Auto Art

Yesterday I discovered quite a cool program. It's an application that takes an input image and transforms it into a painting, according to the parameters you set. The interesting fact is that it's not really the same thing like applying special filters in advanced editing software like GIMP or Photoshop. This program actually PAINTS. And it's really good at it. It's fascinating to press the play button and watch it work. Oh and the more powerful your CPU is, the faster it paints :).

The name of this program is Dynamic Auto-Painter and you can try it for free, although it will add a watermark to the output painting. You can choose between several painting modes(or style, however you prefer it). I tried it too on one of my photos. Once you click "Start", it will run forever, displaying the amount of brushes applied until then, waiting for you to press "Stop". The more it runs, the more fidelity your final painting will have.

Here's the image I've experimented with:

And here are the output paintings, using different painting styles:

I am simply amazed by what this program can achieve. Of course, nothing like this matches a painting done manually, with passion.

A couple of more-than-FullHD wallpapers

I decided to make a few photos and experiment with making some wallpapers out of them. Unfortunately the weather and the fact that it's winter with little snow offered me little options of what to make photos of, even macro.


These photos are higher resolution than 1920x1080 but don't expect them to be crystal smooth: my camera shows a lot of noise in low-light conditions( it was cloudy, and macro photos require quite a lot of light). For comparison, I'm uploading the original photos too.

A collection of stunning Black&White portraits

These are the portraits of homeless people. I think the photos are very impressive.

Find them all here.

Virtual photography?

Since I couldn't find anything interesting to photograph in the past couple of days( well I did take some photos of a small block of ice! :) ), an idea popped in my head. I remembered that in Garry's Mod ( a Half-Life 2 modification), I can arrange things as I do in the real world and I also benefit from a few post processing tools such as a simple Depth of Field simulator. And I also have a very versatile focal range camera that could make real world photographers envy.

So I assumed the role of Gordon Freeman and went with Alyx on a short photo shooting session. We found a cool cave in gm_skylife and took photos:

I would have tried to make different expressions on Alyx's face, but unfortunately the face poser seems to be broken and if I modify the intensity just a bit the face starts looking weird.

Unbelievable photographing technology

A new fantastic piece of technology appeared, that is available for buying. It's a tiny box that does not resemble at all with what the industry has familiarized us. This tiny thing is called "Lytro" and it's actually a camera that takes pictures in a special way...

It's probably so tiny because it doesn't need all the optical equipment a traditional camera has. It doesn't feature focusing. How surprising! You actually get to take the photo and focus after that! That's what's unbelievable. It works because the camera doesn't record only the light hitting its lenses, it records the entire lightfield in the front of it.

You can read more about the science of this technology here.

The price is not so tiny by comparison, but it's acceptable, since it's such a unique method of capturing memories that can literally come alive when you play with the focus later. There are 2 models, with different colors. The first one can take up to 350 pictures(8 Gb) and costs 399$. The second has a 16gb storage capacity and can take up to 750 photos, costing 499$.

There's a gallery of photos that have adjustable focus. It's really fun and exciting to examine photos this way!

Spice up that contrast!

So you're trying to make some good looking photos, but really all of them look bland and boring? Sure, you took into consideration several factors to make your scene look better, but still... the colors seem washed. It's ok- it happens with most entry-level photography tools. They're not designed for professionals, but for enthusiasts. I'm going to make a short and comprehensible tutorial about rapidly enhancing the look of your photo using Gimp. The current stable version as I'm writing this is Gimp 2.6.
Wait, I have to drink a glass of water first. Making a tutorial ain't so easy! ...phew, now that I calmed my thirst, let's start this! Here's a close-up photograph of some rocks I took recently:

It surely looks quite bland. What can we do? Well, the first step is to load it into Gimp. Select the background layer and then click Layer>Duplicate Layer(Shift+Ctrl+D). 
Let's make this duplicated layer black&white by going to Colors>Desaturate,  choose Luminosity and click OK. Set this layer mode to Overlay and reduce its opacity to about 50% or around some satisfactory value(we want this effect to be subtle, not to scratch our eyes).
We should also increase a bit the sharpness of our image. To do this, select the background layer,  then go to Filters>Enhance>Unsharp Mask. A Radius=5, Amount=0.5 and Threshold=0 seems to work fine on this particular image. You can fine-tune these parameters, but remember: you always want the effect to be subtle, else the you're effectively damaging the image.

The image is now looking like this:

Basically, we can already save it as it is, it's looking much better than the original. You may be tempted to say it's not, but switching back to the original you'll have a sensation of looking at it through fog...

