Panasonic Lumix

I have no plans in buying a new camera. My Canon is still working fine although I noticed that the quality of the photos has gone bad. Not sure what happened to it. Plus, I don't know where my memory card is so I can't really use it.

My friend, Karen, wanted to buy the Twilight books for her sister so I went with her, Joy and Ogz to Costco. I've got the membership.

While walking around the place and sampling some free treats, I came across this Lumix digicam from Panasonic. It offers HD video capture, 9.1 megapix, 28mm wide angle lens and a handful of auto intelligent settings (face, motion, shake, light and scene detection). That means, I don't need to push a lotta buttons before I could capture my subject. Since I bought it at Costco, I got 50 free 4x6 prints. Sweet!

This is the first photo I took. This is in low light and I used the automatic settings. The colors turned out great, no?
Here are some mo' photos:

With Joy

Lego-las

Color Accent

If you're wondering how a photo can be in black & white while a certain subject still retains its color, it's very simple. No need to buy Photoshop or some fancy shmancy software. If you have a Canon digicam and it's in the PowerShot series (mine is SD 850), look no further. Grab your cameras and follow along to these simple instructions:

1) Go to Manual setting and click on Func. Set button. This will give you different Manual settings like Digital Macro, Color Swap and Stitch Assist. If you find an eyedropper icon with an A beside it, that's what we're looking for.

Now, the trick with Color Accent is that, you should pick a nice subject that you want to retain the color of. In our example here, I chose the head board. To pick the blue comforter would be an overkill.2) Click on Display button to choose the color you want to retain. Point to the subject and press the left arrow when you have chosen the color. You'll notice that the color picker is now of the same color. In my case, it's brown. Click on Display again to exit.

3) You'll notice now that the rest of your shot will be monochromatic and the subject will be the only one in color. Shoot anytime ;oPHere are other examples:By the way, thanks to Joy for figuring this out. I didn't know that my camera has this feature. Silly me.

A Stitch in Time

Remember this photo from my Thanksgiving party in Jersey? This is our project for today. We'll do some photo stitching. This picture is actually composed of 8 pictures.

Now, the first thing you must remember when you wanna do sumpthin like this, is that, you need to have a tripod (or a very steady hand). If you don't have a tripod, stand on one spot and just do a mini-robotic turn for each shot. I tried capturing these photos from right to left and then I took another round from left to right. Make sure that you have overlaps for each picture so it would be easier to put them together. Choose a nice subject too. Mountains. Forests. Rivers.

Now the fun part. Collect your photos. In Photoshop CS3, place each photo on different layers.Select all the layers. Click on Layer 7 (topmost), hold down Shift key and then click on Background layer (bottommost). Then go to Edit menu, choose Auto-Align Layers. From the Projection options, just choose "Auto" then click OK. Now Photoshop will be doing its magic so be patient.You'll get sumpthin like this in the end:Notice that some parts have different lighting and all? Don't worry, we have a solution for that. Go back to Edit menu and choose Auto-Blend Layers. Once more, "magpapasikat si Photoshop!".

Now, do some cropping and presto! You have your own panoramic photo!

Want McDreamy?

Compare these two photos. Notice how the second photo looks surreal? The shadow and light look soft. It's like you just woke up and everything is blurry.
Today, we'll try to recreate this effect. Thanks to Michael Orton for inventing this technique. It's fairly easy to do. Promise.

Open your favorite photo in Photoshop. In this case, my photo with the Palace of Fine Arts in the background.We'll duplicate our image layer by going to Layer menu and choose Duplicate Layer (remember this step 'cause you'll see it again). Choose Screen for the blending mode. You'd notice that your image becomes lighter. Flatten your image by going to Layer menu and choose Flatten Image.
We'll duplicate the image layer again (told ya). Then go to Filter menu, choose Blur, then apply a Gaussian Blur of 5.0 pixels (you can play around with this value).For the final touch, change the blending mode to Multiply and flatten your image.Here are other photos I played around with:

Lomo Arigato, Mister Lomoto

I've been introduced to Lomo by my friend, Anetski. She took this shot 2 years ago after our frisbee game. It became one of my favorite photos ;oP
I have a Canon Powershot SD 850 and I love it. And thanks to my BFF, Photoshop, I could somehow replicate Lomo photography. If you wanna know how it can be done, today is your lucky day. Grab a nice cup of hot cocoa and follow these instructions (kinda long but it's worth it):

Okay, find a nice photo. This is the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.Go to Image menu, Adjustment -> Curves (or press Ctrl-M). A dialog box will appear. Click on any part of the diagonal line and type 105 for the Output and 95 for the Input. Do it, baby, one more time with these settings: Output - 149, Input - 169. Click on OK.Create a new layer. Go to the toolbar and click on the Foreground Color (normally set to black). Adjust the Hue to 38%. Click OK.
Select All (Ctrl-A). Go to Edit menu. Choose Fill command. Click OK. Blackness will cuh-ver your image. Don't panic. Make sure that the layer is still selected. Change the mode to Hue and the Opacity to 40%. Flatten the image (go to Layer menu, Flatten). Notice the difference now?
Go to Image menu, Mode -> Lab Color. Then go to Channels and select Lightness. Your image will turn black & white.
Go to Filter menu, choose Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask. A dialog box will appear. Apply these settings: Amount - 50%, Radius - 50 pixels, Threshold - 0. Click OK. Go back to Image menu and bring it back to RGB Mode. There's a big difference now between our current and the original image!
We're almost there. Go to Filter menu, choose Distort -> Lens Correction. In the Vignette (pronounced as "vin-yet") section, apply these settings: Amount - -100, Midpoint - 75. Click OK. This will produce blackened areas on the edge of your image.Go to Channels, click on Red. Go to Image menu, choose Adjustments -> Brightness/Contrast. Apply a Contrast of 80. Click OK. Do the same thing with the Green Channel. Afterwards, click on RGB.
And that's it, folks! The Lomo effect. Now, if you didn't get all the steps, here's the Lomo action you can download. Just upload them into your actions and reap the benefit of Lomo ;oP

Doesn't Matter if You're Black or White!

Staying at Clarion Hotel in San Francisco (for free, thanks to Kuya Bong) had inspired me to do more black & white photos. Y'see, all the photos hanging on their walls are done in B&W.

Now, lemme warn you that not all photos would look good in black & white. Imagine stripping off your photo of its colors! Texture and shadows would step up to the plate now.

Buying a B&W film is expensive. For your digital pictures, a graphics application such as Photoshop is our manna from the heavens. Photoshop has an easy way to convert your pictures to its B&W version.

I took this shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. It looks nice but I thought it needs some more drama.I didn't want too much plant on the lower left or those hideous octagonal marks at the bottom right section. I made sure that the focal point is the bridge itself.So I made a rectangular selection. Using the Crop command from the Image menu, you can get rid of unwanted parts.And here's your trimmed picture. Looks nice and all.For the final touch, go to Image menu and choose Mode -> Grayscale.Here's the final product: