was mostly over for me.

Hoodie by Erik Olsson (mouse over for original)

I thought it might be helpful to walk through the theory as I approach it for skin retouching/smoothing, and how Wavelet Decompose fits into my workflow.

The main point that I have noticed is that what most people mean by “smooth” skin really means, “smooth” tones. See, real skin has pores, wrinkles, blemishes, etc. In fact, it’s those pores and wrinkles that add “character” to skin. The lack of these features in skin will instantly cause an image to look unrealistic to most eyes.

Martina by Erik Olsson (mouse over for original)

I am very much of the opinion that any modification to skin tones be as transparent as possible - ie: they should not be obvious or immediately noticeable. I personally try to be as natural looking as I can (to my eye at least). Of course, this is a highly subjective thing, and one mans natural is another mans mannequin.

Another mans mannequin.

That is the problem with trying to use a gaussian blur on the base image to “smooth” the skin. You lose a ton of detail and end up with a smeared looking mess. All in an attempt to either smooth the tones of the skin, or to minimize the appearance of pores/wrinkles. Many times, both to some degree. If only there was some way to be able to modify the tones of the skin separately from the pores and wrinkles (and separate again from blemishes or freckles).

Oh, that’s right, I mentioned Wavelet Decompose earlier!

If you want to practice some of the things I will be talking about, Flickr user Erik Olsson has licensed both Hoodie and Martina as CC-BY-SA-NC. I’d recommend going to grab one of those images (because really, who doesn’t like looking at pretty Swedish girls?). The first image was graciously provided by Kelly Ealy for demonstration here, and was offered on this Model Mayhem practice thread.

Wavelet Decompose

What the WD filter plugin will do is to separate your layer into multiples layers with different sized details on each one and a final residual layer with all the rest of the information. Each of these layers is set to recombine using the Grain merge layer mode, meaning that each layer is added to the previous one to build back up to the final image. This means that we can suppress data at a certain scale level to keep it from contributing to our final reconstructed image.

This is basically frequency separation on your image.

If you’re not sure what that means, it might help to see it in action. We’ll use a 100% crop from Martina above:

The base layer 100% crop.

Now, running Wavelet Decompose on the layer and leaving the default options the way they are, we get 6 new layers: Wavelet Scale 1-5 and a Wavelet Residual layer. Let’s take a look at each layer to see what we get:

Wavelet Residual

This residual layer is what is left over after all of the detail scale layers have been removed. Notice that it represents the global contrast and colors in the image.

Wavelet scale 5

Wavelet scale 5 is the largest details layer in this example. From here on each of the subsequent scale levels down to 1 will only contain finer and finer details from the image on their own. Look carefully at her skin on her cheek here. You’ll notice that individual pores don’t really show up on this scale, but the overall skin tones show up more. If the skin is “blotchy” or uneven in tone, it will show up very noticeably on this scale. I have found often that this scale level will often impact the overall perception of smooth skin tones more than any other, and it is usually here that I will start my editing.

Wavelet scale 4

Wavelet scale 4 shows some more overall skin tones and texture with just a hint of the pores coming through. Between this scale level and scale 5 is where I do most of my work. Rarely do I need to modify any of the lower scales unless I am targeting specific blemishes.

Wavelet scale 3

Pores are beginning to really become obvious now at this scale. This would be the largest pores in her face, and this scale is the contributor for the largest size.

Wavelet scale 2

The mid-size of the pores are very clear at this scale. Finer features like wrinkles will also show up clearly on this layer.

Wavelet scale 1

It may be hard to see, but the finest details reside here. These are the smallest scale contributors to the pores and fine lines. Stray hairs will sometimes individually show up here as well. (You can make out her eyelashes very nicely in this scale level for instance).

What you want to remember is that each of the scale layers is set to Grain merge layer mode, meaning each layer will intensify with the layer below it, all building up down to the wavelet residual (which is in Normal blending mode). I mention this because if you wanted to remove features from one of the scale levels you can easily just set your foreground color to medium gray RGB(128,128,128), and anywhere you paint on a scale level will remove those details.

If you try this on your own, a good way to understand what is happening is to turn off all the layers in your image, then turn on each of the scale layers starting from the smallest (Wavelet scale 1), one at a time. This way you will be able to see what the contribution of each layer is to the final result.

Retouching skin (in practice)

So, how can we use this information to help us retouch our images? Well, there are a couple of things to keep in mind before getting started…

The number of scales you use will be dependent on your image dimension size, and the relative size of features in it. I don’t have any rules to help you decide this, but increasing the number of scales will give you a larger number of smaller frequency separations to work with. If you’re just starting out I recommend staying with the default of 5 scales until you are comfortable with this technique.

I personally try to use as light a hand as possible, to avoid destroying too much detail in the skin. A good rule of thumb is, if it looks right to you, then it’s too much - make it more subtle.

So, using the Martina image from above, I will open the image in GIMP, and run:

Filters → Generic → Wavelet decompose…

Leaving all of the defaults will leave me with 5 wavelet scales and a residual.

Remember you can use Shift-click on a layers visibility to isolate just that layer to view.

I will often do this with the residual and scale 5 layer to get a feel for what types of objects lie in those frequencies visually.

Now I will leave all the layers visible, and will begin using the Free Select Tool to begin selecting a portion of the face that I want to adjust. I will usually try to keep similar-sized features together, and will also try to follow the contours of the face and light. Once selected, I will also feather the selection by a good sized radius (around 30px radius in this example).

Once I have a region selected, I will then activate the highest Wavelet scale I have (5 in this case), and will try applying a gaussian blur to that layer. Choice of a blur radius is arbitrary, but I’ll usually try to blur enough to smooth out the tones on this layer, but not to completely obliterate them. I finally chose 33px in this example. Keep in mind that subsequent scales will also be blurred, and the effect is additive to the final image.

Gaussian Blur, 33px radius on Wavelet scale 5 (mouse over to compare original).

Now with the same selection still, I will activate the next Wavelet scale layer down (4 for me), and will apply another Gaussian blur here as well. I generally tend to aim for approximately 1/2 - 1/4 of the previous blur radius. I finally decided on a 13px radius here.

Gaussian Blur, 13px radius on Wavelet scale 4 (mouse over to compare original so far).

The thing to notice when working on these largest scales first is that the underlying tones of the skin will begin evening out. If there is blotchiness, liver spots, sun damage, etc. those features can be softened or removed without affecting smaller features like pores as much. If this were me, I would stop here and begin pixel-level dodging and burning to clean up other things to my liking.

But, since we are learning, let’s keep going and try blurring features on Wavelet scale 3 to see the effect.

Gaussian Blur, 6px radius on Wavelet scale 3.

If we used an even bigger radius on Wavelet scale 3, the effects get a little jarring:

Gaussian Blur, 16px radius on Wavelet scale 3.

This is what I mean when I say a light touch is really best. The 16px blur on Wavelet scale 3 blew us right past nice, neutral retouching into mannequin territory (and I don’t want to have to link another mannequin image).

What’s nice about using Wavelet Decompose is that on each of the scale layers, a neutral gray (128, 128, 128) color will suppress that feature at that scale level (effectively removing it). This means that you can grab a brush with gray, and selectively paint over blemishes or features that you want to suppress. Instead of using a blur, I could have used a brush with gray, and painted on her skin at each level with varying opacity to suppress those features.

This gives you pixel-level control of features directly with a simple brush, and the fact that the layers recombine with Grain merge layer modes means that you can see the results of what you are doing immediately on the image.

Once I am happy with a region of skin, I will then select a new region to begin working on, and will follow the same steps outlined above to get a result that I like. I like to break up a face into different areas based on the light and skin features. For instance, I will usually work on cheeks and just below the eyes separately from the nose, chin, and forehead. It’s really a personal preference rather than a rule, though.

Remember to zoom out and get a look/feel for the result from afar - sometimes you can get too zoomed into a region and not realize what is going on.

I’ve included the .xcf file with my selection still active from the examples above. It already has the gaussian blurs on scale 4 and 5 done (but not 3).

Download the GIMP .xcf.bz2 file of the example (2MB).
(Just save it and open it directly with GIMP)

Hopefully this has been helpful to some of you out there. With a little perseverance we can eliminate the use of globular gaussian blurs over entire images as a technique for mangling skin. This is a very powerful method of image manipulation and does have other uses as well - did anyone notice that Wavelet scale 1 is a really nice high-pass layer for your image? Bet you could use it for some nice sharpening if you wanted! ;)

Experimentation is key here! Don’t be afraid to try things out!

Questions or feedback? Let’s here about it in the comments.

Getting Around in GIMP - Contour Painting

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:13:00 -0500

Similar to using dodging and burning is something I like to call “Contour Painting”. It’s basically dodging and burning (d&b), but with an eye towards contours of the subject in a photo. I will use this very often in shots with skin, and a great example of this would be a nice cheesecake pin-up style image!

Lovely pin-up pose! (mouseover to see the final result)

First off, I want to thank Evolutions Photography for graciously allowing me to use this wonderful image as part of my tutorial. The model is the lovely Ariel Fulmer (Arielita on ModelMayhem). Make up artist is DmarieBelleza, and the hair stylist is Anna Marie De Almeida. I originally came across this image in the ModelMayhem Digital Art & Retouching Challenge forum in this thread.

Planning

For the most part, the lighting in your image should already indicate how the major contours of your subjects are lit. This should be the baseline by which you begin enhancing those highlights/darks to begin adding shape. Remember - you will usually want to approach this with a light hand at first.

You should also have an idea of how strong you want the effect to be. If it’s highly exaggerated it tends to look more like a mannequin or illustration in some cases, if it’s subtle it can nicely highlight those portions of your images. If I am using it on a more natural image I will use it lightly on faces and to slightly enhance the shapes of interest (bare skin or interesting textures/folds in clothing).

With an image like this pinup, I want to push things to be more exaggerated for a very stylized look (see this search on Vargas for examples of what I am aiming for).

Looking at Contours

The trick to this method is an understanding of where the light is primarily coming from in your image, and what the shape of the objects are. This is best illustrated in images with a single light source (but can be used on just about any image), as you can easily tell where the highlights are on an object.

What you want to notice is: what is the shape of your object, and how do you want to enhance it in your final image?

At the end of the tutorial is a link to the GIMP file I used while making this tutorial.

Dodging & Burning

The basic premise behind dodging and burning (d&b) is to manipulate the exposure in certain areas of a photo. In the old days we would actually do this on an enlarger by using something to limit the amount of light hitting our print (dodging), or by masking other areas of a print to allow extra light to pass through on certain portions (burning).

In the digital realm, GIMP has a specific Dodge / Burn tool for this. It is nice to quickly touch up an area, but works destructively on your image (it alters the pixels of the underlying image without a means for easy adjustment). We can achieve the same effect (mostly) by using extra layers set in Overlay (or Soft Light) blend mode.

