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I got this little problem, a guy is writing a book and wanted my grandfather with all his siblings on a photo, there are only one good photo with all the siblings and that one was shot by my grandfather (which for that reason is not in the image)… So I got to be creative… =)
This is the original photo my grandfather took, old and faded but with all the siblings.
This is the photo I used to cut out my grandfather and put him among his siblings
And this is the final image with a fair amount of photoshopping...
Hello..
Today we’ll learn how to make a HDR (High Dynamic Range Rage) image out of a single GIF. The first thing you need to do is to go out into the nature and shoot your GIF image, now most cameras doesn’t save to this format so for this example we’ll use RAW instead and convert it later… Be sure to bracket a lot when doing the actual shooting so that you have a lot of images to choose from when you get home… In my example I bracketed 9 exposures with 1 EV spacing.
For this example I choose this exposure… +1 EV… Simply because I like it the most and I’m the photographer guy…. the artist.
Then open your image in Photoshop, or whatever program you prefer, it doesn’t really matter.
You’ll get to this wicked looking program with lots of knobs and buttons that no normal human can possibly understand… Just ignore them all and open the image… After all we’re artists, not computer programmers…
This took unusually long on my computer… Just chill out for a while, get a coffee of something, it will open eventually…
In order to save our image as a GIF file we need to convert it to indexed color, ie. no more then max 256 colors…
Save it as a “Compuserve GIF”, quit photoshop and open it in PhotomatRix
PhotomatRix is being stupid, can’t read GIF files… But it seems like it haven’t got a problem with Jpeg files… so we’ll need to convert…
Re-open the image in Photoshop and change the mode to RGB Color. Don’t worry, you destroyed all the colors when converting it to indexed color, and you will not get them back, this is just because you need to have RGB Color mode in order to save as Jpeg.
Check the image that it still looks like a GIF… This one is fine, save it as the middle (0 EV) exposure (as a Jpeg)
Then go to Image > Adjustments > Levels
Set the midpont at various places and save as different exposures… I used 0.1, 0.5, 1, 2 and 5
When you’re done saving your pics open them in PhotomatRix, you will need to fool the program that you have some idea of EV spacing… I told it I spaced 2 EV in between the exposures.
Since all the images in the stack are from the same GIF file you don’t really need anything on this next page… they are perfectly aligned and no ghosting…
Amazing… =)
Ths is the “real” HDR image, but in order to get something the monitor can show us we need to tonemap it back to a LDR
The default setting, you probably wanna drag the sliders around for a bit to get the look you want.
One single GIF HDR sees the light of day… =)
1:40 Leaving for a long walk
1:46 Very dark, I can’t see where I’m putting my feet
1:52 Amazing how many stars there are, just saw one falling too
1:55 Two trucks just passed me
2:08 Strange smell at the roundabout
2:11 A black volvo slowed down while passing me, I thought about waving
2:14 Toilet break, I didn’t dare to go more then a few meters in to the woods, they saw a bear here a few days ago
2:16 Met a truck with 15 lights in the front, followed by a white car
2:17 Truck from a side road, had to hurry to get out of the way
2:24 There’s a slice of watermelon on the road, took a photo
2:34 Dark road again, blinking roadwork sign ahead, they always make holes in the roads in the summer…
2:37 Some animal in the dark bushes to the left of me, a bit scary
2:43 Changed to the next hour-long track in my free audiobook “electricity”
3:02 Met a car, starting to get the feeling I was alone out here
3:06 A hedgehog crossed the road about a meter in front of me
3:18 Met a post-car
3:23 No police-cars at the station, just an observation =)
3:30 A taxi drove past me. It’s getting foggy
3:37 Hare on the road, it ran into the bushes
3:42 Stated the last track of the book
3:53 Getting a bit tired and my back aches just a little
4:07 Met a car, it’s been a while
4:09 Smells great from the bakery I’m passing right now
4:11 A post-car making it’s rounds
4:27 Met a car and another passed me… It’s getting brighter, can’t see much stars now
4:33 A horrible smell rises from the sever pump station
4:38 Came home and the book ended on the doorstep, that’s timing
4:41 16.57 km… Back at the computer. Watching live NASA TV, the launch of the space shuttle discovery STS-128
Watermelon
I realised when I just posted my last post that it’s been a quarter of a year between posts, even more maybe (March to July) that is just not right. I got to blog more often because… well because I have a blog… I don’t know… Blogging is something you are suppose to do, right?
