A Scenic World

“We Used to Vacation” was the first song I ever heard by the Cold War Kids. I was amazed - it managed to convey more depth and understanding about alcoholism in four minutes than most novels could in a thousand pages. I don’t think I did it justice pictorially, but really, it’s brilliant; how could I?

The most important element here is black and white conversion. Digital, for the most part, just doesn’t do black and white as well as film. My friend Caerphoto does some excellent conversions with his secret way, but since I don’t quite have access to his software, I do everything in Photoshop.

Warning: this is a step-by-step, rather tedious tutorial. Feel free to jump to the summary if you want :)

Step #1: Open the picture you want to convert.

Step #2: Add a new adjustment layer - choose Hue/Saturation

Step #3: Pull the saturation to -100. Voila! Just kidding :)

Step #4: Change the blending mode of your Hue/Saturation layer to “Overlay.”

(Note: Sometimes I stop here if I want a dramatic color image. I’ve seen this called the “bleach bypass” method).

Step #5: Add a new adjustment layer; choose Channel Mixer this time.

Step #6: FIRST, check the box that says “Monochrome.” The default +100 Red, 0 Green, 0 Blue is terrible. CHANGE THIS IMMEDIATELY. Just play around until it looks good. Conventional wisdom says that your values should add to 100 (so -50 Red, 50 Green, and 100 Blue is feasible) but we shun conventional wisdom here at ascenicworld. Just do whatever you like.

You’re almost there! You really could stop here if, like us, you’re lazy. But adding that little extra can make the difference between a ho-hum photo and a ho-hum photo with pizzazz.

Step #7: Add the vignette. Do this by making an entirely new, blank layer.

Step #8: Choose the rectangle Select tool in the toolbar. Go ahead and draw a rectangle around the entire picture.

Step #9: Now go to the “Select” menu at the top and choose “Modify > Border.” You can set your border parameters at whatever you like - it depends on how large you want your border, how large your photo is, etc. This photo, slightly cropped, was 2415 pixels wide x 1666 pixels high. I chose a border that was 125 pixels big.

Step #10: Feather your border. Go to the “Select” menu at the top again, and chose “Feather.” This will make your border look less like a hard box with edges and more like a gentle gradient. I chose 100 - choose whatever you think is best.

Step #11: Choose the brush from the side menu, make sure it’s set to Normal and opacity 100 (and black), and paint all over your border.

Step #12: Let’s go ahead and flatten the image. Just right click somewhere in the layers and choose “Flatten Image.”

Step #13: Sharpening. This is a HOTLY debated topic on the dpreview forums I visit, but I’m going to show the simple way of Unsharp Mask today. I don’t always use this way, but I find it’s my most consistently used method. FIRST, make a copy of your flattened image. Just go to “Layer,” then “Duplicate Layer.” Make sure your top layer (the duplicate) is the one selected before proceeding. Then go to “Filter,” and choose “Unsharp Mask.”

Step #14: Choose your parameters. I’ve seem all kinds of numbers thrown out there for people to use. My advice: just use the preview window and choose what looks best. I went kind of crazy with this one since I wanted the rough edges of the beveled beads to pop.

Step #15: Add a layer mask to your duplicate, sharpened layer. In the Layers menu (bottom right hand side), it’s the third icon from the left on the bottom (the rectangle with a circle in it).

Step #16: Choose your brush again. You’re going to paint the layer mask. Painting black reveals the layer underneath (the un-sharpened one, in this case). Painting white puts the sharpened image back on top. We don’t want the ENTIRE image sharpened all crazy, just the beads, so I’m going to paint in black over all my skin, my sweater, my hand, my neck, etc. If something isn’t working right here, make sure you have the layer mask (the big white rectangle next to your sharpened image) selected rather than the sharpened image itself.

Step #17: Here you can see what my layer mask looks like. At this point, just right click in the Layers menu one last time, flatten image, and save.

Voila! Seriously this time!

Summary: Open.Hue/Saturation.Overlay.Channel Mixer.Vignette.Sharpen. Flatten.

Is it wrong to get songs from commercials? Because Feist’s “1,2,3,4″ is AWESOME. And the video is even awesomer.

Total inspiration for today’s photo, as I was dancing to this song for a good 30 minutes:

Or, rather, was flickr. I couldn’t figure out why this blog was taking so long to load, so I proceeded scientifically through the possibilities - first I changed the number of posts viewable on the main page to 5 from 10 (oh, default settings!). That didn’t work. Then I deleted all the photos from my posts. THAT didn’t work. So then I deleted the audio. Still no dice.

Finally, I deleted the flickr widget from my sidebar. Voila! Instant improvement.

So of course I had to go add all that other stuff back. Sigh.

“If we can’t take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that — then what else are we missing?”

It’s old but well worth the visit. Famed violinist Joshua Bell donned a baseball cap and took his violin to the subway stop at L’Enfant Plaza in D.C. to play as a street musician for an hour. No one could have predicted what transpired.

If you’ve never heard Joshua Bell play, this is a nice short introduction. It’s also the first piece I ever heard him play (thank you NPR!).