29 março, 2010

16 março, 2010

Editing pictures

I Loooove editing pictures. Actually, I love pictures! Editing is just part of it.. :)

Black and white effects are really cool. Whenever I wanted to apply them to a picture, I would go to a pic editing software and just use the b&w effect function. But I was seldom satisfied with the results. So boring.. Not even close to the professional ones.
With a little help from Google, I quickly discovered a very easy way to get it a lot better. I don't remember the website anymore, but I learned the following:
On Photoshop -
use the channel mixer, select "monochrome" and play with red, blue and green cursors. One good tip is to get one of the colors at 100% and the others at 0%.
Really cool!

11 março, 2010

Spring

During the first year here in Canada we were very excited with all the changes in nature.
Specially for me, because I'm from a place where there's only two seasons - rain and sun - and they are not very different (except for the rain), observing the four seasons being very different to each other was a great experience.

Now we are starting the spring season again. All the cartoons I used to watch when I was little make sense now: the birds singing, the blossom, people being happier, etc. This season the snow starts to melt, it's 5C outside, but it's warm enough to wear only a sweater, the days are sunny, and it only gets dark at 7pm. Oh, I love the spring!

I also hate the spring :). Last year we had a daily visitor in our bedroom window, and he used to get here at 6am knocking at the "door" insistently and very loudly. This year he's back!!
Last year he stayed for a couple of months. This year, I think he got here a little earlier. He's not bothering us anymore because we've decided to switch rooms.

Here is a short video I made this week.