This isn’t a tip that is going to help you with your computer. However, it is a great example of how the Internet brings us material like this that we never would have seen before.
I’m a big sports fan (I don’t play much, but follow several sports), and love baseball (don’t get me started about the Mitchell Report). NPR has a show on Saturday’s called Only a Game that always has interesting sports stories. They recently highlighted the book Best American Sports Writing 2007 which is a collection of sporting essays and articles. One of the articles is about Bugs Bunny. Baseball Bugs, from 1946, is about Bugs Bunny playing baseball against the Gas House Gorillas. Before he arrives, the Tea Totallers are losing 94-0. When he arrives, he hits, pitches and fields like a superstar. The article takes the approach that Bugs was a real person and tries to analyze his performance. It’s very interesting and a good read!
You don’t have to buy the book
to read the article. You can read Bugs Bunny, greatest banned player ever on the U.S.S. Mariner site.
I think I’ve previously mentioned PDFCreator as a free PDF “printer”. I’ve also used CutePDF. I recently came across yet another PDF “printer” called doPDF:
Freeware. Lightweight. No nags.
doPDF is a free PDF converter for both personal and commercial use. Using doPDF you can create searchable PDF files by selecting the “Print” command from virtually any application. With one click you can convert your Microsoft Excel, Word or PowerPoint documents or your emails and favorite web sites to PDF files.
I haven’t tried the software, but if it’s anything like PDFCreator or CutePDF, then it will work fine.
mental_floss magazine (the punctuation and capitalization are correct) is a trivia sort-of magazine. A recent blog posting had some links to some fun “quizes” where you can do things like find out if your co-worker is crazy, and find out which office moron are you?
From ReportOnBusiness.com:
Sure, they say they have an open-door policy. Some even work in cubicles, just like everyone else in the firm. But don’t let the optics fool you.
Two-thirds of executives prefer e-mail to other forms of communication with employees, according to a survey released Thursday.
Staffing agency OfficeTeam, which routinely conducts surveys on water-cooler issues in the workplace, found that 65 per cent of the 150 senior executives it contacted would rather communicate by e-mail, up from 34 per cent in 1997.
Only 31 per cent said they preferred face-to-face meetings at work, down from 44 per cent a decade ago.
One of my co-workers, John, received a Christmas card this week and asked me how he could replicate the image on the card. The image was a black and white photo with a colour Christmas wreath hanging from a bridge and a river running under the bridge in a pastel blue. This is easy to do using a few tools I have talked about it the past, layers, opacity and layer masks.
In both Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Photoshop, the process is almost identical, and very easy in both programs. Below are the instructions:
- Duplicate the background layer of your image. To do this, right click on the background layer in the layers palette and choose duplicate layer.
- In Photoshop - Create a channels adjustment layer and convert the image to black and white
- In Photoshop Elements - Convert the duplicate layer to black and white (CTRL-ALT-B) Create a layer mask on the black and white layer you created. You can install a utility to enable layer masks for Photoshop Elements here.
- With the layer mask selected, select a brush and pick the black colour from the colour selector.
- Next, set the opacity of the brush quite low, 10 or 15%. This will let you paint the colour back in to selected areas in small increments.
- Painting successively over the same area will paint the colour back into the image more and more with each successive stroke.
- If you restore colour to a selection of the image you still want to remain in colour, change your brush colour to white and paint back over the area you wish to remain in black and white.
The layer masks blocks the effect of the black and white layer, where you have painted black on the layer mask, the effect is blocked and as I already mentioned, setting the opacity of the brush lets you work in small increments for better control.
If you do not want to add the colour back in from the original image, but wish to paint your own colours in, then follow points 1 and 2 above then create a new layer and on that layer, again using a low opacity brush, paint the colours you want. One final step when painting this way is to change the blending mode of your layer to overlay which will make your colours transparent and let the image below show through your colour.
There are many ways in which you can uses these techniques. A little imagination and creativity can open up a new layer of your own photography.
Until next time, happy shooting.
Wired recently had a posting with links to some fun sites that you can visit this holiday season:
- Celebrity Gingerbread: Law and Order Edition - celebrity gingerbread people
- Elf Yourself - put your picture on an elf head and dance around
- Simon Sez Santa - Santa does what you tell him to do
- YouTube Holiday Video Cards - animated holiday video cards
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