Dusty road part 2 (Altered)

I’ve created a new section in the gallery, called Altered. This is where I’ll be putting any photos that I’ve manipulated beyond shrinking and labeling. For example, the dusty road picture attached to this post is one that I had been thinking needed some sort of work to make it pop (for lack of a better word). So I fired up GiMP and did the roughly1 following:

  • Copied the entire image into a new file, to preserve the original.
  • Created two layers in the image containing the entire image.
  • Selected the bottom layer and applied a 5px Gausian blur.
  • Selected the top layer and set it the mode to multiply.
  • Flatten the image to save it as a JPG.
  • Resize and label.

I really like this altered version vs the original one. Also in currently the altered gallery is a picture I took of some clouds and that tonight I ran through the same basic steps to enhance it. This version of the image also really pops! 🙂
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As you might have heard, the activation servers for Half-Life2 are now allowing people to start playing. *sigh* It’s at times like these that I find my empty wallet depressing. This is the one game that I’ve been waiting for all year, but I’m broke. I’m especially broke because I want the game on DVD and the only way to get that in the US is to buy the collector’s edition (~$80). Ouch! Ah well, maybe being broke is a good thing and they’ll put out a normal edition (~$50) on DVD later for the US. They’re already releasing a DVD version for Europe that doesn’t require you to spend all that extra money for the collector’s edition; so it’s entirely possible.