Pixel Touch

Steve Job's Final Words: OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

2011-11-01T00:59:00.005+08:00

Eulogy for Steve Jobs; by Mona Simpson, the late Apple co-founder's sister

Taken from the New York Times, October 31, 2011.

NEW YORK - Ms Mona Simpson, UCLA English professor, delivered this eulogy for her brother Steve Jobs on Oct 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University. Her eulogy is reproduced here in full:

I GREW up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I'd met my father, I tried to believe he'd changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me - me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance - and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild.

This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I'd fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother's name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James - someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.

When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.

We took a long walk - something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don't remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I'd pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.

I didn't know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.

I told Steve I'd recently considered my first purchase of a computer: Something called the Cromemco.

Steve told me it was a good thing I'd waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.

ABOUT THOSE TURTLENECKS ...

I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They're not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.

Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.

That's incredibly simple, but true.

He was the opposite of absent-minded.

He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn't ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn't have to be.

When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn't been invited.

He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.

Novelty was not Steve's highest value. Beauty was.

For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he'd order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.

He didn't favour trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.

His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: "Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later."

Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.

He was willing to be misunderstood.

Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.

'LOVE WAS HIS GOD OF GODS'

Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.

Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out: "Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?"

I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. "There's this beautiful woman and she's really smart and she has this dog and I'm going to marry her."

When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa's boyfriends and Erin's travel and skirt lengths and Eve's safety around the horses she adored.

None of us who attended Reed's graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.

His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.

Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn't intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.

Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He'd be standing there in his jeans.

When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered: "Your dad's in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?"

When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.

They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But - and this was a crucial distinction - it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.

'STEVE TREASURED HAPPINESS'

This is not to say that he didn't enjoy his success: He enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.

And he did.

Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.

Once, he told me if he'd grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn't known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.

Steve cultivated whimsy. What other CEO knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favourite David Austin rose?

He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I'll venture that Laurene will discover treats - songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer - even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company's patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.

With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.

He treasured happiness.

Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he'd loved walking through Paris. He'd discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill-skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.

Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.

Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.

I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He'd push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he'd sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.

Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.

"You can do this, Steve," she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.

He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.

I realised during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: His son Reed's graduation from high school, his daughter Erin's trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.

'STEVE'S DEATH WAS UNEXPECTED FOR US'

Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.

One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything - even ice. We were in a standard ICU unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he'd like to be treated a little specially.

I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.

He leaned over to me, and said: "I want it to be a little more special."

Intubated, when he couldn't talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.

For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.

By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.

None of us knows for certain how long we'll be here. On Steve's better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he'd wanted to walk them down the aisle as he'd walked me the day of my wedding.

We all - in the end - die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

I suppose it's not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve's death was unexpected for us.

What I learned from my brother's death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.

Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.

He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said: "Wait. I'm coming. I'm in a taxi to the airport. I'll be there."

"I'm telling you now because I'm afraid you won't make it on time, honey."

When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who'd lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children's eyes as if he couldn't unlock his gaze.

Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.

'OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW'

Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.

His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.

This is what I learned: He was working at this, too. Death didn't happen to Steve, he achieved it.

He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn't be able to be old together as we'd always planned, that he was going to a better place.

Dr Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.

He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.

This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.

He seemed to be climbing.

But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve's capacity for wonderment, the artist's belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.

Steve's final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.

Before embarking, he'd looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life's partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve's final words were:

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

Kang Ji Min (강지민) Live!

2011-09-04T14:27:00.003+08:00

I was searching through YouTube for videos on one of my favorite timeless classic "Knife by Rockwell"; when I chanced upon a live performance of this song by this Korean Lady in an unknown cafe/bar.

Turns out she's Kang Ji Min (강지민); and when she reaches the "high" of the song, I'm totally hooked.

I would say she has the range of legendary Linda Ronstadt's vocal; superb on both lows and highs, deep and strong.

I'm not familiar with Korean songs, but she did quite a number of English covers, live on cafes/bars.

And I can tell you, I am very impressed!

I've embedded just 5 of her music live recordings, 1 Korean, and 4 English songs.

애원 by 진시몬: This song is just pure Korean classic, and it's a pretty darn hard to sing, due to it's extreme highs/lows; but Kang Ji Min (강지민) handled it more than perfectly.

Unchained Melody by Righteous Brothers: Perfect rendition by Kang Ji Min again; I'm very impressed she captured the highs so beautifully, right down to the note. A must watch! My absolute favorite!