With a new layer over our original image in Overlay mode, we can then paint with white and black values to selectively darken or lighten the areas we want. It’s far easier to show this process rather than explain it, so on we go!

Set Up

The nice thing about this approach of using Overlay layers is that you can leave your base image underneath all the layers for different manipulations (like color changes), without affecting your d&b work.

Add a New Layer (Shift + Ctrl + N or Layer → New Layer…) to your image above any existing layers.

Make the “Layer Fill Type” Transparency.

I will usually name the layer something descriptive (“Legs” in this case) so I know which layer does what. This is helpful because you may use differing amounts of blur later for different regions.

Change the layer blend Mode to Overlay.

Now we are set up to begin painting over our image.

Contour Painting

This is where you want to pay attention to what the light is doing to the subject of your photograph. We’ll start with highlighting portions of the image we want to pop a little bit (this is basically a “dodging” action).

The models legs are really the stand-out portion of this image, so we will start there. Here are the legs before anything is done to them:

Our original image.

From this view I can determine that I would like to highlight the shape of her legs, and perhaps enhance the volume a bit.

To do so, I will highlight the legs to exaggerate the lighting as it comes from directly in front of the model (notice how the center of the legs are well lit, with a fall-off of light as you approach the edges).

If you look closely, you’ll see that the contour/shape of her leg is well defined by the light hitting the front. That is the guide to where we are going to paint on the highlights (dodging).

Choose your favorite painting tool, and set your foreground color to White. Remember - painting on this Overlay layer means that white will lighten, black will darken, and middle gray will do nothing to the underlying layers.

Painting on the contours.

I like to use the Paintbrush tool with a Fuzzy Circle scaled larger to allow me to lay a big stroke of paint at first.

Now paint white onto your “Legs” layer following the contours of her leg.

I don’t have to be pixel-perfect just yet, because I am going to be blurring this white overlay in a moment to soften up those edges. I just aim to get the highlights along the most important areas.

This should get your roughly to where you are wanting to go.

After applying Gaussian Blur (88px radius). Mouseover to see the Dodge Layer.

Now I apply a Gaussian Blur to the “Legs” layer to feather out the effect even further. This smooths out the transition, and makes it all look just a bit more natural.

The blur radius depends on the image size and painting size, but in general I try to make it large-ish. In this case it was 88px.

Now those legs are looking sort of shiny!

We could stop here, but to exaggerate the effect even further, we can use burning to cause the edges of the legs to drop even darker than they already are.

Painted and blurred ‘burning’ along the edges.

To begin burning the edges of those legs, I’ll add another new transparent layer to the image in Overlay mode. This time I’ll name it “Legs Dark”.

I’ll keep using the same brush, but now I will change my foreground color to black (or any other value darker than gray, to taste).

I will now paint (burn) with a fuzzy brush just along the outside edges of the leg, following its contour again. I don’t usually brush right along the edge, but rather just outside so I just kiss the edges with a little fuzzy black.

I sometimes apply another Gaussian Blur to the dark layer (this is highly subjective and up to you). In this case I did apply the blur - 88px again.

After erasing the burn layer from other objects (like her left foot).

In places where the foreground leg overlaps the background leg, I will then go back and use the Eraser Tool to remove any unwanted burning from the background or other objects (the background in this image is white, so it makes it a bit easier).

Notice the models left foot is now not as dark from spill-over after I erased the burning layer from it.

Also notice that I have only done the right leg at this point. When multiple areas I am burning overlap, I will approach each one on it’s own layer to isolate the work I have to do. So to do her left leg, I would create another transparent overlay layer just to work on her left leg.

Burning the left leg, after cleaning up with eraser.

After repeating the same procedure with a new burning layer, the left leg looks pretty good.

This was done on another Legs layer (“Legs Dark 2” in this case), which allowed me to separately control the amount of spillover with erasing, and will also allow me to independently control the opacity of each leg (to give me even more control over the final result).

That is basically all of the steps in what I call “Contour Painting”. To finish this image off, I would basically repeat all of these steps for each area of interest where I want to paint and enhance the shapes and contour of our model.

The body with no contour painting yet.

To keep the overall shape highlights consisten, I will continue thinking in terms of highlighting the peak areas of skin (basically to keep a consistent look with the legs).

I will apply highlighting to her arms and portions of her face next, as well as the exposed portions of her stomach.

Contour painted highlights on her body.

A couple of new layers and some more contour painting produces this.

Again, a rather high-ish radius was used for the Gaussian Blurs in these cases (~66px this time around - and even smaller when doing finer details like her fingers).

The nice thing about using many layers for these operations is that I can now control the opacity and strength of the effect in different regions independently.

Finally some burning along the contours of her body, along with some added highlights in the hair.

After fiddling a bit more and then adjusting each layer’s opacity until I got something I liked, we end up with this (mouse over the image to compare it to the original):

Mouse over the image to see the original.

There is still more yet to do to call this a finished image, as we haven’t even touched color effects or pushing the background to pure white, but those are tutorials for another day.

Remember, I used this type of image because we can approach it with a heavy hand and still get results that look good. Also, try thinking about this technique in different terms that aren’t so large. You can use the exact same procedures on features that are much smaller to adjust the local contrasts in whatever scale you’d like. (For instance, if I could have spent time dodging and burning every little fold of cloth in her top, or been more specific with her hair).

If you’ve followed me all the way down here, I have a treat for you: My full .xcf.bz2 GIMP file that I used to create this tutorial so you can fiddle with it yourselves!

I know this tutorial has been long, but hopefully some people will find it useful in some way. After practicing a bit you might find it a regular part of your workflow! If you think it’s been helpful, consider scrolling back up and hitting the “Donate” button (or maybe visit an ad). It helps feed my caffeine addiction!

This basic method can be used on just about any image that you take to give you even more control over the final results. Similar results could be obtained using local contrast enhancements, for instance, but this method really lets you decide where those enhancements could best be targeted.

I have found this also works to great effect on children’s skin (which should appear smooth and soft anyway), and I will usually do some sort of contour painting on most of my images (even if it’s just a tiny amount). Here are just a couple of other examples where I used this same technique:

Leila Being Devoured by Beverly, a photo by avhell on Flickr. (Mouseover to see original).

Whitney, a photo by avhell on Flickr.

Lauren, a photo by avhell on Flickr. (Mouseover to see original).

Mobile Gothic, a photo by avhell on Flickr.

DIY Ringflash Tests

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:44:00 -0500

I recently had a party at my house for some co-workers of my wife, and managed to get a few of them to let me shoot some quick photos using my DIY ringflash. These are the results.

Whitney, a photo by avhell on Flickr.

Considering that I constructed the ringflash from 2 bowls bought at a dollar store, and an old plastic cup, I’m pleasantly surprised at the results. I still need to place diffusion material over the front to help soften the light a bit, but the overall effect is pleasing. I’ll have a DIY tutorial on how I built the ringflash, as well as my softbox shortly.

To Randi, a photo by avhell on Flickr.

The rest of my DIY ringflash tests are here in my Flickr set.

Getting Around in GIMP - Luminosity Masks

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:29:00 -0500

There was a recent thread on the GIMP users forum at Flickr on how to generate luminosity masks (and use them I suppose). I figured I would chime in a bit here with how I generate and use them in my own workflow. There is an older and interesting discussion about Luminosity Masks by Tony Kuyper that was referenced in that thread, and this is a translation of sorts for GIMP users that want to accomplish the same thing. The original tutorial by Tony is here: Tony Kuyper’s Luminosity Masks Tutorial

The basic premise of luminosity masks is to allow you to modify elements of a layer masked to a specific region of luminosity (or value). If I wanted to control the colors in the shadows of my image without modifying the mid tones or light tones, then this is the method you want. Similarly you can adjust just the mid tones, or light tones without affecting the other regions as well.

If you are new to layer masks (or need to brush up), I recommend you head to Getting Around in GIMP - Layer Masks to brush up first, then come back.

Some Theory

What we’d like to accomplish is to produce masks for our image that target a specific tonal range (lights, mids, or darks). This way, we can make adjustments to the image on a layer, and to use the masks to only apply those changes to certain areas (based on luminosity or value). The nice thing about using our image as the base for the mask is that the tonal ranges in the image will provide a smooth transition between the different layer masks.

Even though you may want to modify some aspect of the lighter portions of your image, it will be hard to tell where that effect is applied as it fades to a gray or black. Don’t worry if this sounds strange, it will become clear before long…

To illustrate what we want, I am going to create a simple image with a gradient that goes from full white to full black:

Lights Mask

Now, across this gradient we may want to make modifications, but restrict them to the lighter values. This is usually the simplest mask to create, and just involves making a desaturated copy of your base image (based on Luminosity). So, create a copy of your base layer, and run:

Colors → Desaturate

and check the box for Luminosity.

After doing this, my gradient image will look exactly the same. I’ll normally rename this layer to something original and creative, like Lights. That’s actually all there is to it! Let’s see it in action, though, to find out how this helps us.

I’m going to create a new layer in my image filled with red, and I am going to turn the visibility off on the other layers. So now my image looks like this:

At this point I will add a layer mask to my red layer by Right-Clicking on the red layer, and choosing Add Layer Mask…. I’ll usually just initialize the mask to White (full opacity), because I’ll be changing it shortly anyway.

Then I will want to copy my Lights layer by activating it (Left-Click on the layer), and then choosing:

Edit → Copy.

Now just paste this into the layer mask on the red layer by activating (Left-Clicking) the red layer mask, then doing:

Edit → Paste.

This will give you a Floating Selection (Pasted Layer) on your layer window, and you can just Right-Click the Floating Selection layer, and choosing Anchor Layer. This will now paste your Lights layer as a layer mask, and you should now see this:

My Layers palette now looks like this:

Basically, we can now change whatever we want on the red layer, and it will only affect the lighter parts of that layer.

Darks Mask

We can produce another mask that will only affect the darker parts of our image by simply inverting the Lights layer. First I’ll duplicate the Lights layer, then invert the colors on that layer:

Colors → Invert

To keep things straight in my head, I’ll find an even more original and interesting name to rename this layer, like Darks.

To show the two masks being applied to my image, I’ll create another new layer below the red layer, and fill it with a nice blue, then add a layer mask, and copy-paste the Darks layer into the layer mask the same way as above.

This results in:

My layers palette for this image:

The reason that they are not perfectly blended exactly in the middle of the gradient is due to the layer ordering on my palette (red above blue). What we are seeing here is that the Lights and Darks layer masks only allow the portions of their layer to show through according to the mask (red shows through the Lights mask, and blue shows through on the Dark mask).

Mids Mask

There is one more mask we can make from these Light and Dark masks, and that is a mask for the Mid tones. This is simply the difference between the Light and Dark masks, inverted:

Lights Mask

Darks Mask

Mids Mask - Difference between Lights and Darks, inverted.

