Alexander 2, V4.

Some enhancement with the mood, but I had to receive some bad news from the press with my model for the brochure that I made for work. I have to make the fonts smaller and blacken them out just to fit their machines. Anyway, this is supposed to be some "easy" task to do... if only I would find the original PSD file of this brochure.
I couldn't believe my eyes when Fotolia rejected my 2 images of the dome, claiming that they have aesthetic problems. I just can't understand what those people are asking for? Anyway, Canstockphoto accepted the 2 photos and that's fair enough. I'm waiting for a reply from Bigstockphotos as well. They surprised me indeed when they accepted 2 of 3 from my shots from the parking lot in Soog Sharg!

Rejected

Accepted

 Accepted

After accepting these 2 images, I revived my hopes in them. And I used to think that they are worse than Fotolia in their conditions! Pah! It would be somehow a disappointment if they rejected the dome photos... and since no luck is my friend, then they would reject them eventually!

Back to the images from Ireland now, and as I finished the folder of 1-10-2009, I'm checking the special subfolders that I usually keep for panoramas taken on that specific day, and they were a lot. I'm hesitated on wether should I spend more time fixing the errors in these images or just do the easy stuff and move on and come back later one day to these! Apparently, the noise problem that I just noticed a month ago and picked my camera for sensor cleaning for it was apparent in the photos taken back then, but for some reason I didn't notice them at all. But with the new panorama that I've made, I've noticed how much spots were there...

The previous image was cleaned from spots and noise with cloning stamp in HDR state before the tone-mapping. Also, I added layers of hue and saturation adjustments to make the colors more bluish and fanciful with some greenish hue for the trees. Honestly, the image looked perfect to my eyes just like that without tone-mapping. However, I made the tone-mapping with Photomatix and not in Photoshop, because in such abundant details and wide image, I tend to make lot of mistakes with the manual job. I was surprised though with the amount of noise that appeared after the tone-mapping that neither NeatImage nor NoiseNinja did any good in removing it! For this reason, I kept this image for myself. It looks better in small size, but in actual size, it is horrible. Thus, I did not submit it to Canstockphoto (and that's why I didn't put any watermarks on it). If you want to use it, please go ahead, just give the credits, please.

I'm trying my best to sharpen the image in the HDR state before tone-mapping, as I read and learned from Mr Christian Bloch's book about HDR imaging, but this option seems not so very useful to do, at least for my images. When I sharp and watch the sharpening artifacts show up (by checking the higher EVs of the image in HDR state), I do reduce the amount of sharpening and the radius and they become so low that, eventually, you see no sharpening effect in front of you at all! Thus, why use it? I guess doing the sharpening after the tone-mapping is better in my case. Sharpening too much without taking care of the artifacts and the color noise at the edges in HDR state, would make tone-mapping later on a bad experiment with weird spots of colors showing every where.

My work with transliteration today would be limited to one verse only I guess. I've discovered some confusion in my present tense make-up (the last syllable of the 4-letters verb). For example, "to leave" is (ğaţbaš), now to make the present for 1st person - I leave - it would be (ağaţbiš), but then some verbs I wrote like (ağaţbaš) and that made me some confusion in the matter. It is a serious mistake that makes me think of all the previous writings and transliterations that I did before. I might have to check them seriously and see any corrections that appeal. I hate this when it happens. Moreover, it might make me record some stuff again, which I thought I've finished already.

For the time being, I'm going to check what I transliterated already from Alexander VI story, and hope no mistakes would show up in the future. At least in grammar that is.

For today, we have Alexander 2, verse 4.

__________

The tidings of the ill omen travelled like lightning
the king killed the messenger for no right or wrong
Thus, Alexander raised his eyes up to the sky and prayed
with tears on the cheeks for the poor man he sent
"O Lord, what to do, I obeyed and listened
but the devilish ones accepted nothing but evil
By Your might I come and go, live and die
guide me through this and do not let me go astray"
Then the voice came down to Alexander
and only he could hear it in his ears from above
"O Alexander, by My power you shall succeed,
and with the light of Mishdárá you shall go on
We know what happens, and happened and what will
go and victory is yours, this is a test for you and your men"
Thus, Alexander got down from the mare and bowed down
to the Almighty, the Giver of life, the Giver of might
Then to his soldiers he looked and organized
and spread the twelve generals across his eyes
Chinchán, Ishkán, Chírán, Érán to his right
Dómí, Tólímí, Kahrímí, Gehámí to his left
Then Shakrashom, Dartalom, Keríhom come
along with Galgolom, they were in his front
While the bugles of war screamed so high
for the blood scattering and for men's valour

A Busy Relief...

It had been a long time since I've been busy like this. Busy with work I mean and not with my own business. After finishing the translation of Alexander's story VI, I'm thinking of taking a bit of a break for the time being. A break from Ayvarith, but not from other things that is.
I brought my usual book about HDR to read today and also the manual of my new baby dedicated-flash to read for today, but I got so busy with the motor in one of the labs that I didn't do such readings in the early morning but later in day. I think I will snap a further picture for this machine that I'm preparing my samples with. It's called "Freeze Dryer". Ever wondered how come there is a milk powder? Well, this machine can do it. It sucks all the air in a space enclosed by some plastic or glass container, and freezes this space. Depending on the sample's weight this process can take some several days. The larger the sample is, the more time you'll need. But there is always a regular check for the oil level in the motor, which is critical for the work. There is one motor that is dead and I'm working on fixing it, if possible, so I don't want to go on with another damaged motor and hence, no work to be done with those fishy samples.
And I just discovered that when someone interrupts or interfers with what you were doing oiginally, is something fishy indeed.

Keeping my work with the pictures I took in Ireland, specially around Aughnanure Caslte, I've come to test some theory with composing HDR. This time, I wanted to apply one of the things that I've learned from the book I'm reading already, and that isharpening before tone-mapping. In fact, I never thought of mangling with the images in HDR (or 32-bit) format because in Photoshop, lot of options are turned off and you can't do much, and hence, I've never thought of doing something other than tonemapping my images and fixing the lights in some areas, and for this reason alone I seldom use Photoshop now for HDR purposes. But now, I've learned that I can do sharpening to the original HDR image and enhance the image before tone-mapping. Sharpening the image usually pops out some artifacts or noise in the image but with HDR, we have an open space of values assigned to each pixel in the image and hence, we can sharpen the image and not affecting the data. This is the theory. However, in my trial I wasn't successful (and maybe misunderstood some concept or Mr Christian Bloch does not want to give me all his secrets!), and I produced lot of artifacts that I need to remove. Anyway, for my image, I decided to sharpen the normal way after tone-mapping in Photomatix, and I will give another trial later on with a new image. Maybe my image was not so good after all... specially with the chromatic aberration on the edges (I'm supposed to clean those in the original RAW files before I merge to HDR, anyway too much headache for me now!).


I have one Panoramic HDR that is making a headache for me, and so, I think I will to do the whole process with Photoshop this time instead of Photomatix, since Photomatix has a problem with memory usage. I know, my PC is not a competant but well, I could handle the file only in Photoshop so far.

This day seems different since I was busy with my hands mostly and not writing as usual. And tomorrow I think I will be alone in the work place! Yeppieeeee...