Can't live without you by Harry Nilsson: Another wonderful classic; only covers by Air Supply and Mariah Carey are deemed passable. She brought this song up another notch with her opera-like vocals!

Knife by Rockwell: This song started it all. A stunning rendition. An absolute blast!

Reflections of my life by Marmalade: Fast paced song, with some nasty guitar work included as well.

Currently, she has over 1000 music live recordings uploaded to YouTube; and even has a fanpage!

Be sure to check them out!

I'm a little disappointed there isn't much information on her bio; and trying to translate the Korean language on her fan cafe site is near impossible.

Hopefully someone can share more info on this amazing lady; especially where you can buy her songs online!

Funny Scenes! My Girlfriend is a Gumiho (2010)

2011-08-04T14:14:00.004+08:00

I'm pretty much into Korean Movies, but not their dramas; till I tried watching this excellent romance, comedy drama; starring the likes of Lee Seung Ki, Shin Min Ah, No Min Woo, Park Soo Jin, Sung Dong Il and Hyo Min.

Pretty darn good Korean drama, I totally enjoyed all the 16 episodes!

The drama started off slowly, but you will be hooked mid-way through.

Shin Min Ah shows why she still is one of the heavy weights of Korean actresses! Excellent performances by her!

She is so darn cute as the Gumiho!

2 of my favorite comedy scenes from Episode 15!

Cha Tae Woong (Lee Seung Ki) burst into a "imaginary wedding ceremony"; between his love interest: the Gumiho (Shin Min Ah) and love rival Park Dong Joo (No Min Woo)...

3 different scenarios follow; 2 of them are just so funny!

My favorite is the 2nd scenario!!! :D

Movie Director Ban Doo Hong (Sung Dong Il) tries his hand on melodrama; with hilarious results!

Korean Movies Countdown: No. 8: A Bittersweet Life

2011-06-14T10:50:00.008+08:00

My first ever Korean Movie I've watched, I still remembered it's a VCD I bought from a local store.

But boy, what memories! I remembered at that time, it was quite a good "action" film with some very good emotional scenes in it. But that's all.

Years later, I re-watched it with a new refreshed perspective, and can I say, this movie is Gold.

Probably the most stylish film I've seen so far in the "gangster/action" category.

A very straight forward storyline (from IMDB): Kim Sun-woo (Lee Byung-hun) is an enforcer and manager for a hotel owned by a cold, calculating crime boss, Kang (Kim Yeong-cheol), to whom he is unquestionably loyal.
The two share concerns over business tensions with Baek Jr., a son from a rival family, which is when Kang assigns Sun-Woo what is perceived (at first) to be a simple errand while he is away on a business trip to shadow his young mistress, Heesoo (Shin Min-a), for fear that she may be cheating on him with another, much younger man, with the mandate that he must kill them both if he discovers their affair.
As he performs his duty following Heesoo, and escorting her to a music recital one day he becomes quietly enthralled by the girl's beauty and innocence, as glimpses into his lonely, empty personal life become more prevalent.

Gritty action, drama, comedic moment at times; and a very solid film editing makes this film a "must-watch" if you are into Korean Movies.

The soundtrack is awesomely beautiful. ( It won the best original soundtrack in the Catalonian International Film Festival in 2005). Compliments very well with the film.

Actors Lee Byung Hun, Hwang Jeong Min, Kim Roe Ha and the beautiful Shin Min Ah all put in very creditable performances.

Sidenote: I think it's no coincidence that Hong Kong director Dante Lam paid tribute to this movie with a very similar baddie character in his own excellent "Fire of Conscience". This character is seen with an almost identical outfit (Green Jungle Hat, black spectacles and all)

Korean Movies Countdown: No. 9: Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War

2011-06-13T14:31:00.006+08:00

Well onto the No. 9 of my top Korean Movie list.

Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War.

Storyline from IMDB:

In 1950, in South Korea, shoe-shiner Jin-tae Lee and his 18-year-old old student brother, Jin-seok Lee, form a poor but happy family with their mother, Jin-tae's fiancé Young-shin Kim, and her younger siblings.

Jin-tae and his mother are tough workers, who sacrifice themselves to send Jin-seok to the university. When North Korea invades the South, the family escapes to a relative's house in the country, but along their journey, Jin-seok is forced to join the army to fight in the front, and Jin-tae enlists too to protect his young brother. The commander promises Jin-tae that if he gets a medal he would release his brother, and Jin-tae becomes the braver soldier in the company.

