Found this sweet piece of street art, on a telecoms box outside JP Morgan in Blackfriars ... Dont know how long its been up.
I like the way its stuck on with sellotape, non-destructive graffiti.
Whoever did it must have been brave .. There are so many cameras in that area. Suprised they didnt get arrested to terrorism at this time.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Practise Random Acts
Thursday, August 24, 2006
LOMO-Like
Just a few recepies i picked up regarding the LOMO-like proecess ..
Originated from : Faking the Lomo effect and here at kingyo senbei's Blog : Simplified by HUGO VT for the Flickr Technique group
1.File: Open: the picture you want
2.Image: Adjustments: Brightness/Contrast: increase contrast by 20
3.Image: Adjustments: Hue/Saturation: increase saturation by 20
4.Choose the Rectangular Marquee Tool (your basic selection tool)
5.Change feather amount to 1/12 the width of your picture (if your picture is 600px wide then you will set your feather to 50px)
6.Select your entire picture note: using select: all, will not work
7.Select: Inverse
8.Layer: New: Layer
9.Change your primary color to black. Fill the selection (on the new, blank layer).
10.Change the blend mode of this layer to Overlay
11.Layer: Duplicate Layer
12.Now select your base layer (the one with the picture on it).
13.Layer: New: Layer
14.Change your fill tool to Gradient
15.Change your Gradient Type to Spherical
16.Change your Gradient Shading Style to "foreground to transparent" (I believe this is the default).
17.Change your primary color to white.
18.With the fill tool selected, click in the middle of the picture, and drag the line out to the farthest edge of your picture (if it's a portrait, use top or bottom, if landscape, use left or right).
19.Change the blend mode of this layer to Overlay
20.Change the Opacity of this layer to 80% (or whatever you see fit)
Personally I find that skipping the whole first layer bit (steps 4 to 10) the effect is very similar. Maybe someone can explain to me what difference it's supposed to make.
Enjoy!
And additons from alephnaught at Flickr
I've noticed one thing about the "Fake Lomo" effect that's definately not quite right.
If you see these 3 genuine Lomo pics:
... The tunneling effect is actually circular, and is cut off at the longer edges of the images.
Here's how I've done the tunneling effect in PS in the past:
1) Load up original image.
2) Copy background layer to new layer.
3) Fill background layer with black.
4) Add a layer mask to the picture layer, set to "Reveal all".
5) Go to gradient fill tool, and set it to spherical/radial fill, going from foreground to background colours.
6) Set primary/foreground colour to white, and secondary/background colour to very light grey (ie something like 75% white, or even more)
7) Go to mask, and fill with a radial fill out from the centre to the just beyond the corners of the picture. The result of this should be a filled mask which starts off as white in the center and slowly blends to very light grey at the corners.
The mask will slightly blend the picture layer with the background layer (Which is black), so it should look something like on this pic:
(NB The above was designed to look more like a Zenit EM pic than a Lomo LC-A, but the tunneling effect is quite similar.)
Further tweaks came from simpologist
A great tutorial and a great look, it's like putting pictures through the wash! I managed to liven up a photo of a mural at the end of my street by following the tutorial instructions, with a few variations:
The first trivial modification was to use Photoshop's adjustment layers to apply the usual brightness, contrast and saturation changes. This allows you more freedom to tweak the final effect.
Now, on a large image (8 megapixels) you hit a photoshop maximum feather of 250 px. I stuck with this, 250 feathering, but switched to an eliptical marquee selection, dragging the selection from top left to bottom right so the selection touches all 4 edges. This doesn't need to be 100% accurate, a few pixels out makes little difference at the end.
Also, after step 11, where the saturation vignette is duplicated, I switched back the duplicate layer (on top) to the normal blending mode, and whacked down the opacity to about 30%. This gives both increased saturation and a darkening of the vignette, which looks more authentic, to my eyes.
The last variation was to create a new layer after step 20 (the end); deselect the selection and and fill this new layer with green. Somewhere between lime and teal. When the layer is given overlay properties and the opacity dropped to 10-20%, it adds a characteristic green / yellow tinge that I see a lot in lomokev's images.
timsperez Posted an addition.
I recently come up with a visual tutorial on faking the lomo effect. You can download the pdf file on here.
timodesigns.com/Music/lomoLesson.pdf
Robert Matheson says: After playing around some more with this affect I think I've gotten it right but I believe there is some missing information in step 13... You need to deselect all and then create the new layer and apply the white gradiant. Otherwise, you don't get the strong highlights in the center of the photo. Below is my latest attempt after deselecting the outer feather area and then applying the gradiant.
I'm still not sure why my edges are so much darker than everyone elses... Cyberesque's image looks similar on the edges but fictures bull does not. Any suggestions?
Other resources :
Fallout75 Adds Lomo LC-A Simulator PSD file with a cross processing layer
::Swisswuff:: Takes it all to another level Here
The Digital Photography Schools tutorial on fake x-pro and LOMO-look
Originated from : Faking the Lomo effect and here at kingyo senbei's Blog : Simplified by HUGO VT for the Flickr Technique group
1.File: Open: the picture you want
2.Image: Adjustments: Brightness/Contrast: increase contrast by 20
3.Image: Adjustments: Hue/Saturation: increase saturation by 20
4.Choose the Rectangular Marquee Tool (your basic selection tool)
5.Change feather amount to 1/12 the width of your picture (if your picture is 600px wide then you will set your feather to 50px)
6.Select your entire picture note: using select: all, will not work
7.Select: Inverse
8.Layer: New: Layer
9.Change your primary color to black. Fill the selection (on the new, blank layer).
