Paid to Play, Part II

Part one, the actual story, is on the blog here.

One piece of feedback I got from my writing class on Paid to Play was that is was not fair that Bob didn't get punished for making a pact with the devil. Hence, this illo.  Style is obviously cribbed from the title card ending of American Graffiti. The faces were generated by the AI This Person Does Not Exist.

Important notice re: Earlier images on this blog are disappearing

Photobucket, the 3rd party serving photo-hosting service, has emailed me (and all others) to say they will no longer host 3rd party images.

To continue using Botophucket, all I have to do is pay $400 a year!

Needless to say, I'm not going to pay $400 a year (actually it's $399), but to help force the issue, Photofuckit are replacing all the hosted images with thumbnails containing their ransom demand. So those of you who read my blog here at http://peromyscus.blogspot.com/ are going to find it looking a little measly with many of the older pictures replaced by those thumbnails. 

My apologies, but it it will take some time - perhaps forever - to change all those links, especially as Photobucket's download button only downloads one picture at a time. One at a time!

If you are searching for a picture (e.g. one of the historical Led Zeppelin pictures) and think the image may be underneath the ransom demand email, leave a message here and I will attempt to find it on my hard disk and re-upload it or send it to you. Same deal for any postings in message boards or fora that you think may have been by me (e.g Elixir_Sue, Lyle Hopwood, Peromyscus). 

Sheesh.

Black is black (I'm feeling blue)

Remember the blue and black (or, for some, white and gold) dress from two years ago?

At the time, I said on this blog,

The picture was 'obviously' light blue and gold - to me. I assumed the people who saw black and blue were somehow processing the white balance in their heads, which is pretty damned clever. It's as though they weren't seeing what color the picture was, but estimating what color the real dress is and reading it back without realizing that's not what was on the monitor. The real dress is, equally obviously, blue and black.

But apparently, I couldn't have said that, because nobody knew how color perception worked at that time, at least according to this Slate researcher.

Two Years Later, We Finally Know Why People Saw “The Dress” Differently

Remember “the dress”? It disrupted our understanding of color, and, yes, it took science two years to catch up.
No one had any idea why some people see “the dress” differently than others—we arguably still don’t fully understand it. It was like discovering a new continent.
Two years later we have a much better idea of what may have been a reason for the varied perceptions: People’s perceived color is also informed by their perception of lighting. And the image of the dress, taken on a cellphone, contained a lot of uncertainty in terms of lighting conditions. Was it taken inside or outside? This matters because it implies artificial or natural light. Was the dress illuminated from the front or the back? This matters because if it was back-lit, it would be in a shadow, otherwise not.

 

I'm glad they cleared that up. 

 

That dress yesterday. #blueandblack

That dadblasted white and gold or blue and black dress! I'm lucky I missed the llamas or I'd have gotten nothing done yesterday.

The picture was 'obviously' light blue and gold - to me. I assumed the people who saw black and blue were somehow processing the white balance in their heads, which is pretty damned clever. It's as though they weren't seeing what color the picture was, but estimating what color the real dress is and reading it back without realizing that's not what was on the monitor. The real dress is, equally obviously, blue and black.

So this morning I checked in Photoshop. (Yes, I'm still wasting time on it.)

The original picture, slightly ensmallened:



What the picture looks like in a Photoshop window (you can see Photoshop just says, 'open', i.e. it's done nothing to it):




Taking a sample of "white" or "blue" in the dress with the eyedropper:



The little circle in the color palette shows what color Photoshop thinks the blue or white area is. It's not white, is it? It's a light blue.


Taking a sample of "black" or "gold" with the eyedropper:



The little circle shows what color Photoshop thinks the area behind her right shoulder is. It's not black, is it? The original picture has gold (or orange or brown) on the lace strips, depending on where you sample.

White balancing the picture by hand (taking the color cast off using adjustments):



Once you adjust the picture for the overexposure, it's blue and black. I adjusted the color under curves  levels for all three channels, red, green and blue. Only the third channel is shown.


White balancing the picture under adjustments using the eyedropper to set white, black and mid-range in the areas outside the dress:



Instead of using my eye to take off the color cast, I used Photoshop's eyedropper tool on the areas outside the dress - white, by her right elbow, black by her left hip and grey at the far right past her elbow. It's actually quite a pretty-colored dress when it's color balanced!

(I think I've got some clipping going on there, but that's enough on the dress for me today.)

Edit to add: scrolling the small pictures up my monitor on the finished post shows all of them gradually changing from bluish-goldish to blue-black as they ascend. It's freaky.

Edit to add on 02/28 - they now all look blue and black to me, all the time.

Edit to add on 4/12/17 - Science has apparently come to the same conclusion as I did. 

Yes, ma'am

I been thinking...

about the White Stripes farewell announcement two days ago and what I thought about it, and I remembered a meme that had been going around in science fiction circles recently - motivationary misquotes to drive fanboys mad.

Anyway, it translates to rock and roll as well, so here's my entry.

At the risk of over-explaining a joke, I have to credit the original photographer, Pennie Smith, who captured this wonderful but now butchered shot. It was, of course, used on a famous album cover.

Enhance!

STB of Enhance fame sends me another video, which was labeled legit.

