GoPro HD Helmet HERO
“GoPro’s HD Helmet HERO is the world’s highest performance wearable 1080p HD video and still photo camera. Professional quality 1080p / 960p / 720p HD resolutions record at 30 and 60 frames per second 60 fps in 720p. Record up to 2.5 hours on a single charge and up to 9 hours total on a 32GB SD card not included.” — via GoPro.
@ehMac was using this camera on Saturday for some of his coverage of the Waterloo Apple Store Opening. I was very impressed with the results. I want.
The Prodigy Son Has Returned
This is my 13 year old son who’s become quite the guitar player (considering his age). Better then me by the time I was 18 anyhow. Here he is playing my guitar. He keeps hinting to me how much he likes it. Nu-uh, I don’t think so buddy-boy.
This is my ’57 replica, circa ’83 with Texas Special pickups and a gold anodized pickgard. Well played, well loved.
My Thoughts — Retouching with Pixelmator
I’ve long since been displeased with Photoshop, so much so that my last version was from CS3. Until recently there hasn’t been any hopeful contenders to step in the ring, but the release of Pixelmator 1.6 has certainly got a lot of peoples hopes up.
I don’t work in photo editors all that much anymore and I don’t get much into graphics since working with Chris at DEVi8.design, so granted my needs are light. But still, I know what I want in an image and I want to be able to get it out. I want an editor that makes that process intuitive.
Yesterday I blogged about making a high pass filter in Pixelmator and honestly I had not done it the manual way in years, but I had no trouble at all finding what I was after in Pixelmator. I cannot say the same of Photoshop.
Well this is the image I was working on. All I wanted was a high pass filter to sharpen up the eyes, a little vignette (which I will blog about making a convincing vignette next week), some color pop and a little bit of exposure tweaking. I can honestly say that it took me no more time or effort then it would have in Photoshop. In fact, I’m convinced that it was far less stressful.
So how do I think Pixelmator will stack up in the pro world? It’s still a little light. Graphic designers used to making rich icons courtesy of Photoshops confused vector tools (yes that’s me) will be looking for a proper vector editor if they dropped Photoshop all together. And there is something to be said for Photoshops layers styles and smart filters which I haven’t been able to reproduce in Pixelmator (someone point them out if they exist please), but honestly those were nothing you couldn’t do with masks and a little know-how.
I think Pixelmator has a way to go before becoming every photographers sweetheart but it’s very exiting to see how far they have come in such a short time. I’m putting smart money on Pixelmator being a real thorn in Adobe’s side in 3 to 5 years.
Getting the High Pass Filter Effect in Pixelmator
EDIT: Before this tutorial even got cold, the Pixelmator Tutorial Podcast picked up the technique and improved on it! Be sure to check out their slightly different method which allows for greater control by allowing you to visualize the sharpening effect.
I recently canned Adobe Photoshop and switched to Pixelmator. No, Pixelmator is not yet everything that Photoshop is. It is missing key items like vector tools (one could argue that Photoshop should not have had them anyway), but Pixelmator is catching up really fast. Pixelmator might even have a leg up on Adobe in a number of areas — like that fact that is looks, smells and feels like a Mac app from this decade.
One thing I found missing that I use quite regularly in photo enhancement work is the high pass filter. A high pass filter is a great way to add some sharpness to your images if you find the edges a little fuzzy. You may not be aware, but the high pass filter in Photoshop is little more then an inverted, blurred copy of the original. It’s easy enough to create manually, but having the feature built into Photoshop made it quick and easy.
So my plan is to write some AppleScript to make happen in Pixelmator. Unfortunately Pixelmator doesn’t yet have an AppleScript Dictionary, so such a script is going to have to be done with what we call menu scripting. Until I have time to sort that out though, here is how you manually emulate the high pass filter found in Photoshop.
1. Duplicate your original layer (⌘J)
2. Name the duplicate “high pass”
3. Remove the color
You want to remove the color but preserve the luminescence of the image, so the easiest way to do this is with Edit > Fill (⌥⌘F), then choose black, and the blending option color. Keep the opacity at 100% and click ok.
4. Duplicate “high pass” (⌘J) and Invert (⌘I)
5. Add Gaussian blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian)
Add as much or as little Gaussian blur to the duplicate as you need. The radius will directly correlate to the number you would have used in your Photoshop high pass filter setting. I typically used between 4 and 20, depending on the amount of sharpening I was after, but you are welcome to go to any extreme you like.
6. Set Blending to Linear Light and Opacity to 50%
7. Merge “high pass” layers
8. Set the Blending of “high pass merged” to overlay and enjoy!
Available Light Portraits
Reiley – December 30 2009, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.
I pulled out my 1984 50mm f1.7 Minolta lens earlier this week and have kept it on ever since. I love that old lens. I love how at f1.7 you can shoot with just about any available light and get a decent shot.
This one is a nice, contemplative shot of my son who is with us for the holidays. He’s really growing up fast.
Sunday Morning Snack
Sunday Morning Snack, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.
Sunday Morning Snack, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.
Sunday morning is a time for mom and dad to tackle some chores and projects but it only takes a little sun and childish wonder to get me to pause and enjoy what Sunday means to the girls.
Bathed in Sunday morning light, the girls enjoy a self chosen snack of BearPaws.
Bunny Escapes Zoo – 2004
Bunny Escapes Zoo – 2004, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.
Years ago a bunch of bunnies managed to get free of their pen at the Waterloo Park. For quite some time after (and I am sure still today) you could find the bunnies — now feral — roaming about many of the public green spaces within a few kilometers of the park. Quite used to humans being around, you could often have these critters chewing grass at your feet while you ate your lunch on the city hall lawn.
This was shot in May 2004 on Fujifilm NPH 120.
Assist your photograpy with iPhone apps
If you don’t have an iPhone and have never seen one in action, you think I am a crack-head for bringing it in a photography blog. The fact is that the iPhone has turned out to be quite the photographic companion for me. In fact I only have 2 GB of music on my iPhone, but over 6,250 images from my image library on my computer.
The iPhone has become my mobile portfolio, my flickr uploaded, my on-the-fly image editor and my insta-shot camera. But I am not the only one who has tapped into the power of the iPhone as a photographic assistant. Photography Bay recently published a list and mini review of some of the hottest photography related iPhone apps. Whether you have an iPhone or not, this list will certain make you hungry for the photographic possibilities.
Grand River Conservation Foundation Annual Report 2008
Grand River Conservation Foundation Annual Report 2008, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.
Back in April, the GRCA called me and asked me if they could use this image in a clean air promotion. Which they did here. Today I got another email from them showing how they used the image in their annual report (as seen above). Pretty cool.
© Grand River Conservation Authority/Grand River Conservation Foundation
The Wonder of Babies
The Wonder of Babies, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.
This is from a fairly old shoot, 6 or 7 years ago, on film, couple of strobes and umbrellas. I am about to embark on a massive reorganization of my image library and I am taking stock, if you will, of the images I have, old and new. In doing so I am coming across some old stuff I’d forgotten about.
It’s interesting to look at this stuff again and see how my style has or hasn’t changed since then. I know one thing for sure, I miss the certainty I had of film, knowing just how it would respond in just about any circumstance. Knowing how many stops latitude you had with negative vs. color transparency, to push one while pulling the other, the grain on T-Max vs Tri-X… all the stuff that just catalogued in your brain after a while.
Digital is a bit more of a mysterious beast to me still. Sometimes it behaves like slide film, and sometimes like negative film and then in the end it can all be changed in post processing. I guess it’s what keeps our minds sharp, always something new to learn.