A Map for Trevilians Tour Page

I posted a map for my Trevilian Station to Piedmont Civil War Field Trip page. It shows the main places mentioned: Richmond, Louisa, Trevilian Station, Piedmont, Staunton...

The map is not to scale; it is a sketch based on a "real" map. I drew it in Photoshop, which fortunately lets me type in text so that you don't have to read my shaky handwriting.

I also added text to that page and to the intro page for "Into the Shenandoah 1864."

In early June 1864, Grant was on Richmond's doorstep, but his failed assault at Cold Harbor convinced him that he needed another strategy in order to capture Richmond. He planned to pressure Lee from many directions, including interrupting the supply of food from the Shenandoah Valley. He also wanted to force Lee to divert troops away from the Richmond area.

In May, Union troops under Franz Sigel had tried to secure the Shenandoah Valley but had been defeated at New Market. Sigel was replaced by General David Hunter, who defeated "Grumble" Jones at Piedmont on June 5-6. On June 7, Grant (still at Cold Harbor), sent his cavalry under Sheridan to destroy the Virginia Central Railroad at Trevilian Station.

We have iris

We finally had an iris bloom. They bloomed in Shenandoah Valley a month ago (see 2008/05/iris.html), but ours were so late I thought they weren't going to bloom at all.

Frank calls irises "flag lilies." His mother grew them in Pennsylvania and they bloomed for Memorial Day. We've planted them at the various places we lived but this is the first time we had enough sun to get blooms. Deer don't like eating them so they are a good choice to plant here in the hills.

The actual color is purple. I've taken iris pictures with both my camera and Frank's, and for some reason the purple photographs as blue. Or is it a software quirk? This one looked purple when I opened it in Photoshop, but as soon as I saved it as a JPEG, it turned blue.

Icon

I added a "favicon" to my blog. You should be able to see it in the address bar at the top of the screen (if that line isn't hidden in your preferences). It looks like this little picture only smaller, and it's a ico (icon) file instead of a gif.

I made the little picture in Photoshop as a 64x64 pixel image. It needed to be half that size (figured I could shrink it) and the dot ico file is not a standard option in Photoshop CS3. However, you can download an add-on that saves your picture as an icon. I did that and resized the image to 32x32, then saved as an ico.

Next I needed to upload the icon to a server that accepts that format. No problem. My Javins.com page (hosted on Virtual Avenue) did not have a favicon so I put it there and made it do double-duty by calling up the icon in the header code:
<link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="favicon.ico">

For this blog, I opened the template and added a similar line, expanding the HREF path to the site where the file resides, and typing in a closing slash to make it XHTML-compliant. For clear instructions see Tips for New Bloggers.

Not Enough Suite Memory...

I wanted to buy Adobe Photoshop CS3 and figured a new version of Dreamweaver would be a good idea too. (Dreamweaver is now owned by Adobe). Since I'm officially a student, I figured I'd check the Adobe Education Store. Indeed the discounts for students are great. I spotted Creative Suite 3 Web Premium and saw that it included Photoshop Extended, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Flash and more for the price of getting just Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Seemed like a logical choice.

Unfortunately, when I tried to install the software, I saw that my laptop does not have enough RAM for all of it. Thought that I could just install the two applications that I needed, since I had enough RAM for them. But no. You can no longer unbundle the suite and install part of it.

Thinking of other software combos, I didn't believe it at first. Finally I called Adobe and they confirmed that you cannot split up the suite. However, they would issue a refund and it didn't matter that I had opened the box. I could just fill out and sign a form and they would invalidate the serial number and issue me a credit.

Once I get confirmation from my credit card that I have not been charged, I'll buy Photoshop CS3. I've already downloaded a trial copy; so all I need is the new serial number and I can keep using it after the 30-day trial is up.

Is the new version worth the cost? Probably. Photoshop CS2 has some problems on my operating system, and I really like the way the Actions menu behaves now. (I use it a lot because I have created a couple of actions for the way I process photos.) So CS3 seems to save
time.

I really wanted to get Lightroom but it'll have to wait. I don't have enough RAM for that either. Guess I will be looking at new Macs before too long. But not quite yet. One has to use a little restraint or buying technology can make your credit card balance exceed your bank balance really fast.

One More Fantasy

April Fool's Day is a good time to make composite images.

Ben and the Giant Moth

Posted in honor of the day: April 1st.

Just Practicing

I'm playing around with the lessons from my Photoshop class.

Our textbook, Advanced Design Techniques in Adobe Photoshop CS2,textbook is huge, and my progress is very slow. I really need to work harder at it.

Pond Photo, Not 100% Realistic

Pond at Shrine Mont, Orkney Springs

Another P-shopt image: This picture looked dull. The pond was a dull yellow-green and the surroundings had no contrast because the sky was overcast. Some experimenting in Photoshop brightened everything up.