Anyway, what has been going on so far this summer? Short answer: Nothing at all. I’ve been photographing quite a lot and walked quite a lot. I’m still a free man, got no work that I need to go to, which also makes me a poor man. Decided that when I get some rainy days I’ll make a gallery on my web-site and start to try to sell images. It should be possible to sell as fine arts. I also almost started a company in April-May I was on a course in starting your own company and has sorted out mostly everything, made Names, business plans, logos and so on… If the United Snakes of America wouldn’t have destroyed the world economy I probably would have had a photography business now… Everything is on standby though, I can start when the economy gets better, maybe to the fall…
It’s a strange summer we have this year, first it’s cold, with frost in June, then a few weeks of very hot weather, and last night (5-6 July) it was 1.0°c. It would be cool if it raised the temperature a bit now, it’s summer after all… they talk about global warming, how about some local warming…
I’m sitting here on the bed with the laptop on my lap, I guess that’s where laptops are suppose to be, listening to the new Moby album and sipping a a cup of coffee that are getting cold. The Moby album is very good, heard it a few times now and I’m slightly in love with it. I think I’ll go for a long walk tonight, maybe a 20’ish kilometre track… I’ve got new walking shoes a week ago or so, but they are pressing a bit on my upper heal on the right foot, which worries me a bit, I don’t want to ruin my feet now when we are soon to go to the northern Finland on some trekking… I walked 13 km yesterday and the foot didn’t feel very well…
Maybe since I don’t have anything to say, I should stop wasting your time. If there really are anyone reading this. If there are someone reading this why are you reading? Is it for the same reason that I am writing, because you got to blog… It’s quite therapeutic to write randomly like this… You should try it some day… =)
Oh well ow my half empty cup of coffee is defiantly ruined and I can put Moby in the Mp3 player and head out in the night… I promise to write more often!
This is today’s web quiz on our local newspapers website:
“Behövs det olika undervisning för kvinnor och män i bilskolan?
( ) Ja, ( ) Nej, ( ) Bara för kvinnor.”
And now let’s translate that to English:
“Do we need a different education for men and women in the driving school?
( ) Yes, ( ) No, ( ) Only for the women.”
I realise my translation didn’t do that good… It’s different between men and women, not different as in a new one…
What is going on?!
I was trying to get my fix of illegal content and the webpage just kept timing out… did a traceroute and it seem to stop at port80.se.
Is it the Swedish police and/or lawyer Danowski gathering servers, I mean evidence?
Ones upon a time, when I was still a kid and the world was still black and white like the old movies you see on YouTube, I bought an album by a British band called “Magnum – The Spirit”. I remember that I quite liked it but that is not relevant. What is relevant though is that a friend of mine said “This is a really good album, one that you still can listen to and like when you are old” (or something close to that and in Swedish. Back then I didn’t think much about it, but for some reason I remembered it.
The album was released in 1991 so I figure it was 91-92 something when I listened to it, today 17′ish years later, I stumbled upon it just by a coincidence… and remembered what my friend said. So I popped it in the laptop (my cd player is diseased), put on my Grado labs headphones, put the volume on 11 and Wow! This album gives me goose-bumps (Great music should give you goose-bumps, or else it’s not good music). I don’t know if it’s really because it’s good or if it’s no darn nostalgic, I remember so much of my youth when I listen to this, but he surely knew what he was talking about all those years ago.
This album just earned a special place in my itunes catalogue, I even tried to listen to Rednex and Scooter that should be from the roughly the same time perdiod but no goose-bumps there…
The most ironic thing is that the album would probably suck if you didn’t have all the memories attached to it… =)
Hello
I’m starting to get seriously annoyed and concerned with the lack of Swedish language in Finland. Finland officially has two languages, Finnish and Swedish, both have the same legal status, and both Finns and Swedes have the right to get service on their native language, however the last years there has been a strong opinion among the Finnish talking people to get rid of the Swedish language minority. It’s quite threatening for us who don’t talk Finnish since it feels like the whole country is turning against us, just a few years ago you could get service in both Finnish and Swedish in most situations, unless you were in the middle of the darkest finn-forests…
There are even political parties with racist-like ideas like Pro-Finland for example that actively working to get Finland monolingually Finnish. One argument that I’ve heard oh so many times are that there’s so few Swedes in Finland, and then they show some numbers on how large the percent of Swedes are compared to the whole population. Well this doesn’t really make much sense since much Finland-Swedes are living with a Finland-Finn and thereby have two languages, these are measured as Finns in the statistics… there are also quite much Saami, Romani and Russian people in Finland, these are not Finnish but still used as Finns in the propaganda. Why can’t we have more then one language, more then one culture and more then one people… It’s a diversity that are making the culture rich, not something that should be exterminated.