To create this mask easily, just make visible your Lights and Darks layer, then set the one on top (Darks in my example) to layer mode: Difference.

Right-Click on the top layer, and choose New from Visible. Then, invert the colors on the new layer (and name it something interesting… say… Mids).

Darks layer set to Difference mode, then created a new layer from visible, and inverted the new layer colors to get the Mids Mask.

If we now take our image strip one step further and add a green filled layer, and apply the Mids mask to it, we have this:

Solid Red, Green, and Blue layers with all masks applied.

The layers palette:

There is one other thing that bears mentioning here, and that is the range that each mask allows through. The Lights mask you will notice went from pure white, all the way to black, with many shades of gray in between. If you wanted one of your masks to not affect other tones as much, you can simply adjust the mask levels to remove other shades.

For instance, the red layer above the blue layer in the example above showed red extending past the mid tones and into the darker tones. You could clamp each mask to only affect from mid tones to either Light or Dark by adjusting each layer masks levels. You would basically activate a mask, then go to

Colors → Levels…

And set the Input Levels Black Point to 128 (middle gray). This will make the Lights mask stop affecting anything right at the middle gray point.

If you do the same thing to the Darks mask, then each mask will stop affecting anything right at the mid-point of values (they won’t bleed over into each other). If I do this, and hide the green layer, we’ll see:

Lights and Darks mask clamped at the mid point to prevent spill-over.

Layers palette:

The main thing to take away from this is that you can create these masks, and then narrow the range of tonal values they apply to by adjusting their range (using Levels). This can then let you filter out specific tonal ranges in your image to modify, independent of other areas.

A good example to see this in action would be to try some… Split Toning!

Split Toning

In my opinion, this is probably the easiest way to ease into how Luminosity Masks should work. The basic premise behind split toning is that you want to color a black and white image using two different colors: one color for the darks, and another color for the lights. In my example below, we’ll use this image from the Dauphin Street Beer Festival in Mobile, AL.:

Conversation in Hayleys on Flickr (insert funny caption in the comments!)

You can download this image from my Flickr photostream if you’d like.

Now, we need to make some artistic judgements with how we want to split-tone this image. In honor of teal & orange madness, we will use a teal color to tint the dark areas of the image, and a nice orange for the lights.

With our newfound knowledge of how luminosity masks work, this should be a piece of cake, right?

Let’s create those masks…

So load up your image, and duplicate the Background layer.
Desaturate it using Luminosity. This is now your base Lights layer (might want to rename it for clarity).
Duplicate this new Lights layer, and do Colors → Invert to invert it. This is your base Darks layer. Rename it to Darks
This step is optional, but if you wanted to clamp the Lights and Darks layers to not overlap, on each layer of the two layers do a Colors → Levels, and set the black points to 128 (see above).

You should now be looking at a layers palette that looks like this:

Now you have your Lights and Darks masks. The next step would be to add some color to your image. How you go about this is entirely up to you, but I will walk through a simple example.

Turn off all layers except your Background layer.
Copy your Background layer twice (we’ll use one for the cool dark tones, and the other for warm light tones). Name them something descriptive (I’m going to use “Warm” and “Cool”).
Now we need to tint each layer with the appropriate color. We’ll start with the cool layer. You can tint this layer using any method you’d like, but for the purposes of this tutorial I’ll use Colors → Colorize….
Your Cool layer should have a nice blue-ish tint to it right away (if you can’t see it, you may have to hide any layers above it). Let’s get it more teal-like by changing the Hue to about 200 in the Colorize the Image dialog:
Nice, but the entire image is now tinted teal. This is where we can apply the Darks layer mask to restrict the teal tint to the darker tones in the image only.
Add a layer mask to the Cool layer (Right-Click the layer, and choose Add Layer Mask… - you can initialize it to white, we’re going to replace it in a moment.)
Select your Darks layer, and copy it (Edit → Copy).
Now select the Cool layer mask, and paste in the Darks layer you just copied. Right-Click the new Floating Selection (Pasted Layer) and Anchor Layer to apply it. Your image should now change, and you’ll notice that the teal tint is only applied to the darker tones in your image. Halfway there!
Now on to the Warm layer! Select it, and again run Color → Colorize…
This time we want to use a warmer color for the light tones, so set the Hue to around 20. Your layer should have a nice orange-y tone to it.
Apply the Lights layer mask to the Warm layer. Right-Click the Warm layer, and choose Add Layer Mask…, again initializing to white is fine.
Select your Lights layer, and copy it (Edit → Copy).
Select the Warm layer mask, and paste in the Lights layer you just copied. Anchor the Floating Selection to apply it.
That’s it! You should now notice that all the darker tones in your image have a cooler teal color to them, while the highlights will have a warm orange color. The separation of tones is all due to the Lights and Darks layer masks that you’ve applied:

Mouse over the image to see the original.

You could also go a step further here if you’d like and generate a Mid-tones mask as well for further experimentation! I know this has been long, but hopefully it’s been helpful. I will write another post addressing how to further narrow the range of tones in your masks to specifically target even smaller sections of the image.

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments.

Getting Around in GIMP - Layer Masks

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:28:00 -0500

An occasional question comes up concerning the use of Layer Masks for really controlling your edits to an image, and I thought I would approach the basics in this post. This is really a primer before moving into a much cooler topic - Luminosity Masks for controlling tonal ranges in a different way. (The Luminosity Masks tutorial is finished and can be found here!)

On a side note, this is also a method many people use for selective coloring an image. They will generate a desaturated version of their image, then lay a color version over it with a layer mask. You could then use the layer mask to only allow the color version to show where you painted it. (I am not a fan of selective coloring personally, but I’m not writing this post for me…)

Understanding Masks

First up is an understanding of how masks work in the first place.

Fundamentally, layer masks allow you to block out parts of the current layer that you want to show through. That’s pretty much it. In GIMP, a white layer mask means that everything on that layer is visible. Any black in the layer mask will make that portion of your layer completely transparent, and will allow whatever is below to show through.

The power of layer masks is that the transparency of your layer can be controlled by any shade of gray. If you paint on a layer mask with 50% gray, then that portion of your layer will be 50% transparent (and it all scales linearly). Layer masks are purely grayscale affairs, so you can only work in shades of gray.

A quick example should illustrate things nicely here:

Believe it or not, he was sober when he posed for this…

Meet my friend Steven. (Shot as a test of my DIY ringflash during a party). Below the layer of Steven I have put another layer filled with orange. I’ve added a Layer Mask on the layer of Steven, and painted three sections on the Layer Mask (from top to bottom): White, 50% Gray, and Black:

And this is what it looks like as applied to the layer of Steven (remember, the orange layer is below the Steven layer):

And this is what my Layers window looks like at this point:

So as we can see, as the layer mask colors approach black, it makes the current layer more transparent to show what is below it.

I recommend you try this yourself to see what I mean. To add a layer mask to a layer, just Right-Click on the layer, and choose Add Layer Mask… If you’re just experimenting, you can just choose

Initialize Layer Mask to: White

to get started, this will make your entire layer opaque - then paint on black to choose what is transparent (or some other level of gray to control the amount of transparency).

Remember, the currently active layer (or mask) that you are operating on will have a white border in your Layers window (to select a different layer or mask to operate on, just Left Click on it).

Masks Example: Selective Coloring

To begin to see the power of using layer masks, we’ll go through a simple example of Selective Coloring. Perhaps we’d like to have a black and white image of Steven, but only let his garishly red shirt color show…

In that case I would take my base image of Steven, and duplicate the layer of his image (Background in my case). You can duplicate a layer by Right-Clicking on it and choosing Duplicate Layer.

This will give you a new layer called Background copy. Now you can activate that layer by Left-Clicking on it, then turn it to black and white by choosing Colors → Desaturate… from the menus.

You can choose any method to choose the shade of gray (I’m partial to Luminosity most of the time). Then Right-Click on the Background copy layer and choose Add Layer Mask…. I chose to add a White layer mask for full opacity (meaning the layer is completely opaque).

After following these steps you should see your layers looking like this:

Color layer below, B&W layer on top with a white layer mask.

Now we are ready to bring out his shirt! Activate the layer mask by Left-Clicking on it, and choose a nice foreground color to paint with. Because we want his entire red shirt to show through, we’ll choose black for maximum transparency. We basically want to paint in the area where his shirt is with black to make it transparent on this layer, and to allow the layer below to show through (the color layer).

I’m going to use a Paintbrush Tool with a big fuzzy circle to paint over his shirt with.

As you paint you should see that everywhere you paint the red shirt from the layer below comes popping through! After a quick painting session I’ve ended up with something like this:

The mask I painted looks like this:

Remember, I didn’t have to use black as my painting color - if I had used a light gray, I would have let some of the color through, but not as much (leading to a more muted effect). Here is what the same thing looks like, but painted with a light gray instead of black:

The corresponding layer mask now looks like this:

Hopefully this has been a reasonable introduction to layer masks. That’s really all there is to how they work. The power comes from manipulating the mask using other tools and approaches to really gain some amazing control over your image. In particular my next post will focus on creating and using luminosity masks to really control the tonal ranges in your images in a new way!

If you’re ready for it, then head over to the next tutorial on how to start using these masks at Getting Around in GIMP - Luminosity Masks!

Young Frankenstein Minimalist Movie Poster

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:07:00 -0500

Young Frankenstein Minimalist Movie Poster, a photo by avhell on Flickr.

My local independent movie theater the Crescent Theater in Mobile, AL is running a Shocktoberfest movie series of some great horror films. They just so happened to include one of my favorite films of all time in the list, Young Frankenstein!

Having seen some amazing minimalist movie poster art by other people got me thinking about this film, and trying to find a way to distill some iconic portions of the film into something instantly recognizable.

So I came up with these ideas very quickly, and knocked them out in Inkscape as vector graphics. I should probably leave this up to the professionals, but I had a good time playing with the ideas and laying these out!

Young Frankenstein Minimalist Movie Poster, a photo by avhell on Flickr.

While I love the top poster for what could be the funniest scene in the entire movie (I still lose it every time Peter Boyle sings…), the brain image feels like the most iconic for the entire movie. I mean, the entire movie is just the saga of Abby Normal, right?

Speaking of which, I went ahead and got the design setup and available on t-shirts and mugs (Abby Normal, that is) over at CafePress, so if you’re interested in really showing off your love of the movie: Check it out here!

Getting Around in GIMP - Adjusting Levels

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:09:00 -0500

In my previous post on Color Correction, I outlined a method for finding the lightest and darkest values in an image using Colors → Threshold. What I may not have mentioned in that post was that the process described will actually level balance your images for you automatically if you follow the steps (choosing the darkest and lightest pixel values to represent black and white in your image).

If you were just interested in basic level adjustments, I thought I would cover that here.