Along the bloody war between brothers, the relationship of Jin-seok with his older brother deteriorates leading to a dramatic and tragic end.

I still remember this was the first Korean Movie I watched in the theaters with my then girlfriend. I also remembered it was the first time I cried so much during the run of any movie. (Ran out of tissues, we were both shedding tears)

Jang Dong Gun, Won Bin and Lee Eun Ju (her 2nd last movie before her tragic suicide); all put in excellent performances in this one.

Prepare the tissues. You are warned.

Korean Movies Countdown: No. 10: Once Upon a Time in High School

2011-06-09T14:13:00.004+08:00

Well time to get the countdown of my top 10 Korean Movies.

I've seen very little of Korean Movies (actually less than 30 films to be honest) to actually make a proper countdown; but here goes anyway.

I'm sure there are more outstanding films out there that I've missed from my Top 10 list.

So on the Number 10 spot: We have Once Upon a Time in High School. (The Spirit of Jeet Kune Do)

Directed by the excellent Yoo Ha, this film is set in a high school in South Korea, 1978.

Excellent casts all around. The main characters are played by Kwon Sang Woo (one of my favorite actors), Han Ga In (the only movie film I remembered she appeared in) and Lee Jeong Jin.

Kwon Sang Woo plays Hyun Soo, a very shy high school student but an avid fan of Bruce Lee; had a secret crush on the ever gorgeous Eun Ju (Han Ga In).

This movie portrays more or less the life of Hyun Soo in the then military-ruled style nation; the gang violence, bullying in school; and of course, the innocence of puppy love from Hyun Soo on Eun Ju.

Superb acting from Kwon Sang Woo, this film really cemented his range of acting abilities, changing from a very shy student to one who takes up "Jeet Kune Do" to wreck vengeance on the bullies in the school.

Who will ever forget that epic fight on the rooftop; or to the scenes where he did his arduous training to beef himself up?

Enjoy the ride and an excellent film!

Oh and yes, not to forget some excellent timeless OST classics like One Way Ticket by Eruption, Feelings by Morris Albert and Graduation Tears by Chelsia Chan. Boy after hearing Graduation Tears, it makes you want to go back to High School! (I'm a sucker for good OST!)

The gem in the OST will probably be Kwon Sang Woo himself singing Love Cannot Be Done, orginally sung by Yang Hee Eun.

Korean Movies: Honorable Mentions (200 Pounds Beauty)

2011-06-08T14:49:00.004+08:00

Ok, I admit it.

I watched this movie all because of Kim Ah Joong. She won the best actress award in the 44th Grand Bell Awards.

The plot goes like this: (from IMDB)

Hanna is the famous Korean pop singer. She suffers from having extremely poor self-esteem, as she has been ignored because of her appearance. At last, she makes the decision of a lifetime to have full-body plastic surgery.

To add on, she has a crush on her company's music director Sang Jun; and to win him over, she is willing to make the crucial decision that will change her life happiness forever by going through the knife.

Kim Ah Joong plays both the "fat" and "slender" Hanna. Take a look at the MV below and wow, She's absolutely smoking!

The story is cheesy, simple and straight forward; with of course, lots of comedic moments, as well as some touching ones.

And don't forget an excellent soundtrack to boot as well.

I'm actually surprised that Kim Ah Joong can hit the high notes so well.

If you are looking for a nice movie over the weekend to chill out, especially with a loved one; you can't go wrong with "200 Pounds Beauty".

Digital Imaging: Mini Power!!! (Part 2)

2011-06-03T16:59:00.007+08:00

It's been quite a long while since I've posted.

Part 2 of the digital imaging for my favorite car! (Mini Cooper)

Take a look at the steps taken to create the desired dark and stormy night scenario.

The final end result!

The actual photograph used as the background setting.

Cloning and touching up!

The Mini Cooper from my previous project is imported to the scene here after some lighting adjustments.

Rain effects created!

Added a lightning effect!

Added touches like windshield reflections, of the lightning strike; shadows etc. to complete the final imaging.

Korean Movies: Honorable Mentions (The Host)

2011-01-25T02:06:00.005+08:00

I watched "The Host" after all the publicity hype on how good this film was.

As of March 2009, this is the highest grossing film to date in South Korea, selling a total of 13,019,740 tickets. This means that over 20% of the South Korean population watched the movie (although there were also some who went to see it several times). (From IMDB)

Personally I'm impressed; especially with the first half of the film.

