Sunday, December 31, 2006 C
"Program Explorations"
1:54pm
I apologize if the following confuses you or doesn't interest you, but I'm testing a theory. When working on my pictures, I frequently have both Picture Publisher and Adobe Photoshop up, and I switch between the two. There's some things the old, cheap program does better. Okay, maybe the big, expensive program has a better way, but I don't know it. For instance, filling in areas with color. Photoshop has a three step process. I first do the 'Magic Wand', which makes a mask from the borders imposed by your picture. One open pixel, and your mask runneth over to places you don't want. Then I select 'Fill' from the 'Edit' column, then comes up a dialogue box which asks 'foreground' or 'background', 'blending mode, and 'opacity'. I have to study that 'blending' mode. There's a whole lot of confusing options there, some of which might open up totally different ways to create that fill. But 'normal' does a 'normal' fill the whole mask area.
Picture Publisher has a 'Smart Fill' tool. If you use it, you also must be careful to not have an open pixel, same as with Photoshop. But it doesn't ask any questions. It merely takes whatever shows as your foreground color choice and fills the whole area. ONE STEP COLOR FILLING! It saves time. Alot of time, when one is impatient to finish a picture.
Not only that, the two different programs seem to have different processes going on when making a picture grayscale. Photoshop calls this process 'desaturating', and you can do it to just one area of the picture, should you create a mask for it. Publisher calls this 'convert to grayscale', and any masks be dammed, undammed?, it will simply make the whole picture grayscale. It seems to me that Publisher will render blues much darker than my eye sees them and Photoshop renders yellows much darker than my eye sees them. I've been testing pictures in both programs to make sure the de-colored version is pleasing in both. Now I take a little thumbnail and do the number on both, to compare them side by side:
Original:
Shown at 136%, slightly magnified...
 
Publisher on left, with its darker blues, purples and reds, Photoshop on right with its darker yellows and greens
There's another difference, not so visible. Publisher's png file is 14.5 KB, while Photoshop's is 32.9 KB. Maybe the visual truth is somewhere between these two. Yellow certainly doesn't render nearly white, nor are the blues, purples and reds quite as dark as PP has them. I think the Photoshop is more accurate, as best as I can tell, squinty eyed, the old fashioned way artists try to determine the grayscale of the picture. For ten times as more expensive, it ought to be ten times as more accurate, I would think.
But that 'Smart Fill' still has it all over the 'big one' in terms of simplicity. Also, the Publisher has an easier line drawing. Not to mention that handy screen capture utility. I recommend both of the programs.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007 A
"Catching Up"
6:41am
I'm catching up on sleep. I went to bed at 9:00pm and slept until 6:30am. Only got up to pee once. Boy, I sure needed
it, after those many nights staying up until 2 o'clock! But it was a good, creative weekend. Nearly a month later, I now have my Set drawing colored:
"Set, the Great God"
I created the background in Photoshop, striving for a sort of 'desert' feel. Then I copied and pasted the drawing to it, coloring it to look well against the background. I knew I had in mind some hieroglyphs for the space at the right. I wanted to put the hieroglyphs for 'Set, Great of Strength' but couldn't find them on line or in any book we have. (I'd tried earlier, but am not sure those attempts are anything close to how they'd write it. But I did find a sample which I altered, and I'm reasonably sure it's accurate. Bridget McDermott in her Decoding Egyptian Hieroglyphs
has on page 63 'Osirus the great God', and a photo of a wall painting from the tomb of King Horemheb. So I just substituted the Set heiroglyph for the Osirus one to make 'Set the great God'.
I only took time to place it in the Egyptian inspired gallery. I will need to re-arrange the Set gallery, as some pieces that are rather clumsy are towards the top. So it will be awhile before it shows there. I also have that second Intuitive gallery that needs re-arranging and new pictures added.
I will get caught up in time. Right now, getting over a sinus headache, catching up on sleep is most needful!
Wednesday, January 3, 2007 B
"Beautiful Onion"
10:04m
Julia was in the midst of meal preparations and brought her cutting board and red onion to the table behind my computer. After she made the first slice to the onion, she declared, "How beautiful this is!" and showed me. Before she started halving the half, I got the camera out:
And it was indeed beautiful with its shape and purplish striations. Then our eyes began to burn as Julia diced and sliced it. I didn't tear up, but felt very near to it. No, it was not 'beautiful' then. But later it regained some 'beauty' after Julia had it all grilled and then mixed with other tasty bits such as artichokes and smoked salmon which she served over shell noodles.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
"Magical Possession"
7:24pm
Julia had so much grilled onions from last night's efforts that some were preserved in jars for use later. This morning's omelet had some of those onions in it. She declared after we'd finished our breakfast, "Impowered by the red onion, we should have a good day." I amended her statement, "Impowered by the red onion and the Black Flame, we should have a good day." Remembering that last night Julia had said the inner part of the onion looked like a candle flame, I wanted to invert it to see if I would get an imagination of the 'black flame'. After much playing with color curves, hue adjustment and what not, I've got an interesting result:
I'm not sure that it looks 'flame-like', but it certainly looks jewel like and rather magical.
Friday, January 5, 2007
"The Sedges and the Bees"
11:59pm
SEDGES? and bees? You wanted BIRDS and bees? Today you get SEDGES and bees...
When I heard of the Friday Illo 'BUZZ' theme, I immediately thought of buzzing bees, and so I sought out various bee pictures from which to sketch. I had no idea if this is what everyone else thought of, as I didn't look at anyone else's picture before creating mine.
"A Bee goes about his Buzzi-ness"
Prehaps I thought first of bees because of something else I'd uncovered while researching hieroglyphs this past weekend. I came across the various titles of pharoahs, and narrowed in on one type, the Throne name or prenomen. Nesu-bity means
'King of Upper and Lower Egypt', but is more closely translated 'King of the Sedge and the Bee', as these are the hieroglyphs for 'nesu-bity':
Te Velde in Seth, God of Confusion refers to "Seth the lord of the land of sedges (t3 sm) e) after the partition."(page 61).
Upper Egypt includes the southern lands which had temples devoted to Set, in
Kom Ombo and Naqada for instance. The goal of the King was to unite the two lands, thus being King of Upper and Lower Egypt. Seth Peribsen might have tried first, but Khasekhemwy (aka Khasekhemui) is given credit for succeeding. "The name Khasekhemui is sometimes supplemented htp nbwy imyw.f (the two
lords who are in him, are reconciled.) Thus both Peribsen's Seth name and Khasekhemui's Horus-Seth name proclaim the reconciliation of Horus and Seth." (page 73, TeVelde)
(the two lords who are in him, are reconciled.)
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