Results of a basic level adjustment. Original image by Danielle Scott on Flickr.

After a basic level adjustment. Original image by Alexis O'Toole on Flickr.

What Level Adjustments will do is allow you to change where the brightest and darkest pixels in your image are. I say brightest/darkest because Levels will allow you to change the relative value of pixels across your image. (Color correction should be approached using other methods).

This means that you can control the brightest and darkest pixel values across your entire image using only the Levels slider, and you can adjust the gamma. If you don’t adjust the middle level control, the response is linear across your image values. Let’s have a look at the Levels dialog to clarify some items:

Input Levels - The range of values you want from the original image. The histogram represents the distribution of pixel values across your entire image from black (left) to white (right). There are three sliders just below the histogram. The far left slider adjusts where you want the darkest pixel values to be, the far right is the brightest pixel value location, and the middle slider is for gamma.

Output Levels - The range of values you want in your final image. The two sliders here are for the darkest and brightest values in your final output.

Auto, Pick Levels - The auto button, and the pick droppers for manually choosing where the different points should be in your image.

Adjustment via Sliders

Most of the time you will likely want a full range of values to be represented in your final image, so you will leave the output sliders set to the full range (0 - 255). You will make your adjustments entirely in the Input Levels portion of the dialog. You can approach this by using the histogram as a guide to where to set the sliders. The histogram is taller in places where there are a lot of pixels that represent that value. (For instance, if your image is overall very dark, the left side of the histogram will show taller than the rest).

Looking at my sample levels dialog image above, you can see that there doesn’t appear to be many pixels at all in the darkest values. This is seen visually in an image as “washed out” blacks and dark values (this historgram is for the image of the trees and lane above). In this case you would grab the black point slider, and pull it to the right until you are approximately where the darkest values in your histogram begin. What you are doing here is “crushing” the darker pixels to black.

The same thing can be done for the brightest pixels by dragging the white point slider (far right) to the left. I normally leave the gamma alone unless it can produce good results. Usually it will wash out/crush the middle tones, but a slight bump in one direction or the other can sometimes help.

Adjustment via Manual Pick Points

This is a much more intuitive way of adjusting the levels in your image (and is the basis for my Color Correction tutorial). You will use the droppers to visually choose what should be the darkest/lightest/middle gray portions of your image.

The first button in this group is the “Auto” button. This will use GIMPs method of balancing the levels across your image, and will sometimes produce reasonable results. It doesn’t hurt to try it as you can always undo it if you don’t like it.

If it produces bad results or you just want more control, you can move on to the droppers. This is the method I will normally use most often if I’m playing with Levels only. The three droppers are for: Black Point, Middle Gray, and White Point respectively.

Each of the droppers work the same way. When you click on one, you activate it. Hovering your mouse over your current image should show your mouse pointer as an eyedropper tool. This means that wherever you pick in the image you are telling GIMP to make it either black, white, or middle gray (depending on which dropper you are using). GIMP will then adjust the levels in the image to match what you want.

If you have a point in your image that you either know is black (or want to be black), then click on the Black Point eyedropper, and click on the pixels in your image that should be black.

Now, by default, the picker will pick a sample from the pixel you choose, and will sample a radius around the pixel (3 by default I think). You can change the radius around the pixel to your liking by modifying the Radius under Sample Average in your Toolbox.

If you prefer single-pixel precision when setting a black/white/gray point, then simply un-check the Sample Average option in your toolbox. Now you can pick a single pixel to represent black/white/gray.

A final word on the gray point dropper, though. Usually you can easily find places on your photo where you expect a reasonable black or white value to be, and can easily use that as a pick point for the appropriate level. Middle gray is a little bit harder. You need to be sure that the pixels you are choosing really should represent middle gray in your image (RGB: 128 128 128). If they are not close, you will introduce a color cast in your image as GIMP will shift the RGB values to match middle gray where you pick!

How Polaroid Instant Film is Made

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 09:00:00 -0500

Reading some feeds this morning and came across this interesting post at PetaPixel about how The Impossible Project produces instant film still (using an old Polaroid factory & equipment in the Netherlands). A really fascinating watch!

Getting Around in GIMP - Expired Polaroid 600 Film Effect

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 11:38:00 -0500

I found an old Polaroid camera among a pile of old stuff in my house recently, and lo and behold it still had film in it! The camera had 7 shots left, and my wife and I had fun shooting the last few that evening. What was wonderful was that the developer/fix in the film had started to dry out (the film expired 5 years ago), and it left some wonderful un-developed portions of the final print where there was not enough chemicals to completely cover the image. The colors were also quite washed out and interesting.

Expired Polaroid 600 Scan, a photo by Pat David on Flickr.

Click here for my gallery on Flickr that shows some expired Polaroids to get an idea of the effect I am referring to.

For the rest of my tutorials on GIMP, see Getting Around in GIMP

I’ve now also posted a new blog post that includes the script for creating a much more realistic looking polaroid border for your images based on image width:

Getting Around in GIMP - Polaroid 600 Film Border Script

So I have decided to attempt a replication of the effect in GIMP (mostly as a means to learn script-fu a little better). I have broken down the attempt at recreation into two parts:

Replicate the colors of the washed-out image, and the undeveloped portions of the print.
Replicate the border of the Polaroid 600 film to frame the image with, including the texture.

Replicating Colors

This wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. There are a couple of ways you could go about this…

One way is to open up a scan of an expired shot, and color correct it in GIMP until the colors look pretty good and natural to you. Then you will only need to find the RGB differences of some representative pixels to create your curve. I’ll have a tutorial up later about how I approach that (tedious…).

Another way is to just go ahead and use the awesome Get Curves Plugin from elsamuko on GIMP registry. (By the way, I highly recommend checking out his other GIMP scripts/plugins as well!)

To use the script, you only need two layers in your image - the original, and the one you color-corrected to look more “normal”. The original image should be above the “normal” one in your layer list. When you run the plug-in, it will generate a new GIMP curve file (called curve_SOME-DATE). The great thing about this plugin is that it checks pixel-by-pixel the color difference between the two layers, and creates the new curve from that data.

This curve now represents the color difference between your “normal” layer, and the original. You can now apply this curve back to the “normal” layer and the result should be really close to the original.

To help speed things along for anyone interested, I have already created the presets for my expired film:

Save these files in your Curves folder for your GIMP install (locations vary, but you can check by going to Edit → Preferences and checking under Folders - it’s usually around the same location as your brushes folder for instance).

Let’s apply these curves to a new image to see the effect…

This is another image of my lovely model. I cropped the image to roughly match a Polaroid 600 image area (roughly 1:1.03 aspect ratio - the height is approximately 1.03 times the width).

Here the color curves linked above have been applied. I basically duplicated the base image twice, and applied each of the two color curves above to each duplicate. Then I used a layer mask to mask out the strip in the middle of different colors (allowing the layer below to show through). I still haven’t added any grain or degraded pixel quality, but it seems fairly close!

If you’ve followed me this far - congratulations! As a bonus, I’ve already written the script-fu to automatically apply this to an image. It can be found at registry.gimp.org:

Download Expired Polaroid 600 Print Emulation script-fu

This script will also apply the un-developed corners that appear on expired film (usually because the developer has begun to dry up in the packets, and there is not enough to fully cover the frame anymore). To make things even more polaroid-y I have also removed any control over how big or where the undeveloped portions will occur. Just like real expired Polaroids! :)

Here’s an example of the script in action (it doesn’t create the border for you automatically - yet):

[Update]
There’s a neat video here that shows how the Impossible Project is still cranking out instant film in the Netherlands.
[/Update]

Getting Around in GIMP - Muted Colors

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 13:29:00 -0500

There seems to be a relatively recent interest in photo post-processing that is centered around recreating the look and feel of vintage photo elements. With the explosion of popularity around applications like instagr.am, quite a few photos have been showing up on Flickr and elsewhere that have these vintage types of effects applied to them.

Not surprisingly, this has led to an interest in photographers about how to achieve similar effects in their post processing workflow. In fact, more often than not I’ve noticed on the Flickr Photoshop Support Group questions pertaining to color toning/grading (especially prevalent are questions like “How do I do this?”). There are many ways to approach image color toning, and starting with something simple might help get people started.

In this post I want to talk about muting colors in an image. Below you’ll find three different approaches to muting the colors in an image…

Original starting image.

Colors muted using a desaturated luminosity layer laid over the original with opacity.

Colors muted using layer masks and blending modes.

Colors muted using curves and blending modes.

I will provide a tutorial for using each of these different methods. The one you use is highly dependent on your subjective interpretations of what you want your final image to look like (and in some cases you may use more than one, and blend the result).

Desaturated Layer Method

This is the most straightforward and easiest method for desaturating the colors in your images. It basically consists of duplicating your layer, desaturating it (Colors → Desaturate), putting it above your full color layer, and changing the opacity of the desaturated layer to taste.

The step-by-step procedure is:

Create a duplicate layer of the color layer you want to mute.
Run Colors → Desaturate, and choose either Lightness, Luminosity, or Average (it's a personal preference - more detailed info can be found here).
Adjust the opacity of the desaturated layer to taste.

Layer Blend Modes Method

From Muted color effect, if you like that kind of stuff thread at the Photoshop Support Group on Flickr the user Tennessee_Gator describes an interesting method of muting colors using solid fill layers with masks applied to them. I had to do a little translation from the Photoshop-centric instructions, but I think I was finally able to replicate the same effect in GIMP.

There were two different methods of approaching this that I was working on, but thanks to some quick math by imagdoofus123 it turns out that both methods produce identical results, so I’ll describe the easier of the two.

The basic idea is to use a luminosity copy of the color image, and to set two layers of this luminosity over your color image. One of the layers will be on a Multiply blending mode, and the other will be on Screen.

Create a duplicate of your color layer, and run Colors → Desaturate on it, using Luminosity.
Change the blending mode of this layer to Multiply.
Duplicate this Multiply layer, and change the new layer blending mode to Screen.

Color Curves Method

This method was mentioned in the discussion page linked to above as another possible approach (and allows for some more flexibility in tweaking the final results directly).

Duplicate your color layer, and set the blending mode of the new layer to Color.
Run Color → Curves…
Tweak an Inverted S-curve on the Value channel to taste.
Duplicate this layer, and set its blending mode to Value.
Run Color → Curves… again on this Value layer.
Modify the curve (slightly!) to a regular S-curve to adjust the contrast to taste.

These are just a couple of methods for desaturating an image, but I find them to cover most of what I need when doing this. As always, try experimenting with different layer opacity options to adjust the strength of the final effect. It’s usually highly subjective just how much to mute, but the nice thing is that it’s easy to vary the amounts with opacity and/or layer masks!

Easy Cheating Method (via my script)

If you’ve stuck with me this long (and you’re a champ for reading all of this!), then I have one last little treat. I recently learned some quick Script-Fu to describe this to others on the GIMP users forum on Flickr - and it was just easier to go ahead and write a script to do the effect.

