Sunday's spotlight - Birthday party

By guest blogger Pete.

The "nearly" lady, I mentioned her in last week's blog, kindly invited Pam and me to Birthday tea to celebrated the fact that I'm now "nearly" 80. There were sandwiches and cakes, coffee and tea in plenty.

My mother always had the idea that sandwiches were good for you and that you ought to be forced fed them before you could begin to sample the real tea time goodies like tinned fruit or cake.  By the time I'd ploughed through all the sandwiches she's made and insisted that I eat I really didn't have any room left for the real food.  My elder brother  (15 years older than me) also had the same idea; perhaps passed on to him from our mother.  He married a Yorkshire lass and in that county the normal thing is to begin the Sunday roast dinner - traditionally roast beef - with a massive Yorkshire pudding EACH that absolutely filled a large dinner plate.  That Yorkshire pudding was then filled with thick gravy.  After you'd ploughed through that lot you had trouble facing the smaller helping or roast beef and the rice pudding to follow that.  Mind you, I've always had trouble facing a rice pudding even when I'd had nothing to fill my stomach beforehand!

Both our girls were very fortunate - even if they tell you otherwise.  On a Sunday afternoon we always STARTED with the really tasty bits and then had the sandwiches if they were wanted.  Oh, Pam and I were real saints!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh!  Something I forgot to mention.  Pam, nearly lady and I were the only ones at my birthday tea; lots of cake and a token sandwich!

For the last couple of blogs I've included some "outlined" photos of this and that (mainly that!) and Ruth has asked me how I achieved the effect,  It's very much "trail and error".  I came across web suite called "topazlabs.com".  Topaz specialise in filters for Photoshop, Elements and PaintShop Pro.  The set of filters I used for the effect of outlining with some colour is called "Topaz Adjust 3".  You open this program (obviously!!!!)  and then, bearing in mind what you goal is, you experiment with the various sliders until you achieve what you are looking for.

In the meantime you have the bonus of some very interesting looking photos as you manipulate the sliders,  I've included some more of these photos in this blog.  This time they are adaptations of photos I took at this year's Gosberton Flower Festival.

England cricketers won their FI|RST world championship this week - first world title ever despite the fact that we invented the game, as we did with football and numerous other things like the ball point pen and television.  Just thought I'd have a little plug there.  There were and still are great celebrations from all true Englishmen (and quite a few English women as well).  Can't understand why some folk don't enjoy this game.  Mind you, there are some who drink instant tea instead of the real thing.

Off to Tiverton next week-end for my nephew's ruby wedding anniversary - it's his wife's ruby wedding anniversary as well so that is a useful bonus!!  Doesn't seem like forty years since I married them -more like sixty!

Sunday's spotlight - "H(igh) D(efinition) R(?)

By guest blogger Pete

I seem to spend quite a bit of my summers taking photographs and even more of my winters developing and improving them in Adobe Photoshop. I was never more than an occasional photographer in the olden days of film before the advent of digital photography but I soon caught the bug for the digital variety very early on and have been addicted ever since. The freedom from film - and the expense - added to the bonus of never being caught out changing a film just when something you would have wanted to photograph passes by caused me to fall instantly in love with the digital variety. Another big plus is the freedom from the number of shots you can take without thinking perpetually of 24 or 36.

With my love for detail it was with some anticipation that I began to experiment with HDR. The "HD" stands for "High Definition" but I've no idea what the "R" represents. Perhaps you can tell me because I've never discovered it (nor have I really looked into finding out the answer either)! With genuine HDR I'm restricted to Photoshop, which doesn't offer the same refinements as the leader in this particular field - Photomatix. Basically HDR is the combination of 3 or more different exposure shots of the same scene, person, etc. The HDR program then aligns these shots and combines the 3 into one image without any detail being lost in shadows or highlights. Photomatic gives you a free 30 day trial but all the attempts during that trial are heavily watermarked and the full program is a little expensive. If the minimum of three different exposures puts you off then you can take one image into Photoshop and make 2 copies, each of which you can give a different exposure to from the original.

I recently came across a program called "TOPAZ ADJUST", produced by "topazlabs.com". This is a more reasonable price and gives very favourable results using just ONE image. The two examples I give you below in this blog are from Topaz Adjust but please bear in mind that I have gone a little over the top because I don't know what difference you'll be able to see on these pages and, if it is good, then, believe me, you can go much further or far less than I have gone. Topaz Labs give a 30 day free trial but with their program there are NO limitations or watermarks at all.

Original image:
Topaz Adjust-ed Image:
I've never seen it mentioned but one thing I have found useful when using Topaz Adjust is to make a copy of the image you want to adjust before starting. When you get the adjusted version if there is ANY part of that image you don't like (i.e. the sky) then you can either put a mask on the new version and paint out the sky with black (thus revealing the original sky) or else just erase the unwanted portion. I have used this quite a bit.

Happy snapping.