Friday, August 11, 2006

Stay safe in a prison ...

Are these quotes for real:
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

Or,
Our history has shown us that insecurity threatens liberty. Yet, if our
liberties are curtailed, we lose the values that we are struggling to
defend." ~ The 9/11 Commission Report by the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States

(from http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193740&cid=15886012)

With all the recent strict security on airline travel, its better if army
takes over the entire country. The government doesn't anyway trust anybody
else on anything.

Saturday, August 5, 2006

dtecht-ed

I have started a new blog for all
tech related things. No more geekism here.

GIMP: Poor man's HDR

  • Take two separate frames of the scene. They should be exactly the same except for the lighting. Take them with 2/3 f-stops between them. One will show the shadows and other the highlights.
    • Set the camera to Aperture priority (to prevent change in field of depth) and manual focus.
    • Might be helpful to use a tripod.
  • Paste the dark frame on the light frame. The light image becomes the background and dark image becomes a new layer on top of it.
  • Now there are two methods:
Painted mask method:
  • Add a layer to the dark foreground image: layer / add layer mask / full opacity (while)
  • Select the paintbrush tool and choose a large brush.
  • Start painting over the dark area of the image; try to expose the underexposed parts. Painting on the dark-mask will remove parts of the dark image. Dont go too close the light areas.
  • Then select a smaller brush and do the dark-light edges.
  • This method allows one to precisely control what to expose.
Layer mask method:
  • This one is a black magic :)
  • Add a layer to the dark foreground image: layer / add layer mask / full opacity (while)
  • Click on the background layer, copy it.
  • Select only the white mask (press ALT and then click the while rectangle). Press CTRL-V to paste the light image on the mask.
  • Gimp creates a floating pasted layer, right click and say "anchor layer". A B&W mask image is displayed.
  • Add a gaussian blur with 40px radius (Filters / Blur / Gaussian blur)
  • (Optional) Edit the curve of the background image.
  • Flatten image (merge layer with the background layer).
  • Voila! I was amazed with the results. Now I will make bracketing the default mode in my camera.