The script is called Muted Colors, and you can download it from the GIMP registry here.

You can choose any of the methods I’ve described above, with the exception of using curves. Hopefully some people find this helpful!

Bouncing Baby Beverly

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 08:30:00 -0500

Bouncing Baby Beverly, a photo by avhell on Flickr.

Don’t worry, no babies were harmed in the making of this photo (unless giggles count as harm). She was a really good sport, and just look at that smile!

I figure if I’m going to be taking hundreds of photos of her, might as well make some of them fun!

This was shot with a 20" softbox camera right, and some sunlight from a large covered window directly behind. I probably could have used a little more fill light from left, but I really like how it all turned out!

Update: I’ve put together a tutorial on how I shot this image, and Mike over at PetaPixel was kind enough to post it there, so check it out for more info!

PetaPixel - How to Make a Photo of a Bouncing Baby

And I figured I would just add a couple of other cute photos of her flying in some fashion…

Beverly Floating, a photo by avhell on Flickr.

Balancing Act, a photo by avhell on Flickr.

Getting Around in GIMP - Color Correction

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 15:33:00 -0500

The list of all my GIMP tutorials can be found here.

I’ve noticed that many people are interested these days in color processing effects for photos, and thought I’d share some interesting things to get people started on the path to color grading.

I almost always do some sort of color toning on my photos. Sometimes a little, sometimes quite a bit depending on my mood and vision at the time. I’m a big fan of just trying things out a bit to see where it gets me, and often this will change the course I may have been heading down into a completely new direction (I encourage this idea of playing around, especially in GIMP).

(This tutorial is a deeper look at a thread I originally started on the Flickr Gimp Users Group)

To begin, we should probably look briefly at balancing the colors in a photo to make sure we have a good base to start off with…

Basic Color Correction

Sometimes an image can come out of your camera looking either a little hazy or dull (possibly lacking contrast). So how can we get some “pop” back into the image? I will usually start by adjusting the overall range of the image to suit me.

What I mean by this, is that I want to identify the part of the image that will be pure black, pure white, and middle grey. So how can we do this? Well, a couple of ways…

Colors → Auto → White Balance

This method will let GIMP automatically calculate for you it’s best estimate of what the white balance should be in the image. Sometimes this can produce OK results (and sometimes it can really mess up). I don’t personally use this option, but if you want a no-frills first guess automated for you, it’s a nice option to have.

I have also noticed that auto white balance can sometimes blow out highlights in an image as well…

Manual Balance

This is the method I have been using personally for a while now. The theory is basically that I want to identify where in the image I want the blackest blacks to be, the whitest whites, and a good middle grey point. So how can I find these quickly and easily in my photo?

Here’s a hint: Colors → Threshold

Threshold will give you a means to see where the extreme pixel values for your image occur. With it we can identify where the brightest and darkest pixels are. The basic idea is to use a Threshold to isolate the brightest and darkest pixels in your image to set the white and black points, and to use a neat trick with a 50% gray difference layer to find the middle gray point.

So let’s begin…

Image courtesy of Kelly Ealy - MM# 7866

Open an image you think could stand a little color correction.

Right click on the background layer and Duplicate Layer. This is the layer we will be working on fixing the color, and I’ll call this the color correct layer.

With the color correct layer active (remember: white border around it), activate the Threshold dialog.

Colors → Threshold

Setting the White Point

We’ll start by finding our white point in the image. The white point marker is already (be default) all the way to the right, and the black point marker is in the middle. What we’ll do is pull the black point marker all the way to the right as well.

This should make the entire image show black (with possibly some white showing in places). What this means is that the white pixels, if showing, represent the brightest pixels in your image. If you don’t see any white pixels yet, you can begin pulling the black point slider to the left slowly, and they will eventually begin to appear. You’ll want to note the location of the first white pixels that begin to show up, and either remember them or use a sample point to save their location.

An important thing to remember here is that this is often a subjective determination of what you want to be pure white in your image. Some bright pixels (any RGB component is 255) will show up in threshold, even though they may not be “pure” white. Watch out for those, as a non-neutral color chosen to be your white point will cast a color on the entire image.

Cancel out of the Threshold dialog.

Now we want to use Colors → Levels to set the white point for our image to the pixels we identified with Threshold.

Open the levels dialog (Colors → Levels), and use the Pick White Point eyedropper to pick the location of the whitest pixels we just identified.

Hit OK to apply to the image. We basically just identified the location in our image we want to be pure white (255, 255, 255) in our final image.

Setting the Black Point

Now we can do the same procedure, but for the darkest/blackest point. Open the threshold dialog again (Colors → Threshold), and this time slide the black point slider all the way left, and do the same for the white point marker. The image should turn all black.

Slowly begin sliding the white point marker to the right until some white pixels begin to show up. These white pixels now represent the darkest pixel values in your image. As before, note their location (or use a sample point) and cancel out of the Threshold dialog.

Open the levels dialog again (Colors → Levels), and this time use the Pick Black Point eyedropper to pick the location of the darkest pixels we just identified.

Hit OK to apply to the image. We just identified where we want the blackest pixels in our image to be (0, 0, 0).

Setting the Gray Point

This one is a little tougher. You may not have an easily found truly neutral gray point (RGB 128, 128, 128) in your image. So we are going to use some layer blending modes to help us find the gray points closest.

Create a new layer above your color correct layer, and fill the layer with a neutral gray (RGB - 128, 128, 128).

Set the layer mode for this gray layer to Difference.

Right click on the layer in your Layers window, and choose New From Visible to create a new layer with what you can see. Make sure this new visible layer is the active one.

Now, run a threshold against this new layer.

Colors → Threshold

You will now follow the same procedure as you used for finding the black point threshold values, but in this case the white pixels will be those closest to Middle Gray.

Zoom into those first white pixels and remember where they are (or use a sample point).

De-activate the difference layer, and make your color correct layer active and visible. It helps if it is also the top-most visible layer (ie: turn off visibility on all layers above it in the Layers list).

Now use Colors → Levels again.

This time, use the Gray picker and choose the pixels you identified as closest to middle gray.

If you’ve chosen good points then the final result should be an image with much better looking color overall. If there was a nasty color cast previously, this method should remove it for the most part…

Here is my starting image, and after modification using this manual method:

It’s subtle, but the original image was not in serious need of any balancing.

Mouseover the image below to see a comparison on an image where I didn’t white balance properly before firing the shot (only modifications to the image were the manual color correction procedure):

Please feel free to post any comments/suggestions/rants in the comments if you get a chance to try this method out!

Getting Around in GIMP - New Layer

Wed, 25 May 2011 12:29:00 -0500

Layers are really key to just about any workflow in GIMP. To help illustrate the concepts I am going to talk about, I’ve put together a quick screencast using Wink to show some steps of creating a new layer from scratch (please let me know if there is a problem viewing the screencast, it’s my first time trying this).

The previous tutorial just covering the interface can be found here. The list of all my GIMP tutorials can be found here.

One of the main things to remember when working with layers is that they will affect other layers from the top down in your layer list. I haven’t mentioned layer blending modes yet, but for layers with a “Normal” blending mode (the default) this means that the top most layer that is visible is what you will see in your image window (see video).

Creating a new layer from scratch is quite simple. There is a “Create New Layer” button along the bottom of the top half of the Layers window. You will then get a “Create a New Layer” dialog that allows you to choose:

Layer Name
Whatever you want to call this layer
Width & Height
Dimensions for this new layer (default is the current image dimensions).
Layer Fill Type
You can have the layer automatically filled with either the foreground or background color, white, or start it as a transparent layer.

This new layer will then be created above the currently active layer in your list. Speaking of “active layer”…

Active Layer

The current active layer will have a white border around it in your layer list. This is important because it means that anything you do to the image will be applied to that active layer. If you activate a layer below another visible one, you may not see any changes you try to apply appear in your image window!

Look closely at the image above: the “Background” layer is active (white border), but there is another layer “New Layer” that is above it and visible. If you tried to paint or adjust the “Background” layer right now, you wouldn’t see any of the changes (in fact, you’d just see a black screen in your image window).

To activate a layer, just click on it in your Layer Window list.

Visibility

You can toggle the visibility of each layer on/off by using the Eye icon to the left of the layer image. This will only affect the layer visibility in your main image window.

Very often I will use the layer visibility toggle to either compare a current layer to a previous one, or to show/hide the effects of a new layer on the ones below it (in the case of using a different blending mode or layer masks - which I will talk about shortly).

Getting Around in GIMP - The Interface

Tue, 24 May 2011 13:53:00 -0500

I’ve found myself using GIMP more and more lately to manipulate photos, and thought that perhaps some of the things I’ve been playing with might be helpful for other users as well. Especially translations of effects that are achieved by photoshop users, but replicated for the GIMP environment. It is my hope to be able to provide some level of tutorials that might help others get as much use out of GIMP as I have.

The main list of all my GIMP tutorials can be found here.

To help others get the most from these tutorials and GIMP in general, I am starting out my first GIMP tutorial post by quickly examining the main interface in GIMP, and what all those floating windows mean…

GIMP users often seem to feel that the user interface is a barrier to entry for them. I agree that at first it can seem odd compared to the paradigm used by other programs, but I feel it’s just a small sticking point. Spend a little time with it, and you will quickly get used to it.

In general, there will usually be 3 main (floating) windows that all of your work will be done in with GIMP:

Toolbox Window

This window houses all of the tools available to you to manipulate your image. It may seem overwhelming at first glance, but you’ll probably find that for the most part you only use a few different tools as you’re getting started (a full list of each tool with shortcut keys and description can be found in the GIMP wikibook).

The window can be considered in two halves (upper and lower). Above the foreground/background colors are all the actual tools. Below that are modifiers for the currently selected tool (the Heal brush, in this case).

Some very common tools you will likely use often are: Rectangle, Ellipse, Free Select Bucket Fill, Gradient, Paintbrush Clone, Heal

Just below the tool palette in the center of the window is the Color Area. This displays the current foreground (black in this example) and background (white) colors. You can swap between the foreground and background colors by clicking on the double arrow just above and to the right of the colors. Choosing a new color is easily done by just clicking on the current foreground or background color.

Below the Color Area are the available modifiers for the currently selected tool. What is shown here will change depending on the options available for the tool you select to use. In this image the Heal tool is active, and the options (Mode, Opacity, Brush, etc…) will apply to the Heal tool specifically.

Layers, Channels, Paths Window

This window displays all of the current layers in the image (including Channels and Paths). Realistically for the most part I personally use the Layers portion of this window more than any of the others.

Similar to the toolbox, this window can be divided into an upper and lower half.

The upper half is has tabs running across the top that give you access to (from left to right): Layers, Channels, Paths, and Undo history.

