Thursday, June 09, 2005

QuickFix

An imaging program came with my computer. It doesn't do much, but it has one button that I've enjoyed playing with recently: QuickFix. Most of the time it just slightly changes the hue or the contrast. Every now and then it makes art.

It changes this redbud leaf



into this exotic jungle creature.



Occasionally it takes ho-hum flower shots



and produces surprising results.



And sometimes it gives you



super-sneaky crawdad spy vision!



I'm off to a soapmakers' gathering tomorrow. Smell ya later.

16 comments:

UncommonSense said...

That is cool!

I like to play around with the "effects" tools on Paint Shop Pro in a similar fashion. I'll save a work copy of one of my pictures, and then just click random effects, or combinations thereof, to see what happens. Sometimes, the results are amazing.

I have to say, though, that I have not come up with anything remotely as fascinating as "super-crawdad (we say 'crawfish' in Louisiana) spy vision."

What is the app you're using? Is it one of the bundled Microsoft photo tools?

UncommonSense

Rurality said...

Dell Image Expert is the one that came with the laptop. Most of its spiffier tools "expire" after a short time and you have to upgrade ($) if you want them back.

I have Paint Shop Pro also (Photoshop's poor relation), and waste a lot of time with those buttons too. :)

Anonymous said...

Super cool.

Smell you later, get a job....

Anonymous said...

The crawdad fix is really good. It's like having a polarizer on your camera. That would be a lot of work in Photoshop to fix.

Anonymous said...

mmmm, crawdad....

Karen said...

Cool pics - I like 'em!

LauraP said...

That looks like fun. I haven't played with the photo effects much yet - must do that.

Dave said...

Yeah, what fletch said. I'm sitting here wondering how many steps that would take in Photoshop - half a dozen, at least.

Rurality said...

Thanks y'all.

Dusti, another Brak reference, yippee! :)

I guess it knows somehow to act like a polarizer... it's one of the few things that the program does right.

Jerry... with Ginger Beer, right?! LOL. I'm going to try your recipe sometime. (I've never actually eaten a crawfish, believe it or not.)

Anonymous said...

As kids in western Nebraska we walked about a half mile to school each morning, through alleys of course. Along the way there was an irrigation ditch, haphazardly surrounded by wire fence to keep kids like us out.

I'm not quite sure where/how we got the idea but we started fishing for crawdad. Since a major part of walking to school through alleys already involved snooping through garbage cans we'd eventually find some funky chunk of hambone or other cast-off meat. Tie it to the end of a long string, hang over the wire fence trailing into the slow moving ditch water, and then off to school.

On the walk home we'd slowly ease the string out of the water and "harvest" the collection of crawdads chowing down on the treat. I think we put them into a bucket and Mom had us feed them cornmeal or something. When we got enough we'd eat them, sort of like shrimp.

Charles said...

love the crawdad pic. he can no longer hide behind the sky's reflection.

Happy and Blue 2 said...

All your pictures look great with or without the fixing..

fred said...

Remind me what camera you use. I think maybe I asked a while back if you use a macro. My coolpix 950 (focal distance to 1/2 inch) died and I'm longing for macro-abilities again.

Anonymous said...

Really, I think the blog gods should require a post from Rurality each day. Look, it's been two days now and no new post. Does this seem fair to anyone???

Rurality said...

Jerry it's nice to know we'll have a use for cast-off meat now. :) Although I don't know that I'd want to eat anything from this creek... not sure what's upstream.

Charles, hubby said that's the biggest one he's ever seen! He crawled under a rock when he was through showing off.

Thanks H&B, you're on the nice list now too. :)

Fred, it's a Sony Mavica CD1000, an older camera with 2.1 Megapixels. I'd like to get one of the newer Canons myself.

Pablo I was out of town! Thanks though. :)

UpNDown said...
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