The CGI on the monster, the execution, the storyline etc, are all very good.

However I find the action/ thrill trails out at the end, giving this film a somewhat "bland after-taste".

As with most Korean films, you'll get a dose of humor, thrill, action, and drama.

A must watch if you are into "monsters" or "thrill" kind of movies.

My Favorite Korean Movies

2011-01-25T01:55:00.002+08:00

I've been starting to watch Korean Movies lately, and I must say, I'm impressed.

Even though I just started; I've watched enough to compile a decent list of my favorites.

So what is the list of my favorite Korean Movies; and which are in the top 10?

But before I go into the top 10 list; I would post some 'honorable mentions'; films that are good, but not good enough to crack my top 10.

Where would "A Bittersweet Life" be ranked? Stay tuned...

Ground Zero, World Trade Center, Satellite Shot

2010-12-31T14:01:00.003+08:00

A stunning shot by a Satellite on Ground Zero (World Trade Center).

The actual shot is an amazing 9372 x 9372 pixel dimension! (Jpeg, 45.5 MB in size!)

Download it now via multiupload and view it for yourself.

Something I dug out from my old hard drive to share.

Zooming in to the actual pixel size; you make out even the tiniest detail on the site.

Amazing what technology can provide.

Digital Imaging: Mini Power!!! (Part 1)

2010-12-29T13:21:00.007+08:00

I'm always a big fan of the Mini Cooper; so I decided to embark on this personal project (which was done a couple of years back)

I've decided to take a photo of an ordinary Mini Cooper "S"; and apply digital enhancements; with the final output of the sporty car in a showroom advertisement kind of feel. (see below final image)

The final output. My favorite car in my favorite colors; waiting to be driven off from the showroom!

The original photo I've taken from the web; credit to the original owner. :P

Masking time! I masked out the car into its own element. I did enhance the look a bit here by applying a classic "S" curve.

LAB time! How to change the bluish color to my favorite green color? Using LAB mode is the easiest! Note that the bumpers and other chrome parts of the car reflect the green color correctly.

Some touchup here and there is needed.

I redid the whole windscreen area.

On hindsight; I've missed out on the reflections on the car hood area.

Three other versions of the final image below:

Ready to be sold: With specs like these; that's what I call Mini Power!

A mini in classic Black & White! I'm loving it!

Zoom in close on the reflection on the floor area!

A fake advert I did; well some of the words used are pretty dumb! (I know I know!)

I used radial blur filter on the wheels; and motion blur filter on the background to get the desired "car in motion" effect.

Part 2 coming soon!

Pixel Touch: Now a personal blog!

2010-12-29T12:34:00.005+08:00

I decided to make some minor changes to Pixel Touch.

Pixel Touch is now a personal blog where I want to share all kinds of interesting topics and stuff under the sun!

I will still be doing Photoshop and (to a lesser extent) Illustrator tutorials.

For more information; please refer to the About Page.

One thing I will be doing soon: Introducing my top 10 favorite Korean Movies! :)

Oh yeah, and that photo above? Some place I want to go when going for a vacation with my family! :D

Restoration Process: Tintin T-shirt to iPhone Wallpaper!

2010-12-29T11:47:00.007+08:00

The final output "Tintin with Captain Haddock and Snowy, iPhone Wallpaper (640x960)"

The initial stage: I got this T-shirt in Thailand during my National Service stint.

An excellent T-shirt (a huge favorite of mine); I worn it till it was pretty worn out.

I decided to "savage" the graphic on the T-shirt for future use.

I scanned the T-shirt in 3 portions; making sure I cover all the areas of the graphic.

Using Photoshop; I lay out the 3 pieces of the scanned graphic layers till they aligned up.

Using the clone and healing tool; I touched up the graphic till it looks like above.

Next step; Illustrator!

Illustrator has a function call "Live Trace"; I tried it; but I got rough edges on the scan to Black & White. Tweaking the settings remained futile.

I decided to go "manual" on this one and trace out the outlines one by one. Results are as above.

With reference to the original graphic on the T-Shirt; I filled out the Black areas first; as above.

The final step is to fill out the colours; results as above.

The Illustrator file is exported to Photoshop for the final output!

Incidentally I did the same restoration process to the "badge graphic" on the T-shirt as well.

Results as below: (I couldn't find a similar font; so I decided to replace it all together with another suitable font)

Final comments: The good thing about "Vector Graphic" is that you can blow up the graphic to epic proportions; but it will still look crisp and sharp.