To start, I made a copy of the background layer for experimenting. That way I can lessen the effect or multiply using layer blending choices. I multiplied the colors here, as you can probably tell. I added a dry brush filter and sandstone texture - hard to see that with this little picture, but I have a 5 MB version that I'll have printed. Don't know if I'll like it enough to hang on the wall; I have an awful lot of enlargements already. Maybe one day I'll sell some at a local crafts show.

Garden overlooking the Pacific

Here we see two photos I took when we were in Palos Verdes a month ago.

Or is it one photo?

My picture of these flowers at Wayfarer's Chapel was a bit washed out, and the sky was just white space. Using Photoshop, I added another picture that I took there, one of the ocean, and just made it visible in the windows. Then I saturated the flowers and applied a couple of filters (watercolor and texture) to give it a painted look. After all, if it's an artificial photo, I like it to look like art, not just trick photography.

Picture of a Tree

I liked this old tree in Port Republic but the picture looked a bit dull. Saturating it in Photoshop helped and then, since I had the software open anyway, I played with the filters and layers. Something was still missing... I remembered a picture of a crow that I took in our yard recently which had turned out too colorless to post. I selected the crow and copied it into this picture.

I like it better now. I refrained from adding a squirrel; enough is enough.

More California Pictures

I received a huge envelope from Photoworks today - prints from our California trip. You've already seen many of the pictures; they were digital. I uploaded them and ordered prints. (It's cheaper and faster than printing them myself.)

I still have more to process and upload from that trip. I like to straighten or crop them, size them a bit smaller (24x18 inches by 72), sometimes saturate a bit, maybe modify the color balance. All this takes time but the prints come out pretty.

Here's a couple more California pictures:
Frank looks a bit odd in the left-hand picture because he was holding my sweatshirt and decided to drape it around him.

Below we see Max getting a treat. Notice his little shirt.

Whale Watching

Whale watching is a popular pastime in Palos Verdes. Folks watch from Point Vicente or even pursue the migrating whales from boats. A census is maintained of numbers of whales spotted.

I snapped a couple of pictures of whales as they surfaced but from a distance they just look like bumps in the waves, unless you are lucky enough to catch the water spout like I did in last year's photo.

I wonder what the whales think of all this attention?

Copyright 2008

(The photo above had an unrecognizable whale in the middle. I drew in this guy using my touchpad and Photoshop.)

A Couple of Warm Days in February

We had unseasonably warm weather yesterday and the day before. With temperatures in the upper 60's (F), I was glad for a chance to take the dog for an extra walk.

Here's a couple of pictures I took in W.O. Riley Park in Woodstock after our visit to the vet on Tuesday. I used a Photoshop filter on the image above to give it extra contrast.

Odd Dog

This one is altered in Photoshop using filters and layer blending modes.

For CS2 Users running Leopard

I upgraded my Mac OS to Leopard, which has some very nice features. However, Photoshop has been giving me weird problems and I haven't upgraded it yet. I certainly intend to but it's pricey.

Found this on Adobe's site: "Photoshop CS2 crashes when you run Web Photo Gallery on Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard)." See Adobe's fix for this.

Adobe Bridge: How I Mark Used Images

Someone once admitted that he had trouble remembering which digital pictures he had already edited in Photoshop. I mark them in Bridge (in Photoshop CS2) as follows:

After using the image and saving it to my hard drive with a descriptive title, I close it and return to Bridge (which displays the original pictures in thumbnail versions). Usually my image is still highlighted. I click on Tools in the Menu bar, then select Batch Rename. I use these selections as shown:
* Rename in Same Folder
* Current Filename
* Name + Extension
* lowercase

This just takes a few seconds because my selections are saved for next time. And I can see at a glance which pictures I've used because the titles are in lowercase.

Two Versions, Same Image

Last night I was playing with Photoshop and ended up with the picture below. It's cropped from the "real" photo and filtered several times, etc.

A tip for applying filters: make a new layer first. Not only can you discard the layer easily if you don't care for the results, but you can choose different layer blending modes for special effects and you can try different percentages of strength for your layer.

Joan's Pond Revisted

When Frank's sister was here, one of the places we visited was the town of New Market. I took these pond photos but not exactly as they appear here. I've been playing with Photoshop again.


Postscript about New Market: we had lunch at the Southern Kitchen and my companions were very impressed with the pies.

Image: Orkney Springs Hotel

This historic hotel at Orkney Springs is identified on the Shrine Mont site as the Virginia House.

(This picture started out as a photo. I altered it in Photoshop using filters and layers.)

Photo Art: Cardinal