I will write up more detail on using Layers in image manipulation later (it deserves it’s own post).

The lower half of this window shows access to three more tabs: Brushes, Patterns, and Gradients.

Image Window

This is where the magic happens. This window will display whatever image you happen to be editing. You’ll also notice all of the menu items that are along the top edge of this window. These menus give you full access to all of the options that are available in GIMP (you can also access all of these menu items by right-clicking in the image area anywhere).

This should serve as a (brief) introduction to the basic GIMP user interface. Hopefully this will help some people feel just a tad more comfortable about getting around and where to find things.

I have further tutorials coming up on achieving some basic effects on photographs (and hopefully some more advanced ones as well). Stay tuned for more to come!

Seriously? A camera AND a softbox?!

Mon, 09 May 2011 14:03:00 -0500

Seriously? A camera AND a softbox?!, originally uploaded by avhell.

Outtake from a quick Mothers Day shoot with little Beverly and her mom. Her expression is priceless.

She was a little on the squirmy side the entire time, and this annoyed look on her face made my day…

My ghetto 20" softbox with an FL-14 flash fired full power just to the camera left and a little high. About 2 feet away.

Beverly in Repose - Light Painted

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 15:11:00 -0500

Beverly in Repose - Light Painted, originally uploaded by avhell.

Towards the end of the evening things start to quiet down. I have a few minutes to myself, and decide to grab my camera and a tiny little LED book reading light.

Tiptoeing into my daughters room, I wrap the legs of a gorrilapod holding my camera onto the edge of the crib and focus the camera. This is the only chance I’ll have of painting light onto my little girl.

15 seconds of waving the little book light around madly produces this. A snapshot of the most perfect little person in the world.

Books and Prints for my daughter

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:36:00 -0500

I am recently the proud parent of an absolutely amazing little baby girl. Her mother is a scientist, and I am an engineer - so when I came across this wonderful poster by Etsy artist electricboogaloo, we had to have it:

‘Every baby knows the scientific method’ by electricboogaloo on Etsy

While that is cute for mom and dad, a little something dad wants to share with his girl is more along the lines of these classic movie scenes interpreted as old “Little Golden Books” by Josh Cooley:

There’s a whole bunch more of these here. Well worth a few minutes to peruse!

(via boingboing.net)

I (still) hate Comcast

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 15:46:00 -0600

This just keeps getting sadder.

I finally did hear back from Mark Casem (who posted a comment on my earlier entry “I hate Comcast”) and was told that he would look into the problem with my local Comcast guys. They did finally send someone out who determined that something was wrong with my line, and they sent a maintenance crew over to apparently fix it.

I say apparently because, well, have a look at my latest numbers (allow me to remind you that I am paying for 16 Mbps Business Class connection) for January 5 - 20:

And these are just the latest numbers since I last blogged about this problem. For comparison, the previous average from the last post was 3.1 Mbps. The current average as evidenced above shows an average now of 2.6 Mbps.

Not surprisingly, my latency has also gotten worse overall:

Previously, the average latency was 254ms, and now I am showing 297ms. I guess you can pretty much rule out any chance of playing an online game where latency matters (in fact, these ping times are closer to what I used to get playing Quake 2 on a dial-up connection!

I am trying to be understanding here, and as patient as possible. I have given them a couple of chances to come and fix this now, and things are only seeming to get worse. I will continue to call support while this speed is so abysmal with the hopes that they track this problem down and get it resolved ASAP (and I hope the billing department can help make this right for the lost bandwidth so far).

I just can’t fathom the thought of a business having to deal with this type of sub-par performance for their internet. My recommendation at this point would be for any business even thinking about using Comcast as their internet provider is to NOT do it. DSL may be slower overall, but at least it’s consistent and the bandwidth is all yours as opposed to a shared resource with your neighbors.

Just to keep things up to date, here is the total of my current averages from December 19 to yesterday (January 20):

Now I ask you, as a business paying for a 16 Mbps connection, does this even remotely seem reasonable?

I desperately want to say that this all gets fixed in a timely manner, but things are not looking good. Stay tuned for more as the story develops…

Firefly - Serenity HUD Display

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:08:00 -0600

Firefly - Serenity HUD Display, originally uploaded by avhell.

I know that the use of a logo from the Weyland-Yutani corporation from the “Alien” franchise in this first episode of Firefly is old news, but on examining it again earlier today I noticed that the gun designation in the upper left corner of the HUD in this screen grab shows UA 571-D Ground Sentry. The name sounded familiar to me.

Upon investigation, it turns out I was right. In the extended version of “Aliens”, there is a scene with automated remote sentries. The model of those remote sentry guns were UA 571-C.

A coincidence? I think not! Especially given Joss Whedons hand in the franchise… Still, I thought it was a pretty cool, if obscure, reference.

I hate Comcast

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 10:29:00 -0600

Thanks to the speedtest.net iphone app, I have been monitoring my Comcast Business Class internet speeds and have been mighty upset with the results.

I had originally wanted DSL again, having had it for quite a few years and being quite happy with the performance and speed at the time. Unfortunately, upon moving into my new home I found that DSL couldn’t get past 1.5 Mbps tops for me. So my only other option was to go with Comcast.

Now, I knew that cable internet was a shared resource locally, and I wanted to not have to worry about neighbors sucking down all the available bandwidth. So I figured I would go for the “Business Class” internet at 16 Mbps down even though the price was more expensive than the residential version. I figured that I could expect a better level of service since I was paying more for a business account.

WRONG.

Below are graphs of my internet speed performance for December 19th to now (blue line is download speed, red line is upload speed, and orange horizontal line is download average):

Despite paying more for a business class internet at 16 Mbps down, I have been seeing absolutely atrocious results. My average speed since the 19th of December has been 3.1 Mbps! Less than 1/5th of the advertised speed! They actually consider this “Business Class” service?! I feel bad for what the residential users nearby might have to deal with…

My ping latency is no better at all, and just plain depresses me. The average ping reported over the same time period was over 250ms! I haven’t seen ping times like that since playing Quake 2 over dialup with friends over a decade ago.

The sad thing here is that the service used to be pretty ok. For two years they managed to at least deliver some semblance of service close to what they were advertising. Here’s hoping that a few technical support calls will get someone out here to correct this ASAP. Stay tuned.

RIP Leslie Nielsen

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:30:00 -0600

David Zucker remembers Leslie Nielsen in such a wonderful way. From The Hollywood Reporter:

Arguably the best role was that of Dr. Rumack, played by the guy no one wanted or ever suspected would be funny, much less go on to have a second career starring in feature films as a goofball comic. Leslie was great in the role because he never “winked” – let on that he knew he was in a comedy. This was essential to the style, and Leslie had a natural instinct for it.

One of my all-time favorite exchanges in film:

Rumack: Captain, how soon can you land?
Captain Oveur: I can’t tell.
Rumack: You can tell me. I’m a doctor.
Captain Oveur: No. I mean I’m just not sure.
Rumack: Well, can’t you take a guess?
Captain Oveur: Well, not for another two hours.
Rumack: You can’t take a guess for another two hours?

Iphone 4 (iOS 4.1) Video Upload Quality Test

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 16:27:00 -0500

I recently became the new owner of a iPhone 4 after beating my old 3G phone to within inches of its life (not on purpose, just the normal wear and tear sort of life-beating). I had originally dropped my phone last week from my night table, and it left the display looking like it was super-saturated with mega-brightness. I fiddled with the brightness settings and smacked it around a bit, but all to no avail. I figured a broken phone was as good a reason as any to upgrade. Of course, in a bout of madness I decided to try one last thing before I gave it up as a lost cause, and opened my phone up where I found that the LCD connection ribbon had jostled loose: all it took to cure the phones problems was to re-seat the connector.

Stupid, itchy gadget lust…

Of course, by that time I was already more than halfway to resigning myself to an upgrade. It didn’t help things that my wife was also interested in getting a new phone.

One of the main draws for me besides the snappier processor and new hardware, was the improved camera and ability to record 720p HD video. I had read in other places online, though, that there were problems with uploading the full resolution video to YouTube directly from the phone. To test what was going on, I have tried a few things and these are my results.

The Source

The source material is just a quick pan of the parking lot at my work. It’s interesting in that there are many trees in the background that can often tax HD video in capturing properly. If you want the original quicktime file directly off the phone, it’s here:

Original .MOV from the camera (12MB)

Direct upload from the iPhone

I then uploaded this video to YouTube in two ways:

First, as a direct upload from the camera using the “Send to YouTube” button:

Upload using ‘Send to YouTube’

After choosing to upload in HD, this starts what I believe to be a transcoding process where the video is shrunk in size in preparation for upload.

Preparing Video… (I suspect transcoding at this point)

After “Preparing Video…” the actual upload starts, and when finished I am prompted to go to YouTube or to “tell a friend”.

The final directly uploaded from the iPhone video is here (don’t forget to change it to 720p):

Transfer to computer, then upload

In this case, I just plugged my iPhone directly into my computer and copied the .MOV file onto my desktop. From there I just uploaded to YouTube as I would for any other video file. The final uploaded from my computer:

Screen grab comparison

This is where things get interesting. I’ve grabbed a screen cap of each of the videos at the same moment in time. I basically downloaded the .mp4 from YouTube for the two uploaded videos, and used MPlayer to output a screen capture at the same frame.

Below are the three screenshots (click to open the full size image) I am using here:

Original .MOV directly from the phone

Uploaded from computer

Uploaded directly from iPhone

The Crops

Using these screenshots, I then crop and zoom into 300% size to investigate the results of a small sub-section of the image.

Original from camera (left), after upload from computer to YouTube (center), after direct upload from phone to YouTube (right).

In this first crop of the light pole, some things become evident almost immediately. The colors and detail in the shadow areas of the image are devastated by the compression going on. The direct upload from my computer to YouTube at least manages to keep some of the details, but the direct upload from the phone smears all of the detail of the background foliage, especially around the lamppost. It also appears that the colors are reduced or muted in the direct upload compared to the other two methods.

Original from camera (left), after upload from computer to YouTube (center), after direct upload from phone to YouTube (right).

In the crop of the parking lot there are some other telling things going on. The first thing I notice is the desaturation of the colors in the handicap parking sign for the direct upload. The upload from computer manages to retain the colors, and a lot of the detail of the sign, but the direct upload sadly does not. Also notice the shadows in the tree in the upper left corner where for both versions YouTube manages to smear it all into a mess.

Original from camera (left), after upload from computer to YouTube (center), after direct upload from phone to YouTube (right).

In this final crop, the telling problems occur again in the shadows of the foliage, where it gets progressively worse from the original to a direct upload. Notice the loss of detail in the definition of the leaves, and especially in the mulch (brown) on the ground in the middle distance.

