Thursday, March 17, 2005

I'm hanging out with Samantha today! I'll update on where our adventures take us. I miss my gal - ever since I quit the marching band, I've had problems staying in touch with TMB friends. I still think she's beyond fabulous, though. I have a feeling I'm going to have a lot of fun - and imagine, it's Saint Patrick's Day, too! This is a recipe for a good time.

On a more geeky note, I was browsing a few photography forums when I ran across a link to this program, called VirtualPhotographer. It's a free filtering program for Photoshop, Elements, or any photo editing program that uses layers. I've only had it for ten minutes, but I'm already in love. It's a super easy program that goes well beyond the standard filters in Photoshop. Plus, there are even more downloadable filters available, all for free - without a catch!

Let me show you a quick example. This took two minutes; I used a red polarising filter, adjusted the levels a bit, and did a little Gaussian blur to smooth some of the edges. Yes, there are a few artifacts and problem areas. However, if I spent ten minutes, I think these could be fixed. (And I know my highlights are close to being blown - don't chide, Lauren!)



And here's the original.



I'm a big fan of automation within Photoshop. Hell, I'm the dork that creates my own actions to save time. But this is beyond easy.

BTW, Ajeet sent me an interesting link about the essence of photography yesterday. I agree with a lot of what was written. It's a nice starter guide to photography, although I'm still trying to figure out the technicalities of manual photography, just to be a purist. (Plus, eventually, I'd like to be able to use my dad's Minolta and his massive collection of lenses.)

(Please, daddy?)

Okay, I'm going to shower. Samantha wanted me to pick her up at 10am.