About photography Number 2

[Horus]

Thanks Barry it does appear as though some screens have a problem with a graduated background, as I said earlier, I am viewing on a 19" LCD screen at a 1280 x 960 32 bit, screen resolution and can see nothing wrong at all with the picture. On my screen I see a very steady colour graduation in mid grey, very smoothly changing from the bottom and getting lighter towards the top of the picture.

[Horus]

Have a look at this one and see if you see the same strobing or stripe lines this one also has a smooth graduation but this one is from top towards the bottom.

For LLL, this one shows how you can take elements from lots of pictures, in this case (4) and cut & paste into one.

[Kiya]

The daffodil pic when enlarged is a bit grainy near to the bottom of pic,no lines & not so bad as the Rameseum pic.

I checked my moniter with the link it is 1024 x 768 32 bit (LCD ) when I changed it to your size Horus 1280 x 960 all the writing & icons went much smaller which I dont like.

[Kiya]

Horus forgot to add when I checked the daffodil at your size of 1280 x 960 the daffodil pic still had some graininess at bottom but not so bad at my size of 1280 x 768 when enlarged....you may right after all when you said it could be different screen resolutions.

[Horus]

Thanks Kiya I think that pretty well proves my point that it is the screen resolution and graphics that is the main culprit. Although it is not a problem that would be experienced with most pictures, you have to remember that the graduated fill that I used is not something you would usually use and of course if you did, then you would set it to suit what looked best on your own screen. I think it will be one of those 'not backward compatible' effects, where if you used a low resolution effect it would actually look a bit better on a higher resolution setting, but not the other way around.

And Kiya ............... I have a bone to pick with you! that 'Daffodil is a close up of a Nasturtium
I am having serious reservations about your eyesight or are my posted pictures really that bad

[Kiya]

Nasturtium..... a South American trailing plant with round leaves and bright orange,yellow or red flowers, widely grown as an ornamental................well now I know after checking my dictionary I'm sure I've told you in the past I'm not at all green fingered but only weeeeeds in my back yard. now I've checked its nothing like a daffodil

Since we've been on about the resolution on different moniters I noticed mine is a little blurry when looking at my icons....how do I sharpen that without changing the resolution on moniter cause I dont want my writing on screen any smaller than it is.

[LovelyLadyLux]

Way cool photo Horus! YES!!! Am sooooo excited about this! And the creative juices are flowing! That photo is GORGEOUS! I installed the Gimp but 'duh' am not getting it cause I can't seem to install the manual AND after 2 pages of printing it the ancient printer decided to go to the great printer Gods in the sky "agh" foiled! And flipping back and forth on the internet isn't working too well. But - wow! This is the GREATEST!!

[Grandad]

I changed my screen to 1600 x 1200 and could still see it in the first picture. I could also see it in the flower composite but only when zoomed quite a lot. The blue background graduates much more smoothly than the grey.

But what the heck, they are good pictures and perhaps I have to concede that I could do with a better graphics card........but I am not really bothered

Oh, and I take your point Stan, but that was when I was first trying to get to grips with PSP X2. Still trying

Just a comment on layers......if you have spent a lot of time getting a good cut out layer of some object you can save it as a PSP layer and use it again rather than perhaps lose it when you flatten. I have the helicopter saved and can use it elsewhere. You must save it as PSP (or similar Photoshop format) or you will just save the image on a white background, not the transparent background that you require .....

[Grandad]

Just noticed that Helsx has nominated 'Egypt in Black and White' for the March comp...

What a great topic

You are already ahead in that then Horus with your moon montage

[Horus]

Grandad wrote:

You are already ahead in that then Horus with your moon montage

No I don't think I will stoop so low Grandad Anyway with all them stripes and speckles it won't stand a chance
And ....... if you can set your screen resolution to 1600 x 1200 there is not a lot wrong with your graphics card.

Kiya, it may be possible that if you go into where you found your screen resoluton settings and have a look to see if you can increase the 'Colour Quality' settings, it may help.

[Horus]

Here is another one for you ladies to try out
Take a single flower, place it on a plain background and play about with the lighting. Hope this doesn't come out all blotchy when you enlarge it

[Kiya]

Beautiful even when its enlarged pink is my favourite colour

I wouldn't know where to start

[Horus]

Kiya wrote:

I wouldn't know where to start

You soon will that's what this is all about, helping you to learn different things.
I love taking pictures of flowers, they usually keep still at least when the wind doesn't blow. At least I only need to nip out into the garden and I can take lots of pictures anytime I want, well at least in the summer months. It is a good place to start using your camera for trying out those close ups and macro focus shots, give it a try.

[Kiya]

I wasn't kidding when I said I'm not green fingered theres no flowers in my garden, got some from google though.......think I'm
going to be pulling my hair out with this 1

[LivinginLuxor]

I too can see a very thin dark line just above the moon, but I think it might be a screen resolution thing - I'm using a laptop with lower resolution than my normal 1290x960 or thereabouts.

[Horus]

Thanks for the feedback Stan

Kiya just get yourself a bunch of flowers from Tesco and spend some time taking macro photo's of them and then post us some pictures

[LovelyLadyLux]

Horus I just bought PSP x2 off of Ebay and it was really good price especially with free shipping. I'll get it soon and get it installed THEN the real questions will start! ;) I actually liked that it said in the description it had tutorials.

I LOVE talking photos of flowers too. Got tons of them and my entire fascination with photography started cause for years when I retire I wanted to start painting again and painting flowers but the more photos I took the more and more I became enamoured with photography and now I'm totally hooked and don't care if I ever paint a lick.

I'm still exploring all the lens and stuff and still haven't ventured beyond "auto". I tried to take a photo of a fly today but wasn't so lucky.

Really skookum tripod Grandad. Need to acquire one of those too!

Am sure loving this thread! The info is so completely wonderful and applicable! Love the plain talk (instead of the mumbo jumbo of some of the manuals full of techie talk!)

[Horus]

LLL, glad you opted for the PSP X2 I am sure you will find it a good program to use, it is a little heavy on PC resources, so I would suggest you don't have a lot of other things open at the same time when you use it.
Yes the tutorials are on the CD and they are very good
Once you have a program like this installed you can have hours of enjoyment just playing about with your photgraphs and either changing them or creating new compositions from several photo's.
I always try to keep the explanation simple, mainly because I don't understand it myself
We are all bracing ourselves for your myriad questions No doubt you will throw us a few wobblies that we cannot answer, but between us we will do our best.

And you can still perfect your oil painting techniques:

[Kiya]

Like the oil painting effect but without the bee on this 1

[Horus]

Try to imagine that it is a dead petal Kiya