Conclusion

From what I have seen I feel that what is happening is that the successive degradation of the video quality is due to having to transcode the video twice during a direct upload from the iPhone, as opposed to only transcoding once with an upload from my computer. As with any transcoding, the quality begins to suffer horribly after the first time. In this case, the color saturation and especially the shadow details are lost very quickly during the second transcoding as is the case with the direct upload from the iPhone.

In a pinch I feel that a direct upload could do and be passable for some simple video. If it was something I wanted to keep a little quality on, and I could wait until I was at a computer, I would rather just upload directly from my computer and avoid the extra transcoding step that hurts the quality so badly.

Quick and Easy Visualization of Paint Colors for Rooms

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:39:00 -0500

I have recently completed the major stages of renovation for a Florida room in my home. All the old paint and wall surfaces were torn down and built back up to what we wanted as a finish, and we were staring at a fully primed, and waiting for paint, empty room. The only problem was, we hadn’t really decided on a color scheme yet!

I needed a quick way to visualize what general types of colors we thought we’d like to use, so I came up with a way using my camera and GIMP. I will outline the steps I used below, with some example photos taken from Flickr. The nice thing about this approach is that you can visualize just about any room with new paint even if the room is not empty, and even if there are different lighting conditions across walls (sun shining in a window, while another wall might be in shadow for instance).

So to explain, I am using Flickr user micamica’s living room photo:

The basic process here will be to isolate the walls we are interested in changing the color of, and to then adjust the colors of that wall to help us visualize what the room will look like. After loading the image up in GIMP, I will often duplicate the Background layer right away (so I always have a version of the original available later). After that it’s time to start isolating the wall we want to change the color of. In this case, I want to consider changing the large rear wall with the painting hanging on it, but will leave the low wall behind the couch to either keep it white or to change it to a different color than the main wall.

There are a couple of ways to select just the wall we want in GIMP. If we just want a quick visualization to get an idea of what the color will feel like in the room, we can make use a “Quick Mask” in GIMP to quickly paint in the areas we want to select. The toggle to turn on Quick Mask is on the bottom left of the GIMP screen, and looks like a small red square. When you turn it on, your entire image will appear to have an opaque red layer over everything.

To select the areas we are interested in, just paint over the area you want with a white color. I like to use a fuzzy circle brush to allow the edges to feather just a bit. You will want to paint in all of the areas you want selected. As you paint, the opaque red mask will disappear and show the image underneath:

Quick masked wall (note art left not selected)

After you’ve painted out your selection, toggle the Quick Mask again, and you’re left with a selection of what you painted. At this point, you can quickly try changing the color of the wall. First, though, I personally like to do this without having the “marching ants” selection showing to distract me. To turn them off in GIMP, go to View -> Show Selection, and uncheck it (don’t worry, you’re selection is still active - just don’t forget that it’s hidden or you’re gonna be cursing when paintbrushes don’t work right for some reason).

Now you’re ready to adjust some colors! Go to Colors -> Hue-Saturation. You can now adjust the sliders for the Hue and Saturation to adjust what your selected wall will look like. For instance, what about a nice soothing blue color?

Another option would be to use GIMPs “Colorize” command under Colors -> Colorize. Again, adjust the Hue to your liking, and tweak the Saturation and Lightness to taste. In this case, a deeper red color:

If you wanted to adjust colors of other sections of the photo, you can always save your current selection to a channel for recall later on. Just use Select -> Save to Channel, and your current selection will be saved to a channel (mine is saved as “Selection Mask Copy” by default). You can now quick mask a different portion of your image, and repeat the above steps to apply a different color.

In the above steps, I am just roughly trying to quickly visualize a different set of colors on a room to get a feel for it, so this is by no means a detailed and meticulous modification. You could spend a lot more time masking out portions of your image more carefully if you wanted something a bit better. For images that have walls that are already colored, you could also run a “Desaturate” on your selection before using “Colorize”. This will remove any colors already present on the wall, but still keep the shading and relative shadows.

This method is not perfect, but certainly serves nicely to quickly visualize what type of colors might be more interesting to pursue for the room!

5 minute portrait - Coworker Emily

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:13:00 -0500

5 minute portrait - Coworker Emily, by avhell.

I’ve really wanted to experiment with different lighting techniques and to start incorporating flashes off camera for some shots. I just haven’t gotten around to purchasing any flashes or triggers yet (though it is on my wish list). As such, I have to be a little more creative when coming up with ideas for lighting some pictures.

In this case, I had to take some new photos for the employee poster we have at work. I could have just snapped a shot of them right at their desks, and I’m sure it would have been fine. After thinking about it for a minute, though, I decided to try something a little better. All I had was my trusty Olympus E-P1, a 17mm lens, and whatever I could find in my office. I like a challenge!

I felt the on-camera flash would be a little too harsh here, and I didn’t have any way to angle the flash head to bounce the light off anything (but still wanted nice fill on the subjects face). So I thought a nice portrait for this scenario could benefit from the same lighting a ring light might give. I just don’t have a ring light in my office lying around. I do, however, have a couple of desk lamps that might fit the bill. Et Voila!

I stole two fluorescent desk lamps from my co-workers, and set them up on a table pointing directly at Emily’s face from the sides:

There was also a ceiling fluorescent fixture in my office providing some fill light from above. Because the desk lamps were low power, I had to really get them close to the subject (along with the camera). If you look, you can actually see the two desk lights being reflected in her eyes.

I thought it came out pretty good for scavenging lighting supplies from around the office. After the first one, I decided that I might as well go ahead and re-shoot everyones picture in the office for the poster:

Office Family, by avhell.

And a great big “Thank you!” to my coworkers for allowing me to use their images here! (btw, that’s me in the top left)

The Walking Dead - Full Trailer on AMC

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:26:00 -0500

I have been devouring (hehe) Robert Kirkmans The Walking Dead comic for months now, and he has absolutely kept me always rabidly wanting more. If you haven’t had a chance to pick it up, it would easily top my list of recommendations for a new read. The Walking Dead Compendium Vol. 1 is a great way to get into this story, and compiles the first 48 issues together in a single book.

The story basically follows the main protagonist Frank Grimes, a small town cop who awakens in the hospital from a short coma after being shot on duty, and a small band of survivors he meets up with as they try to find a way to survive in the aftermath of a zombie outbreak. Though that synopsis may sound clichéd, it is Robert Kirkmans relentless and sometime brutal storytelling that really drives the plot along.

Drives it along like a schoolbus missing one wheel screaming down the interstate at 100 mph and being driven by a clown who left sanity sitting under a skidmark by the side of the road 5 exits ago.

Seriously.

I am not kidding.

So it was with great delight that I heard the news some time back that the cable channel AMC was going to pickup the book and make it a series. In fact, the release date has been set to be Sunday, October 31^st at 10EST/9CST. This first episode will be 90 minutes long, and there are to be 6 total episodes.

AMC also released the trailer on its website, and boy does this look like it will be a doozy! Judge for yourselves:

If you’re intrigued, I’d also recommend checking out the motion comic that introduces the story. The art style is just like the print comic, and you can see how this whole thing kicks off:

BP - A New Hope

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:29:00 -0500

If you’re going to bother photoshopping…

You might as well make it interesting!

I came across gizmodos Photoshop BP PR photos contest a little late, but thought I should make my own little contribution anyway. So here are the brave BP pilots making a trench run!

Large version here, careful, the big one clocks in at over 7MB.

JAVOedge Fiber Axis iPad Case Review

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 16:54:00 -0500

I have had my iPad for a couple of months now, and the device is never far from me. It really is the ultimate casual media consumption device for me, and nicely fills a niche that was previously being fulfilled by my iPhone: ubiquitous and instant access to information. I have even on a few occasions brought the device to work with me, and it has proved extremely useful to access information on my internal work network when in meetings or a coworkers office (tightvnc running on my main machine allows me to quickly and easily remote in to get at other information).

The problem is that I do not have a case yet that I like. I tend to really enjoy the industrial design of Apples products overall, and often do not care to muck about with them by ensconcing them in cases of questionable quality (either build or style). With my iPhone it wasn’t really a question. I have always used each of my iPhones entirely without any case. Given the quality of the glass used on the touchscreen, the only part of the phone that I had ever been concerned about was the back and bezel (in the time I have owned my 3G since launch day, I have only really managed to put a couple of small scratches on it from an unfortunate sailing trip).

Holding this fabulous slab of glass and aluminum makes me think a little differently, though. My iPhone usually has the benefit of being housed in a pants pocket, and at least has some protection from the vagaries of the world. My poor iPad, on the other hand, finds itself exposed to all manner of undesirable things when I bring it along places (oh, the guilt of first-world problems!). So the search was on for an iPad case that would fulfill my use patterns, and look good doing it.

I have specific requirements for what I want in a case based on how I know I use it:

I want to access and use the device while it’s in the case.
This means that I am not interested in a bag or pouch.
I want something that looks good.
The iPad by itself is a wonderfully slick looking piece of hardware. If I am going to be putting it into a case, I want that case to reflect good design.
Access to all of the ports and switches.
No need for storing extra things in the case.
I don’t need pockets. That’s what pants are for. (see 1.)
I am not interested in decidedly kludgy looking methods for securing my iPad in the case.
If there are four elastic straps over the corners holding my device in place, I’ll pass.

Those requirements led me to some lively conversations with my little sister, Cindy, about what would be a good case for me. At the time, I had looked around enough and found what I felt was a great fit for me in the Dodocase, but the wait times were approaching 10 weeks to get one. I went ahead and put the Dodocase on order.

[Disclaimer: My sister Cindy works for JAVOedge, and procured me an editorial sample of the case.]

It was many weeks later that I was lamenting the fact that I still hadn’t received my case when my sister innocuously sent me a link to the JAVOedge Fiber Axis Case. I couldn’t pass up a chance to rib her for not getting me the case that her company makes. I even offered to write up a review of the case, and she finally succeeded in getting me an editorial copy to investigate. After spending a couple of weeks with it, here is what I have found.

Swivel Stand

This is by far the coolest and most useful feature of this case, and is almost worth the price of admission alone. There are many other cases on the market that will support the ability to prop the iPad up in some fashion, but where the JAVOedge case really sets itself apart is in the ability to rotate the orientation of the iPad when propping it up. It does this by incorporating an incredibly useful swivel for the cover of the case, which has rubber stoppers sewn into it that will catch the edge of the ipad for propping at different angles.

This is a fantastic feature, and should push the JAVOedge case to the top of anyones list if they need the ability to prop the iPad up in either orientation, and at varying angles.

Quality

The build quality of the case is fantastic. This case is basically a modified version of their “Back Cover” which is composed of a polycarbonate plastic shell that sort of clips onto the back of the iPad. To this shell, JAVOedge added the swivel front flap cover that serves double duty as the base of the stand when propping up the iPad. The swivel quality feels very sturdy and not flimsy at all. It has just the right amount of resistance to swiveling that makes it feel substantial and not cheap. The outer material of the case is available in many different finishes (baseball, basketball, charcoal, cherry blossom, fiber - what my review unit has, plaid, poppy, and tennis as of this writing) that are all synthetic and animal friendly (really)!

