CRDESIGNLAB

I have been at my computer for five hours now, copying 30GB to two places and working on two images, one of which is done (for now).

As soon as I got home today, I began the long and arduous task of updating my files. Over the past six months, Kyle and I have accumulated just under 30GB of Mac Lab content, and have been trying our best to keep these 1,423 files synced across six computers. We upgraded to the 50GB version of DropBox, but that is limited by the speed of the internet connection and requires that the computer be turned on and logged into the specific account for an extended length of time, which is a problem because we are each only in the Mac Lab for one period a day. I have started storing all my files on my 1 terabyte external HDD, which I have lugged to school the past two days and have been trying to use to keep the computers undated, but DropBox just keeps messing things up. I have decided to suspend DropBox from the computers that are not updated and manually load the files onto them. Unfortunately, that all six computer needed updating, so the process has taken a while. So far, four are done. When I got home today, I updated my MacBook Pro and my iMac, and am letting my iMac sync up to the DropBox server. The iMac as school are also finished.

As soon as I got the file transfers started, I turned to Photoshop. A few posts ago, I said how I had spent an evening light painting with my lightsabers and that four good images were produced. Well,today I took one of those images back through Photoshop and attempted to improve upon the version that is on the Mac Lab Light Painting Gallery. One of the best features of this image is that you can see star lines in the background, and so I endeavored to improve this quality. I applied a “Deep Blue” “Photo Filter” set to 95% to the images and painstakingly masked everything expect the sky back in. Then I applied a “Cooling Filet (80)” set to 35% and copied the mask to that layer. The result was astounding. Where I once had a brownish-yellow haze, I now have a navy blue abyss streaked with starlight. It is a little hard to tell just how dramatic the change is from looking at the image to the left, but it makes all the difference. One of my favorite features of this image is the fact that I managed to capture the stars, and now to accent those with a clear blue sky, it completely makes the photo.  I also removed the hard light effect I added before, so now there is a smooth rather than harsh feel. The power of adjustment layers and the mask still astound me, even after three years.

After that, I played around with a similar image, but the masking was taking way too much time. I was forced to move on to more urgent tasks, like writing this post.

I officially dub Street 01 done for now. It goes back into my maze of a file system to await a day when I learn something new and can make it better.

Update: The power of QuickTime!!!!!!