My GPS Camera Phone

I’m amazed at the amount of nearly correct guesses there were with this one. Lots of you said something about a reflection or water, which was nearly correct, but the actual source of that was the water cooler in the hallway.

The horizontal and vertical stripes are part of the bottle and the “hair” behind it is actually some hideous textured wallpaper. I will never look at the walls the same way again.

The angle of the shot was taken just below the water level inside the container, which gave it that reflected look. All I did in Photoshop was adjust the contrast and crop out the top and bottom.

Without further ado, this weeks winners: MommyWizdom, Mojo, dcr (bonus points for telling me about the broken link), Michelle Gartner, CatSynth, Raven, strider, Sister Sassy (bonus points for the hairy arm reference), Bill (bonus points for creativity), and Marsha. Good job, hope to see you around soon! (Like tomorrow!)

What we’ve got here is…a bunch of clouds! Yes, no fooling around this week. However, it is two cloud photos merged together with hue and saturation adjusted to make it more blue. Other than that, it’s nothing much really.

Just when you thought it was safe to guess correctly, I pull fast one. Actually, I had no idea that some of you would think I was trying to fool you with this photo. However, Dan’s second guess of waves breaking was correct as well because my initial intent was to do that, but it turned out to be a big blue mush instead.

So technically, Dan is correct twice.

As a result of his dual correctness, I feel obliged to offer him something more than a link. So here’s something better: two links. So please stop by dcrblogs.com and gain some wisdom on making your blog better. Here’s two recent posts I like:

Money for (Almost) Nothing
Mindful Monday: The Value of eBooks

Congrats, Dan.

Now that leaves me with the problem of everyone else. Since I suck this week, you all win, but everyone pretty much guessed the right thing anyway. So, in no particular order:

smarmoofus, dcr, CatSynth, Raven, Pamela, Jan, Rizza, Francine, Kelly, Michelle Gartner, Vixen, Chica and Bill (not Jill).

Thanks for commenting everyone! See you next week!

Well, I thought for sure Chica was going to guess this one, but I was wrong. Fred guessed correctly that it was a marble, probably because he remembers the post from a few months ago. Chica inspired me with her marble photos, so I took a series of pictures with a marble, only it was sitting on the lens. Interesting stuff.

In an effort to prevent you from remembering that post, I took the photo into Photoshop and desaturated it, then applied a sepia filter to it. Sister Sassy guessed the sepia part correctly, so she gets a link. Fred gets one for his guess. Chica gets one because I can’t believe she didn’t get it. Dan and Michelle don’t get links because apparently they think I’m a drug-addled alcoholic. Well, OK, but just this one time. Link and link.

Thanks for playing this week. Stop by again soon!

I didn’t realize the time, so stop by Dan’s blog and thank him for getting this post out the door today. On to the how-to!

Nothing was coming to me last Tuesday night, which nearly led to me not participating in yesterday’s Wordless Wednesday. Instead of giving in, I tried something that works for me when I get stuck: I went back to basics. Locating a simple image was the first step. After an intense staring contest with computer screen, I decided to re-visit the blending modes, but this time using one image with multiple modes and layers.

After opening the image above in Photoshop CS2, I desaturated the image and then copied the background layer six times, which ends up giving me seven layers total to work with. Switch off the visibility of all layers except the background and the layer above it.

Note: There’s no right or wrong way to do this. Experiment with different layers’ opacity and blending modes for many different results.

I left the background layer at 100% opacity as a foundation for the next six layers above it. Then, starting with the next layer above the background, rotate the layer via “Edit->Transform->Rotate” to any position desired. Try thinking ahead to the final finished product when doing this. Once the image is rotated to your liking, press Enter and the transformation will apply to the layer.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Change the layer’s blending mode to whatever you want, depending on the effect you are trying to achieve. In this case, I utilized Overlay and Multiply on various layers to get the effect you saw yesterday. You can also play around with layer opacity settings, but I don’t believe I did that on this image.

Once completed, turn on the visibility of the next layer and repeat the process. You will probably end up going back to lower layers for some fine tuning, but the end result will be nothing like the original photo.

With regard to blending modes, I’m partial to Mulitply, Overlay and Screen, but I’ve been leaning toward Luminosity as of late. Do you have a preferred blending mode or techniques? Let me know in the comments.

The closest guessers from yesterday: dcr, Chica, Raven, CatSynth, The Right Blue, Ryanne, on the Rock, smarmoofus, DrillerAA, Shiela, Secret Agent Mama, SarahHub, Sister Sassy, BK, Michelle Gartner, Vixen, Brony, kelly and nance (my darling wife).

Hey wait, that’s everyone who commented. Oh well, I’ll bend the rules a bit this week. Next week, though, only the closest guess (or two) wins a link! (Multiple guesses/comments allowed.)