pixels

First, new feature, dekeLounge Quote of the Week:

"And by donuts, I mean onion rings." ---Deke

We continue our DekeLounge QuasiOfficial Illustrator Month this week (in honor of Deke's new book which I swear is very soon to be a reality, we have the sleep deprivation and stress symptoms to prove it. It's why we do an audio-only podcast) with a discussion of Live Trace. Pixels become paths, as we discuss how this nifty feature allows you to trace your Photoshop file and turn it into vectors. I've always been sort of intimidated by this feature; I think it's the name. And the fact I start out being intimidated by Illustrator in general. Why is it "live?" (Can features hunt you down and swallow you whole?) Well, clearly I overcame my waryness enough in the course of this week's Martini Hour to make this graphic:

Here are the key things you need to know about Live Trace to try it yourself: Read more » 

I celebrated the New Year with a winter sports vacation through Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Big Sky, Montana. Folks call it Big Sky Country, but between you and me, the tall mountains leave a narrower-than-average glimpse of the sky. (Pancake-flat Nebraska, now that's some big sky.) But the land is huge. Vast and sparse. Peopled but underpopulated. Earth on an almost antique and undeniably humbling scale. And the sky aside, ultimately enormous.

In this post, I present you with 13 black-and-white images, all but one captured with an Olympus E-30 or Stylus 1030. Some might call it a travelogue, but I see it more as an experimental portrait of space. I say “experimental” because many of these images exhibit flaws. Beautiful and purposeful flaws. My idea is that a digital image, like a painting, tells a story beyond that of its subject matter. A story of process and approach, one of development and media, a documentation of the power and limitations of tools.

Consider the Grand Tetons below. Comprising 11 vertically oriented telephoto photographs, this 500MB composition is a testament to the power of Photoshop’s Photomerge command. But the moment I attacked the image with the Color Range command--with the sole intention of enhancing that big sky--I revealed a series of striations across the clouds and foreground snow. (Click the thumbnail below to reveal the image in detail.) Normally, I would retry the effect to avoid these artifacts, but this time, I added Levels, Black & White, and Smart Sharpen with an eye toward exaggerating the effect. I did everything with layers--nondestructively, as it were--and yet plainly the image is stressed.

That said, I for one like the results. Read more »