How To Decorate with Photoshop

We plan to use the hallway of our newly finished basement to show off vacation photos. The walls are about 12 feet on one side and 7 on the other. I've had trouble deciding how many frames to order and what color. Since the wood is all maple in the house I considered maple frames but I also thought black frames would look nice with photos.

So I turned to Photoshop to help me. First I photographed the hallway. Yes, that is the wall color!



Next I went to americanframe.com to get a framed photo. I have used American Frame many times for custom frames and have had great luck with then. Very inexpensive way to frame. The website has a neat ordering system where you can upload your artwork, then try out their frames so you can decide color as well as matting. Slick. After I picked out a frame I liked I simply did a screen snap into Photoshop as below.



In Photoshop I was able to position and copy the photos onto the wall. For those Photoshop users out there, I used the vanishing point tool to make sure they followed the perspective of the wall. Note that the farthest frame is smaller then the foremost. A slight emboss was added to give the frames their thickness and lastly a drop shadow behind to match the spotlight direction.



Here are the maple frames on the wall. It was pretty clear to me that the black frames were much better then the maple. The lighter wood on the green wall wasn't as striking.



As a final touch, just to see how realistic I could make it, I added some lighting to the otherwise flat black frames. Since the frames were added digitally they didn't get the same spotlight variation that the wall did. Not to mention the ambient green color bouncing off the other wall. The following images shows where the photos would be and the lighting that will fall on it. This was done by making a copy of the wall layer, masking out all but the frames then reducing the transparency of the new layer till there was a slight coloring on the frames. A very subtle effect but one that the eye would notice.



Here is the final composite. Note that the light and coloring on the frames is now more accurate.



Below is the Photoshop layers of the project. Each group was a different framing consideration.

My Web Anniversary

Today I had to check to see when a few DVDs from Amazon order would arrive. They make it very easy to do. The information is all very accessible and always a breeze to use. I love Amazon but I had no I idea just how long my love affair has been.

I found an area of my account that had a record of every purchase I've made. Curiosity sent me to the very first purchase which amazingly was 10 years ago today, March 19, 2008. What are the odds of finding that when I did!!



According to the order I bought a book on Sumo. But my memory is that the first thing I bought was a CD. More then likely this database was created around 1998. Amazon was founded in 1994 and went public the next year.

Lunar Eclipse

Tonight there was a total eclipse of the moon. They say it won't happen again, at least here in Minnesota, till 2010. I've never tried photography the moon so I figured I'd give this a shot. Ha! pun!.

It was a crystal clear night however it was also only 1 degree out so I decided to try shooting from a window. I did go to the trouble of opening the window for each shot thinking that I would avoid the distortion of the glass. But now I wonder if I just introduced distortion of all the heat waves I was letting out!

The experiment was so-so. None of the shots were very sharp but the exposures were fairly ok. The left most exposure was of the complete eclipse. I had to drop the shutter speed from 1/250 to 1/4 ofa second just to get anything. It was only then that you could see into the shadow. All the detail was always there in the previous shots but was overwhelmed by the bright side.

Shibuya Panorama Revisited

I just had to go back into this panorama. So much of what makes this corner so cool are all the huge video screens. I think there are 3-4. But the pano doesn't really show them. The overexposed one on the right, called Super Lisa, was kind of unavoidable but the monster one right in the middle, the Q-Front, is barely noticeable - and its 3 stories high! It was bad timing that there wasn't a feed when I snapped the 3 shots for the panorama.

But looking through all my photos of that evening I came across a shot with a decent exposure of both screens. So I just had to go back in. The Super Lisa monitor was simple. I cropped out the screen area on the original and scaled the image to fit. A little color correction and it was done. The Q-Front was a little more tricky because of the grid running through the image and the building. But actually the grid helped me register the 2 as I scaled down the image on a separate layer. Once in place I used a little math to do the combining. I set the image layer blend mode to Add which takes the pixel value of the top layer and adds it to the pixel value layer underneath. So white (256) + black(0) = 256 (white). So what happens is that all the black of the image at a value of 0 does not get added to the original wall color. No need to do a ton of erasing. Neat huh?
One last thing I had to do was to go into the added images and try to match the noise. It's a little weird to think about adding noise but if you looked really closely you would notice the videos being smoother then the surroundings. That can tell the brain that something funny is going on.

To me this now better captures my experience of Shibuya even thou it is not a photo of a real moment in time.

Shibuya Panorama

Another panorama from Tokyo. This time in the trendy area of Shibuya. This corner is the Time Square of Japan making it probably the second most over photographed spot next to Mt Fuji. But for good reason becuase it is so cool. Never the less it's one of my favorite places and deserving of a place in my blog. This was another set of photos that I had forgotten about and had never assembled until now.

Here is a google map of the area. The blue marker is where I was standing.


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Tokyo Panorama

I've been spending some time reviewing and cleaning out my digital photos. With Lightroom it's a pleasure not a chore. I discovered some shots from Tokyo that I never got around to assembling into a panorama. Worked out anyway because now I have good software to do it.

This shot was from the top of the Mori Building in Roppongi. A beautiful new tower. Just to the left of center is the Tokyo Tower. A well know Tokyo landmark that, yes, is a ripoff of the Eiffel Tower. In the distance is Tokyo bay. You can just make out the Raindow Bridge that crosses over to Odaiba.

As you can see it was a hazy day which always leads to dull low contrast photographs. Yet with Lightroom I was able to easily extract enough contrast to make a decent, thou not great, shot. To give you an idea of where I started, here is what the center shot looked like unprocessed.

Japanese Food in St Paul

Seems like Sushi resturants are popping up everywhere in the Twin Cities. Recently a new one named Giapponese opened in Woodbury near our home and I'm told another one named Akita Sushi and Hibachi is on the way. These two join Sushi Tango which opened last Summer in Woodbury. What is going on?

For the last year Linda and I have been very happy with Murasaki in Stillwater, MN or would make the trip into downtown St Paul to Sakura or the St Paul location of the long time favorite, Fujiya. I don't really consider myself a huge sushi lover. I'd rather have a bowl Japanese noodles or Tempura if given the choice. But I will also happily eat sushi from Target for a fast lunch so I'm no sushi snob.

We've already eliminated Sushi Tango from our list. The service was terrible 2 of the 3 times we've been there. There was nothing spectacular about the sushi or the courses like tempura to over come the apathy of the wait staff. Too bad as it's the closest to our house.

As I said before we really like Murasaki. It's a no thrills restaurant with a good selection of Japanese dishes and good sushi. It reminds me a lot of typical family owned restaurants in Japan. Although I'm pretty sure no one there is Japanese. Hey, that's ok.

The new kid on the block is Giapponese. We went there a week ago and have already been back. I love this place already! It's a hip place with a mod decor. They don't have a big selection of Japanese hot dishes (not as in Minnesota hotdish silly!) but the sushi is excellent. Monday we sat at the sushi bar which is something we never do. I guess we like to look at each other when we eat. Well this time we sat at the bar and got to interact with the sushi chef who, yes, is actually Japanese! But the best part about Giapponese is that they serve Japanese beers on tap! I've never seen that anywhere in North America let alone Minnesota. BTW they also have Fat Tire on tap which is also something you don't find around here. I'm really pulling for Giapponese to make it.

Although technically in Minneapolis there is also a new sushi spot just north of the U of M campus called Obento ya. I met a few friends there for dinner. The unagi was cold and they had no beer license. That place is dead to me.

If you haven't been to a sushi resturant you may want to learn a little from this video before you go. If you've every been to a real Japanese restaurant you will find it very funny.