Nov
5
I really enjoy taking photos. Generally I do more candid work which does not allow me to stage the background. I took this photo of my friend Joyce in her lovely dress. Unfortunately, there are a lot of distracting elements in the background that draws my eye from what should be a stunning picture of beautiful woman in a fabulous dress.
Click on the photo to make it larger.
Notice the brown box in the back, the white board has scribbled upon with blue ink, a garbage can just to the right of her and the depth of field is such that the background is in focus.
Click on the photo to make it larger.
I started by adjusting the contrast and color to make adjust for the flash. This is easily done in Picasa or other free tools and it makes a significant difference.
I then cropped the photo so that the some of the distracting qualities were diminished while placing her face in the upper right third of the picture and keeping the angle of her body going along that same axis to the lower third of the shot. Notice the red line that I drew to cut the photo into thirds.
Then next thing I worked on was removing her from the background. This was done by using photoshop and a the magic wand tool to select the subject, used feathering and copied her from the background layer to a new layer.
From here I identified the offensive background objects and did a quick job of removed them. I just cut and paste the wall and molding over them. Then I changed the brightness and size to make it fit. That works pretty well and should be relatively quick. Also it does not need to be perfect because I knew I was going to blur the background. Then I blurred the background layer and saved it as a jpeg.
And poof!
Nov
2
Canon MP480 All-in-One Photo Printer
I purchased this printer a about 8 months ago and it is one of the best all-in-one printers I have ever owned. It works great on multiple platforms (mac, windows, etc…). The printer is easy to use, truly a plug and play device and the quality of print is solid on both text and photos. The scanner has saved my butt many times when working from home. The real ease of use test is that I have purchased the same model for my parents (not very tech savvy folks) and have not had to do any troubleshooting since plugging it in. I would highly recommend it.
The best part, is that is sells for around $70 (as of this post) and comes with ink and usb cable so you can start printing right away.
The Ink:
Canon PG-210 Black Cartridge ($16)
Canon CL-211 Color Cartridge ($21)
Oct
26
Not too long ago I discovered the most awesome thing; BlackBerry’s can automate the dialing of a participant code on a conference bridge if the phone numbers are put in a specific format. So here is the layout for your conference bridge: Phone Number x Participant Code
For example if your conference bridge phone number is (888) 888-8888 with your participant code is 666666 and you need to press (#) pound to continue then you can put it in your outlook or email message like this:
(888) 888-8888 x 666666#
or like this 18888888888×666666#
or like this 1.888.888.8888 x666666#
or any combination thereof…
Given any of the phone numbers listed above the BlackBerry will dial the phone number (888.888.8888), pause and the following screen will pop up on your BlackBerry:
Dial Extension
Dial 666666#
Skip
End Call
|
You then can select to dial the participant code or technically the extension (666666#).
Happy conferencing!
Oct
16
By default most WordPress themes are not enabled to allow comments on pages. So even if you check the “Allow comments” check box in the DISCUSSION section when creating a page, nothing will happen until you edit your Page template file. You can ether edit it by logging into the the wp-admin site or by editing the file via ssh or ftp.
If you use the wp-admin site, click “Appearance” on the left side of the window to expand the section, then click on “Editor”
Make sure your current theme is displayed on the right hand side where it says “Select theme to edit:”
If it is, then click on the “Page (page.php)”
If you are using the FTP/SSH option go to your wordpress installation directory.
Then navigate to wp-content > themes > {your theme} and edit page.php
Scroll down until you see the following line of code:
|
<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); } ?>
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Then add the following line:
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<?php if ((‘open’ == $post-> comment_status)) { comments_template(); } ?>
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And it should be added before this line:
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<?php endwhile; endif; ?>
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Oct
15
If have serious issue with compact florescent light because…
- No one looks good in florescent light
- CF bulbs contains mercury
- Only select models dim
- They burn out a lot sooner than advertised
- They dont work with all light switches, especially the high tech ones
- Or they will flicker, even when off, if you are using a high tech light switch.
Though mostly they just make my eyes hurt and give me headaches. Philips has come out with a line of High Efficiency Incandescent (HEI) light bulbs called Halogena. They work like normal bulbs but produce twice the amount of light for the energy consumed. Making them very close to CF in efficiency.
I have slowly started to replace all my dim-able lights in my house with these:
Philips 40-Watt R20 Halogena Energy Saver Reflector Flood Light
They work great. No hum or flicker while dimmed. The color of the light is white with a slight warmth to it. Overall I think it is a great find.
You can buy them at Amazon.com
or in stores at Home Depot. The only bummer is that few other companies are doing this. GE stopped their research into this technology in 2008 probably due to the fear that incandescent lights will be banned like what is happening in Europe. I hope that is not our future too.
Aug
26
How do I change my default image editor to Photoshop (or something else) in Vista?
Well I have just the trick. I have made a script (based on another person’s work) that you can just download here: change_default_image_editor.vbs
Note before you start you will need administrator rights to pull this off.
Assuming that you don’t trust random scripts that you download off the internet (which is wise) then I you can do it manually. Note editing the Windows Registry by hand is dangerous and my script just automates this process. If you installed your image editor and it has registered correctly, there is a simple change that needs to happen in the Windows Registry. You can screw up you computer. You can do this by clicking on
Start > Run or type in this in the Start Search area >
Then type: regedit
Browse down the tree as follows
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
> SystemFileAssociations > image > Internet Explorer > shell > edit > command >
(Default) = “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4\Photoshop.exe” “%1″
Then right click on (Default) and Modify… the value to what every you want in quotes with a space followed by “1%”
Note: Changes to this registry value should take effect after a reboot.
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