You can't say the same thing about "Raster" graphic.

Hmmm, maybe I should make a huge banner with this ;)

Correcting The Orientation Of Your Photos Using The Arbitrary Function in Photoshop

2010-10-27T13:01:00.006+08:00

In this video tutorial I will demonstrate how you can correct "orientation-skewed" photos by using the Arbitrary function in Photoshop.

We will use the Ruler Tool to draw out a reference plane for Photoshop to calculate the angle needed to rotate the photo back into its correct orientation.

No more guesswork or manually rotating photos!

Note: This method works very well with photos that have structures with straight planes (buildings, bridges etc).

Before

After

Difficulty Level: Beginner

Improving the Contrast and Tonality of Your Photos Using Levels

2010-10-27T12:11:00.007+08:00

In this video tutorial I will show you how to improve the contrast and tonality of your photos; simply by using levels adjustment.

By sliding in the black and white point sliders of the levels adjustment layer; we can achieve instant improvement of contrast to your photos!

I normally use this method in the beginning of the retouching process flow of my projects.

Before

After

Before

After (Subtle improvements!)

Difficulty Level: Beginner

Correcting Underexposed or Overexposed Photos

2010-10-13T11:58:00.006+08:00

In this video tutorial I will show you how to correct underexposed or overexposed photos in a very simple yet effective manner.

This video tutorial is very useful if you are totally new to Photoshop.

By changing the blending mode of duplicate layers; (screen for underexposed) or (multiply for overexposed) photos; we can color correct the photo in less than a minute.

Before (Underexposed)

After

Before (Overexposed)

After

Difficulty Level: Basic

Do note that sometimes after extreme color correction; JPEG artifacts may be seen in the photos. There are ways to reduce this; but I'll explain this in other tutorials.

Creating a Bubbly Brush in Photoshop!

2010-10-09T15:40:00.000+08:00

Thanks to Cadbury White Bubbly Chocolate packaging for the inspiration! ;)

Making use of the “no fill” option layer in Photoshop; layer effects; gradients etc; and using a simple “black for pixel information; white for transparency” algorithm; we will create a “Bubbly Brush” from scratch in Photoshop.

More sick shortcuts revealed in this video tutorial!

Difficulty Level: Basic

Creating a Glossy Photoshop Icon

2010-10-09T15:37:00.000+08:00

In this tutorial we will learn how to create a Glossy Photoshop Icon.

Several Photoshop techniques are covered here:

Using different layer blending modes to create the glowish effect on the icon.
Using the “Step and Repeat” feature in Photoshop to create a diagonal-line pattern across the icon.
Using guides to facilitate the work flow.

Difficulty Level: Basic

Creating A Neon Logo Text In Illustrator

2010-10-09T15:35:00.000+08:00

We will learn how to create a Neon-like logo text from a vector program like Illustrator. (Photoshop is a raster program).

The final vector text is then imported to Photoshop.

Using the Illustrator's Effect Appearance; we will give the text logo the neon-like glow effect.

I've included an example working file of the neon-like text (Ai file)

Download it here.

Difficulty Level: Basic

More Color to Black & White Conversions!

2010-09-29T16:07:00.007+08:00

More Color to Black & White Conversions!

This time we are taking this color shot of a Lotus leave; and changing it into a Black & White photo.

Our desired outcome will be a contrasty and strong image with intense blacks and whites.

Before:

After: Note the "metallic look-a-like" shine to the water droplets!

Difficulty Level: Beginner

Changing a Color Photo to Black & White

2010-09-29T14:33:00.010+08:00

I learn this technique from Photoshop Guru Russell Brown.

A rather simple but effective technique that allows a certain amount of control over the image tonality. Perfect for beginners!

Before:

After:

This technique uses a "dual" Hue/Saturation adjustment layers to get a simple yet effective B&W photo.

The top adjustment layer acts as a film; while the adjustment layer below it acts as a filter. You can have control on the tonality of the photo by playing with the Hue and Saturation sliders of the "filter" layer.

Difficulty Level: Beginner

Welcome to Pixel Touch!

2010-09-29T14:08:00.009+08:00

Hi Everyone, Mattias here.

I decided to start this blog to share with you my experience; and the various tips, tricks and techniques I used in Photoshop and Illustrator.

You can find video tutorials, freebies and other design related tidbits here. So enjoy your stay here!

You can find video tutorials, freebies and other design related tidbits here. So enjoy your stay here!