The lineup of JAVOedge Axis case styles.

The interior of the cover is a nice quality microfiber material, and the stitching and assembly are all high quality (no unfinished ends or strange fittings) and nicely finished. The rubber stops that make up the propping mechanism on the inside of the front cover feel quite solid, and are also fully stitched into the cover (with recessed stitching to help protect the iPad screen from touching anything more than just the rubber itself - another nice touch). One minor thing my wife pointed out to me was that the rubber stops do tend to smudge the surface of the iPad, but these are not normally noticeable when in use.

The cover material is slightly plush with a little bit of give, and the back cover feels quite solid to the touch. This give the case a nice feel in your hand when carrying it: substantial, but soft. Overall I felt that my iPad was very nicely protected in this case, and did not worry about normal use tossing it around. The magnteic latch was also nicely appointed, and the magnet does a great job holding the cover closed. There is a nice JAVOedge metallic button on the latch that really finishes off the overall look of the case.

The back cover that holds the iPad in place has all of the ports and switches cutout to allow access to everything on the iPad, while making sure that any areas with no buttons or ports are fully covered. This is a really important detail I feel, and one of the main reasons that I was interested in this case. No need to do anything special to access all of the buttons and ports, which means I could have my headphones plugged in and adjust the volume without ever having to open the case to do it.

Snap-on Back

I also feel that just the back cover would be a fantastic option for those who are willing to forego some protection for ease of use. One of the nicest things about this case design is that when in use, the case just “gets out of the way”. Due to the method of slipping the iPad into the plastic back case, there is nothing obstructing the front of the iPad. I simply cannot stress how nice this is, and what really sets these types of cases head and shoulders above other options. JAVOedge also sells just the plastic back cover as a separate product, and would be quite worth it on it’s own (if you didn’t want a front cover or to use the case as a stand).

However…

For all the things that are done right, there are unfortunately a few glaring oddities that I would be remiss in not pointing out.

The magnetic latch is one. The latch is attached to the plastic back cover, and when the cover is closed on the case, the latch will flop over and magnetically catch on the front cover. The problem is that when the iPad is in use, the latch will still want to flop over. Flop over and obscure the iPad screen. This is especially irritating when using the case as a stand in landscape mode, and maddening when using the iPad while holding it. It would have made a lot more design sense to switch the orientation of the latch so that it was actually connected to the front of the case, and would wrap around and magnetically catch on the back instead (though I am not sure if a magnet that close to the iPad itself would cause other problems). Aesthetically I can understand the decision, but perhaps engineering some method for holding the latch back out of the way easily would have gone a long way to help.

The rubber stops that allow you to prop the case up at various angles seem to be a tad bit bulky for my tastes. They also tend to smudge the screen a bit when the case is closed. This is a small item, and nearly insignificant as far as I am concerned.

The other problem is that even though the swivel is a fantastic option that really sets this case apart, you do lose some of the stability when trying to use the iPad lying flat. The swivel mechanism causes the surface to wobble unsteadily on the swivel, and makes typing very burdensome. Though this can be lessened by using the iPad in one of the propped up modes, for flat desk typing (as I am sometimes doing) it is just too unstable to be used reasonably well. I should point out that this only affects use of the iPad in the case on a flat surface such as a desk or table. When using the iPad on my lap with this case, for instance, there was no problem whatsoever. Indeed it was quite comfortable to use this way, where the swivel mechanism would actually be centered in my lap, and my legs would be stabilizing the iPad to the sides.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a case I would wholeheartedly recommend to any of my friends who were looking for the same features I covered. Right away I can definitely say this is a better value than the stock apple iPad case, hands down (and the same price, $39.95 USD, to boot!). Are there a few things that I am not a fan of? Yes.

Are they killer problems? Not even a little bit. The ability to prop the iPad up in both orientations and multiple angles far outweighs any small issues I might have, and in fact the issue with the swivel being unstable is really a non-issue for me personally:

Pair it with a Think Outside Stowaway bluetooth keyboard (snagged on ebay for about 50 bucks), and this is an absolutely killer combination! (I may review this killer keyboard in the future).

JAVOedge Fiber Axis iPad Case on Amazon ($39.95)

Selective Suspension of Disbelief

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:08:00 -0500

I am going absolutely nuts trying to find a good term to describe something I am tentatively describing as “Selective Suspension of Disbelief”.

Now, I understand the concept of “Suspension of Disbelief”, and how it applies to fictional narratives, but my problem is distinctly different, though related.

Specifically, I am looking for a term to describe when one has suspended their disbelief for a story to a large extent, but then balks at some other smaller stretch that pales in comparison to the overall suspension.

Allow me to illustrate what I mean:

While sick a few weekends ago, I was laid up on the couch not wanting to do much. One of the cable channels in my area was running the Star Wars films back to back all day. I sat through each movie and allowed myself to be fully engrossed in it. Until The Empire Strikes Back.

Specifically, the end of The Empire Strikes Back. Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader is his father, and hurls himself off the catwalk down the shaft on Bespin. He falls.

Right into another shaft that is conveniently about a meter wide and sloped like a funhouse slide.

It was at that point that the little guy at the back of my brain sat up and said:

Really? He just happened to fall directly into the center of another shaft?!

There is the crux of the problem. I had suspended by disbelief about the Force, spaceships, Darth Vader and lightsabers. But I just couldn’t fathom Luke falling into that other shaft.

At the time I didn’t even realize that I was doing it. It only came to light when I was watching The Matrix with my wife later. The scene where Neo and Trinity are rescuing Morpheus. There is the amazing fight scene in the lobby, the encounter on the roof with the agent, the bullet-time scene (still amazing, btw), then the helicopter with the minigun they commandeer.

As they are hovering outside the floor where Morpheus is being held, Neo bears the minigun on the three agents standing around Neo, when my lovely wife looks at me and says:

“How does he not hit Morpheus with that gun?”

I looked at her and started my tirade. Really? How does he not hit Morpheus? Forget that we are in a computer generated world while sentient robots and machines harvest our body heat as an energy source, or that Neo just dodged fucking bullets.

At that point my brain stopped and remembered the air shaft on the Bespin Mining Colony.

So what do we call this phenomenon?

Hotlink fun

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 15:28:00 -0600

There are certain rules of etiquette that often requires one to behave in a manner consistent with the mores of the people around them. This applies to social situations to help facilitate the ability to interact with other people in a meaningful fashion, as opposed to earlier men who, not having evolved much at the time, decided a better means of communicating would be swinging from the trees they were camped in, and flinging feces at each other.

I maintain that certain changes in network usability by anyone has allowed us to take a giant step back into those good old days, and to use new, shiny, digital feces instead of the old brown stuff.

You see, once upon a time the ability to post information on the network required that one learn a little something about it. Anyone wanting to host permanent information needed to buy a host, learn to code, and then put their wares out there for all to see. There was a certain amount of blood, sweat, and tears required to effectively create something that would be worthy of putting online.

Recently an explosion in online awareness has allowed companies to leverage cheap methods for allowing people to easily place whatever content they wanted online without having to learn very much. The unfortunate rise of giant black-holes of mindless dribble began to rear their ugly heads in the form of places like MySpace.

Now the masses had a means of quickly and easily putting content on the network without having to go through the process of learning what was really required to make it work. Unfortunately this process is readily skipped in favor of a background-du-jour, an embedded music player, fancy fonts, and ultimately pictures.

Unfortunately, the new users of this veritable publishing utopia couldn’t be bothered to learn how the network works. They just wanted to play. And of course they wanted to share what they find in this brave new world. Such as pictures. They just couldn’t be bothered to find out what the mechanics are to actually being able to show images online. Such as finding their own image hosting.

You see, the purveyors of this “mini-bake-website” mentality probably did not want to have to foot the bill for the bandwidth required to host all of it’s users pictures. So they didn’t give these neophytes the option. And having not had to learn how things work, these new users found it easier to only have to embed an address to be able to proudly display an image from somewhere else on the network right there on their shiny-neat-and-new web page.

No need to have to go out and actually go through the tedious task of finding a method of actually hosting the image themselves. Even worse is the likelihood that most users of this newfangled tool probably don’t even care in the first place.

So what is there for us to do? Why, encourage image hotlinking from our personal sites, and then quietly replacing the linked images with something a bit more fun, of course!

About Me

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

facebook · twitter · mastodon · instagram · flickr · email

Hi! I’m Pat David.
Husband, Father, and Engineer.
Minor photographer, major nerd.

I dabble in different things.

I enjoy taking photographs and processing them using Free Software. You can see my photographs on Flickr or 500px.

I’m a member of the GIMP team and recently built a new website for the project (which you should totally go check out). I’ve written about using GIMP for photo processing (along with other software and techniques). Along the way I’ve been lucky enough to make a bunch of new friends.

A few years ago I found the community (and resources) for photography using Free Software to be lacking. The best option available was Meet the GIMP by Rolf Steinort. At the same time, available photography-centric software was getting a boost with projects like RawTherapee, darktable and many (many!) others.

The larger community aspect was still missing, I felt. To (hopefully) solve this I sat down and created PIXLS.US.

PIXLS.US is a community focused on photography using Free Software tools. I wanted to give back to the projects I had been using by helping to foster a community around our common hobby (and in some cases, profession). I also wanted to remove any barriers to collaboration between projects, users, developers and hackers. If you have any interest in photography and digital art I encourage you to drop by and join the community!

Websites

As part of helping the community through PIXLS.US I’ve been offering to help with building infrastructure and websites. If you’re curious about some of my work in this area here’s a partial list of sites that I’ve built and manage (in some cases with the help of my friend Mica):

Crypto

GPG

If you need to reach me securely, my GPG key is:
66D1 7CA6 8088 4874 946D 18BD 67C7 6219 89E9 57AC

My full public key can be found here: GPG.txt.

I can also be found on https://keybase.io/patdavid where you can encrypt a message to send to me (copy/paste ciphertext into an email/message/post to me).

Bitcoin

If you’d like to donate some Bitcoin (or Bitcoin Cash), my Bitcoin wallet is: 1Ahi8PN2r7GAbqZuGmVjFynP5BCLrT64UA

Licensing

If you haven’t already noticed, just about everything I write or produce artistically I tend to license very liberally. Normally I’ll use a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license which means that you are free to share and adapt my works in any way you’d like (even commercially), provided you give me credit and that any changes you make to my works will be licensed under the same conditions.

Please attribute me as:
“Pat David” with a link to this site, https://patdavid.net.

If you’d like permissions beyond these conditions, feel free to email me to discuss.

Image of me courtesy of Rolf Steinort (Meet the GIMP) during LGM 2014.