Historically, the first official language in Finland were Swedish, so if anyone has the right language… ok I drop that thought, I don’t want to provoke…
Today my mother got a new SIM card for her mobile phone, it was from Tele Finland it contained a few papers ad forms and not a single word in Swedish. A few days ago a woman from that company called her and (in Swedish) asked if she’d be interested in changing to their company. Mother change and soon the Finnish forms came… Mom sent a message back to them that if she don’t get it in Swedish she wont take the service… That is the way to do it, but most people don’t seem to mind. And just because of all these people that don’t mind Finland will loose it’s Swedish culture… I’m also in the process of getting a phone, my old phone is mostly dead, and I’ve noticed that there aren’t a single mobile telephone company in the country that have their website translated to Swedish, one of them has some basic information but not enough to actually use it… I don’t think it’s in the law that companies must have information in Swedish but I think it would be in their own best interest to sell, but maybe it sells more to show that they are a Finnish only company… I don’t know… Another company that I noticed made less of a service in Swedish lately is the post office… they use to have two different URL’s, one that said posti.fi (means the post in Finnish) and was Finnish and one that said posten.fi (which means the post in Swedish) and was in Swedish… they changed it a few months ago to both point to the Finnish site, with a small text in the corner to make the site Swedish, it’s actually more work to do this than to leave it as it was… Maybe I’m picky and in an irritated mood but I think that this is racist and oh so unnecessary…
Also, we do have one political party that are working for the Swedish rights, it’s called svenska folkpartiet or SFP (the Swedish peoples party) but there is a fundamentally wrong idea with having a political party that has to be voted in to the government, if you are Swedish talking you almost have to vote on them to defend your rights to service in Swedish, those rights that are a part of the Finnish law, however I would rather vote on the Green party or someone with more liberal ideas if it wasn’t for this issue that overshadows everything else… and in the end there are so much more Pro-Finland’ers that will just vote down anything good for the Swedish culture anyway… Gaah!…
I feel like moving to some more intelligent country… I use to think Iceland would be a good idea but I’m not sure anymore after they crashed their economy… They said in the radio the other day that the Finns in Sweden (Finnish is not an official language in Sweden) has more rights then the Swedes in Finland… Maybe moving to Sweden would be a good idea…
Or why not just remove Åland and the Swedish coast of Finland to make a new country… A country that would speak a language that you could understand, a country that would have a culture that are interesting and fresh… I mean why not, isn’t breaking out in the fashion these days… We already have an internet domain (.ax)… we already have a flag… =)
I guess the way to hack this problem is to learn and start talking Finnish, but I think that is loosing, I think that since we have the right to our language, in the law, we should never give it up… What will be next, when we no longer talk Swedish we no longer need our own media channels (TV and Radio). We do have a different culture then the Finnish people and that culture will also suffer and die if the language dies, and that would be so sad…
Ha en bra dag… typ
I made bread tonight and it was awesome… here’s the recipe… =)
Oatbread.
1 liter Water
3 deciliter Oatgrains
2-3 teaspoons of Salt
50 grams of Yeast.
1.7 liters of Wheat flour
2 deciliter of mixed Seeds
- Soak the oatgrains and the salt in warm water for a while.
- When the mixture cooled off to the right temperature (for fresh yeast approximately 37 degrees), add yeast (dissolved in a little water), the wheat flour and the seeds.
- Stir with a wooden ladle to a smooth batter (rather loose).
- Let it ferment under a cloth approximately 45 minutes and pour out on a plate with the help of a ladle or steak shovel to 4 breads.
- Cook at 200 degrees around about 35 minutes.
- Brush bread with melted butter and let it cool down under a cloth.
I used a little bit too much flour, I would recommend not doing that it’s suppose to be quite loose.. The fresh bread with just butter on it tastes absolutely amazing…
I have been thinking about making a HDR timelapse for some time and I wanted to make one of the dawn or the sunrise, I haven’t had the chase to do it though because of rain or sleeping however, this morning I went out about one hour before sunrise and set up the camera to take +/- 2ev brackets. I don’t have a intervalometer (is that even a word?) so I have to press the shutter by hand, I used my PDA to show a clock so could see when to press and pressed the shutter 300 x 3 times… I had the aperture at f/4 and shot in aperture mode. When I’ve been shooting just under 900 photos, 300 brackets, the battery in my PDA started draining… I would have liked to go on for a while sine the sun was staring to paint the marsh but I had to give up since I didn’t have any other way of splitting up the time in half minute pieces…
When I got home I put the photos to batch process in photomatix and went to sleep… After that it’s just sequencing and encoding… I made a HD1080i version for myself and a smaller H.264 for flickr and youtube…
Now I’m gonna go have a look if it’s raining or not… if it’s not raining I’ll go for a walk, which I really would like to do, if it’s raining I’m going to bed…
