Many friends see my posts in their daily Facebook stream and wonder what it’s all about. One person pulled me aside and asked me to explain it. I gave a much more detailed explanation in my conversation, but it boiled down to this.
tags: postaday2011, GIMP, GNU, GPL, Open source, lemasney, 365, design, painting, fun
My friend Laraine wrote me recently with a request:
“I need help with the attached photo…it is the Blawenburg Band at the Hopewell gazebo, being directed by clarinetist, former member and my dear departed friend, Rich Hill, who died this past spring at 51…
I want to use the photo as the cover of a thank you card, 5 x 7, to people who contributed to a band scholarship in Rich’s honor. I am choosing and writing the thank you cards; I’m secretary of the band.
But the problem with the photo is that Rich’s clothes looked rumpled… (maybe) shadows from the gazebo cut outs…
I feel the spirit of the photo is just right for the memorial thank you’s. (Do you think so?) But Rich looks rumpled…”
He was a bit rumpled, but that was easy enough to take care of with cloning, burning and dodging tools. I moved on to restoring the gazebo, band members and audience members with the burn dodge tool to bring out the shadows, highlights and midtones after doing some work on the picture overall to improve brightness and contrast. A bit overworked perhaps, but I really enjoyed the challenge. Thanks Laraine!
tags: lemasney, 365, dailypost2011, band, Princeton, Blawenburg, Hopewell, NJ, photo restoration, GIMP, GPL, GNU, Open source, Creative Commons, CC-SA
I recently saw a friend’s very wonderful painting of a rooster, and was inspired to do this as a compliment to it. In GIMP, I used a preexisting silhouette of the bird you see here, which I selected by color and converted to a mask, which I then used to paint into a new transparent layer.
tags: hen, rooster, chicken, egg, 365, dailypost2011, everyday, GNU, GPL, GIMP, photomanipulation, photo, sharing, gift, friend, lemasney, open source, creative commons, cc-sa
Today’s sketch is a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the greatest thinkers, writers and orators of our recent history, on his nationally recognized day of service. Using a famous AP photo, I used GIMP’s threshold tool to essentially break the photo into two colors: a highlight in white, and a shadow in black. Then, using the select by color tool I selected the black shadow and began to paint into a new transparent layer with a variety of brushes in a blue palette. I put a new transparent layer behind the blue painted layer, removed the selection, and painted from a gold palette, which showed through the remaining open spaces in the blue layer.
“Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds. Â You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.” – Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.] from
tags: mlk, martin luther king jr., service, reminder, of service, sharing, lemasney, GIMP, GNU, GPL, open source, 365, postaday2011, peace
Sometimes we do what we want instead of what we should. Sometimes we even deeply enjoy it. I do it, you do it, and the best we can do is to remember and improve from it. We can possibly even savor the experience as a memory and a learning experience, recall it from time to time, and maybe even smile a bit in recalling it. That’s humanity for you. I’d probably say I’m more devilish than divine in this respect, but maybe I’ll learn someday.
To err is human, to repent divine, to persist, devilish.
Benjamin Franklin.
So this is the last of the photos from Alma. There was a lot of water damage, and it was an interesting challenge to correct it. The really fun thing about using the GIMP to do photo-manipulation is how many ways that you can solve a problem. In this case, I used some cloning, but mostly I did a marquee selection of a water stained area all of one color, desaturated that selection, and colorized it to match the rest of the photo’s content, like her skin or his suit, etc.. Thanks for all of your help this week, Alma. I’m going to turn to some other requests now.
tags: photo, photo-manipulation, GIMP, GPL, GNU, open source, Creative commons, CC-SA, sharing, lemasney, 365, postaday2011