Let's continue making this photo more interesting!
When I took the shot, I forgot the EV(exposure value) at -0.7, so it's a bit underexposed. Let's profit from this by emphasizing a bit the whites, particularly the bigger white rock. Duplicate the background layer again and move it up(so it's at the top). Go to Filters>Blur>GaussianBlur. Type in a value of 100 and click OK. Set this layer mode to Dodge, with an opacity of about 50-55. To eliminate the possible "too saturated" blurry edges(it's happening on the white rock in this image for example), go to Colors>Desaturate and choose Luminosity to make this layer b&w too. So now we have this:

Now it all depends on your imagination. Would you like to alter the colors or make them more intense? Select the background layer and then go to Colors>Curves and start messing around until you are satisfied. I came up with this: 

(I usually enjoy warmer pictures. I rarely opt for 'cold' colors)

Perhaps you enjoy monochrome images? With the background layer selected, go to Colors>Colorize. Again, fine tune the parameters remembering to make the effect have a subtle impact on the final image. Particularly, reduce the saturation a lot.

 (this looks green and... cold... *sneezes)

Let's try something different this time. Desaturate the background layer( I hope you know how to do it now). Select the Blend Tool(or gradient tool, by pressing L). Set its mode to Overlay and then choose a gradient from the available ones(or you can create one of your own, but the list is quite enough for our purposes). You have to experiment with the Opacity on this one, as different gradients will look better with different values.
For example, I chose the Golden gradient, with an opacity of 70, a Linear shape and dragged from bottom to top:

(now I don't want to hear somebody saying this has the color of puke, because I think it is elegant! Allright? :) )



Or you can go totally wild and do something like this:

(Notice how we completely ignored being subtle here :)... uhm, is that a double rainbow? :O)

Well, what can I say? Editing is a lot of fun! So have lots of it! ;)

NIkon D5100 Unboxing

A few words about Snapsort.com

It's well known that when you are short of money(or when it's very hard to save some money at all) and really want that special product, you begin to make some research. After all, you want the best bang for buck right?

This whole research process can be basically divided into 3 main parts: FINDING, ANALYSING and COMPARING.

Personally I think the hardest parts are the first two, once you went through them comparing is easy. But this whole process takes up a lot of time. And when it comes to digital cameras, things start to get complicated.
The product line is very wide, and you can get confused rapidly. There are pocket cameras, bridge cameras(those that look like a DSLR but you can't change their lenses), DSLRs and for quite some time now, mirrorless cameras with changeable lenses(they're like a DSLR, but much more compact).

You only have to go to some sort of online shop that sells cameras to observe how fast you can get confused. If you had an idea what camera you'd like before, at this point you get really confused. What should you choose?
And you start asking friends, taking those suggestions and google about them, comparing, start having a ton of tabs opened, reading reviews, hours pass like birds... at the end of the day you still have no idea. Yeah, if you had lots of money you could just buy the most expensive camera from a certain category right? Oh but you're not a billionaire :(.

There's an online tool that does most of the job for you: http://snapsort.com . Really, when I decided buying P100 I spent a month researching(because I really had no idea about cameras at the time) on the internet. At the end of my research I found snapsort, and after a few more clicks and comparisons I was convinced. I was short on money and needed something that has most of the DSLR's features.

So here's what I like about this online tool: 
-Snapsort is like a friend that knows everything about cameras and does what you expect him to do: making a good recommendation.
-You don't even need to have a starting point. You just need to know what you actually want to do with that camera, or what you desire. It's easy: click the "Explore" tab and start adjusting the parameters as you like. For example, let's say that I want an entry-level DSLR that's less than 620 euros and is "Best overall". 2 simple parameters that will immediately display some results. Currently, the best one for these parameters is Canon EOS550D.
-If you're lazy you could just resort on using the "Just tell me" tab. Input a maximum sum of money and you get the best bang for buck. I don't recommend this feature, as you'll surely not get exactly what you want
-There's a top of the best cameras in different cameras, you can start getting orientated fast

The feature that I appreciate the most is "Compare", though. This is what makes the site a good friend in choosing a camera in my opinion. Its objective style of comparison is unbeatable. It's really helpful when you have to decide between 2 cameras that are extremely similar.
Take, for example, Nikon P100 and P500. Should you get the new P500 or P100? There are minor differences, mostly the increased zoom, but is it worth it? Try the feature yourself!
The awesome part is that you can even compare cameras from different categories! Of course, the site itself says that you shouldn't take the comparison seriously, but it helps you decide faster.

Now, although the site is mostly perfect in my opinion, I have some suggestions too. This site only helps you make decisions based on the features, but not actually the quality. Yes, there are videos and photos for almost every camera, but not in a direct comparison.
The owners of the site should create some kind of a "standard scene", or different standard scenes that will remain unmodified(forever :) ) and could be used for every new camera that appears.
A static scene that can be used to analyze the color and sharpness performance for example. That way, when comparing 2 cameras, not only can you decide based on the features, but you can actually ''SEE" the difference between the two.

That being said, I wish you a happy researching and a fast decision on which camera should you buy!