10.Change the blend mode of this layer to Overlay
11.Layer: Duplicate Layer
12.Now select your base layer (the one with the picture on it).
13.Layer: New: Layer
14.Change your fill tool to Gradient
15.Change your Gradient Type to Spherical
16.Change your Gradient Shading Style to "foreground to transparent" (I believe this is the default).
17.Change your primary color to white.
18.With the fill tool selected, click in the middle of the picture, and drag the line out to the farthest edge of your picture (if it's a portrait, use top or bottom, if landscape, use left or right).
19.Change the blend mode of this layer to Overlay
20.Change the Opacity of this layer to 80% (or whatever you see fit)
Personally I find that skipping the whole first layer bit (steps 4 to 10) the effect is very similar. Maybe someone can explain to me what difference it's supposed to make.
Enjoy!
And additons from alephnaught at Flickr
I've noticed one thing about the "Fake Lomo" effect that's definately not quite right.
If you see these 3 genuine Lomo pics:
... The tunneling effect is actually circular, and is cut off at the longer edges of the images.
Here's how I've done the tunneling effect in PS in the past:
1) Load up original image.
2) Copy background layer to new layer.
3) Fill background layer with black.
4) Add a layer mask to the picture layer, set to "Reveal all".
5) Go to gradient fill tool, and set it to spherical/radial fill, going from foreground to background colours.
6) Set primary/foreground colour to white, and secondary/background colour to very light grey (ie something like 75% white, or even more)
7) Go to mask, and fill with a radial fill out from the centre to the just beyond the corners of the picture. The result of this should be a filled mask which starts off as white in the center and slowly blends to very light grey at the corners.
The mask will slightly blend the picture layer with the background layer (Which is black), so it should look something like on this pic:
(NB The above was designed to look more like a Zenit EM pic than a Lomo LC-A, but the tunneling effect is quite similar.)
Further tweaks came from simpologist
A great tutorial and a great look, it's like putting pictures through the wash! I managed to liven up a photo of a mural at the end of my street by following the tutorial instructions, with a few variations:
The first trivial modification was to use Photoshop's adjustment layers to apply the usual brightness, contrast and saturation changes. This allows you more freedom to tweak the final effect.
Now, on a large image (8 megapixels) you hit a photoshop maximum feather of 250 px. I stuck with this, 250 feathering, but switched to an eliptical marquee selection, dragging the selection from top left to bottom right so the selection touches all 4 edges. This doesn't need to be 100% accurate, a few pixels out makes little difference at the end.
Also, after step 11, where the saturation vignette is duplicated, I switched back the duplicate layer (on top) to the normal blending mode, and whacked down the opacity to about 30%. This gives both increased saturation and a darkening of the vignette, which looks more authentic, to my eyes.
The last variation was to create a new layer after step 20 (the end); deselect the selection and and fill this new layer with green. Somewhere between lime and teal. When the layer is given overlay properties and the opacity dropped to 10-20%, it adds a characteristic green / yellow tinge that I see a lot in lomokev's images.
timsperez Posted an addition.
I recently come up with a visual tutorial on faking the lomo effect. You can download the pdf file on here.
timodesigns.com/Music/lomoLesson.pdf
Robert Matheson says: After playing around some more with this affect I think I've gotten it right but I believe there is some missing information in step 13... You need to deselect all and then create the new layer and apply the white gradiant. Otherwise, you don't get the strong highlights in the center of the photo. Below is my latest attempt after deselecting the outer feather area and then applying the gradiant.
I'm still not sure why my edges are so much darker than everyone elses... Cyberesque's image looks similar on the edges but fictures bull does not. Any suggestions?
Other resources :
Fallout75 Adds Lomo LC-A Simulator PSD file with a cross processing layer
::Swisswuff:: Takes it all to another level Here
The Digital Photography Schools tutorial on fake x-pro and LOMO-look
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Lattes, iPods Among Air Security Fears
Shampoo, iPods and Starbucks lattes have suddenly become security threats. Terrorists could easily slip a few apparently innocuous items past airport security and assemble them into a lethal explosive once aloft, security experts said.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
ShoZu
ShoZu is the easiest and coolest way to upload photos and videos from your phone to your photo-sharing Web site.With just one click your photo or video is on the Web. You can add a description and tags either before or after uploading it. You can even change them later, from your phone.
When friends or fans comment on any of your photos on the Web, ShoZu forwards those comments to your phone. With some sites you can even reply to them (while you're still on the beach) - now that's really cool!
And ShoZu keeps on getting better. You can now set up your favourite email addresses, flickr & blogger accounts in ShoZu - and then email or post your photos and videos in seconds.
ShoZu is pronounced like "Show Zoo", with the emphasis on the first syllable.
ShoZu originated as a mis-pronunciation or "Sho2u" ("show to you"), written on a white board as we were brainstorming ideas for a name.
ShoZu is a small bean in Chinese, an alcoholic drink in Korea, and a district in Japan. As far as we're aware, it doesn't mean anything rude in any language.
It can be argued that the name does have some meaning…
* Sho = Show = Share (emphasises community)
* Zu is like Zoo = fun, lots of stuff going on, exciting
* Zu is like 2u = to you (zu means 'to' in German)
Also...
* It’s short enough to fit on a phone
* It's memorable
* The domain name was available
* It could even be used as a verb: "Let me just ShoZu that over to you..." (OK, we're getting carried away now)
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