I believe it right up until the panorama demo in which it fills in the missing hills. I don't believe that that a program can come up with an esthetically pleasing downhill slope for the hills at the far right which don't match the uphill slant in the original photo the program has to work with. Esthetically pleasing, yes, but logically and algorithmically it makes no sense.

Original here.



I love photoshop, but I don't believe this. Is it April 1st?

Lilith

I love Photoshop. There's nothing in this picture that wasn't in the original. I just chose the bits I wanted to foreground. It's hard to believe, but there's no added color.




I got the picture at a spectacularly handy all-Satan all-the-time copyright-free image page. Thanks, Satanists! It's not what you think; I'd actually Googled for "winged disk" but couldn't find a good picture (there or indeed anywhere else). Luckily Lilith here filled my Photoshopping deficit. She wasn't grey enough and the snake wasn't quite punchy enough, but I soon took care of that.



See? Just not quite there enough in the original.

Really Useful Tips

I often post on message boards, and I've noticed that newer posters on the internet don't always know some simple tricks finding out information on pictures or saving the pictures they produce or find. Three came up recently, so to spread the joy, here are some simple techniques. They're for Windows machines. There may be easier ways of doing these things, but they tend to involve buying something extra.

1. I found this picture on the web/ Someone sent me a picture from the web. Who is in the picture? When was it taken?
2. Someone sent me this funny file. Ha ha. (Or maybe they sent you an MP3 of their great band.) There's no links on the page they sent me so how can I find out if there's more at this website?
3. I got a high score on this game but no one will believe me because there are no embedding instructions and I don't know how to email a picture of my screen. How will I impress me mates? Or, this photo has right-click disabled so how can I rip it off, pretend it's mine and get thrown off my ISP? (Second scenario not recommended.)

1. I found this picture on the web/ Someone sent me a picture from the web. Who is in the picture? When was it taken?

A quick way to find out something about a picture you've found online is to right-click it and select "save as". The default name Windows offers you is the name the previous person saved it under. If the previous person called it "Me and Hillary Clinton, 2006," or something else useful you're home free.

If they didn't, save the file to somewhere you can find it to get rid of it later (like the Desktop), and right click the icon (not the picture, its icon) and select properties. Is there anything under "Summary"?

No? (Well, at least now you know to fill in the summary on pictures you put on the internet so you can recognize them later.) Open it with Microsoft Office Picture Manager (it comes free with Windows) and look under File – Properties. There's information there on the camera that was used to take the picture and some other stuff that might be useful.

No? Then copy the File Name exactly, e.g.

iguana3

and paste it into Google Images.

That fooled you, didn't it? It isn't an iguana! I don't know what they all are, but it just illustrates that Google Images looks for the filename (possibly among other things) when searching.

If Google Images doesn't find it, try Google web search.

If that doesn't work, write to the poster and ask. (Alternatively you can do this step first, but you'll feel silly if he replies, "It's me and Hillary Clinton in 2006, you moron.")



2. Someone sent me this funny file. Ha ha. (Or maybe they sent you an MP3 of their great band.) There's no links on the page they sent me so how can I find out if there's more at this website?

A lot of people keep personal websites with no good index or links between them. If there are no links on the page you're looking at, cut down the URL to the page under it.

Let's say you were given this URL (I'm making it up. There aren't any URLs beginning with hxxp://)

hxxpp://www.barrysbollocks.ipanema.com/2007/07/wildwood/lilypad.html

You thought that "lilypad.html" was a really interesting page and want to see if there are any more gems on the site.

Take off the end of the URL - lilypad.html - and have a look at the page called wildwood. If there's nothing of interest there, cut it down to

hxxpp://www.barrysbollocks.ipanema.com

You'll probably see an index of some sort there. If it says the server refuses your request, give in. (Or be considered a hacker.)

3. I got a high score on this game but no one will believe me because there are no embedding instructions and I don't know how to email a picture of my screen. How will I impress me mates? Or, this photo has right-click disabled so how can I rip it off, pretend it's mine and get thrown off my ISP? (Second scenario not recommended.)

Put the part of the screen you want to keep on top of all the other windows, so it shows clearly.

Hit Shift-Printscreen

Open All Programs – Accessories – Paint.

Control-V to paste the picture of your screen into Paint

Use the top right hand square tool to draw around the part of your screen you want to keep. (Beware because having a picture of your screen on your screen leads to dizziness and disorientation.)

Ctrl-C to put that square's worth of data into the Clipboard.

File-new to open a blank Paint picture. (It may ask you if you want to save the previous picture. Say yes until you're sure you know what you're doing. After that, say no.)

Ctrl-V to paste the square's worth of data into a new picture.

Save the picture and email it to your best friend.

(He or she will probably hate you because a Paint bitmap file is huge, but saving it as anything else is for the intermediate class next semester. Oh, all right, here goes: save it as a .jpg. It's part of the dropdown menu on the "save as" screen.)


This is a picture of a bit of Paint's own interface saved by this method. The square crop tool is the top right one. Don't get confused and press it. It's just a picture of a tool.

I cut and pasted the rose in there from a website. It isn't mine. It's a lovely rose but I don't own it.