It is simple. Give the on-field officials one more, er, official hand gesture: ‘go to the video’ (Cricket, a game that has been played since the early 16th freakin’ century, has an easy one: The Ump draws a box in the air above his or her head with his or her fingers).

If the video official can tell what happened, the result is reported to the field. If not, some sort of signal is sent to the field and the field official uses whatever judgement he or she has and makes a call.

This gives the official on the field an out when they aren’t certain what just happened, but leaves the judgement calls on the field. And it could happen really fast.

Here’s some of my attempts at HDR

OK, then. I’ve been asked to share some of my thoughts and tips on using Photoshop to create HDR images. So I will.

Why HDR?

All cameras are limited in the range of values that they can capture in one exposure. Ansel Adams made his bones by getting a really nice spread of tones (from black to white) in his prints using the ‘Zone’ system. The main idea was to avoid having large areas of your image that go completely black or white. The goal, expressed in a simplistic way, was to have information everywhere you looked in the picture — to avoid flattened black or white areas.

The hard part in achieving this is that when you pick an exposure level for a photo, your camera will probably end up getting one end of the black-to-white range wrong. Set the exposure correctly for the shadowy areas, and the lighter areas will be over-exposed; set the exposure to capture the details of the brighter areas and the shadows end up looking all blobbed up and black. It’s hard, but Ansel Adams got really good at getting a really nice spread of grays without blobby blacks and blown-out whites.

So did Eadweard Muybridge, but he cheated. Muybridge wouldn’t worry about getting the exposure on the sky right when he shot landscapes, because he didn’t need to: he had a drawer filled with beautiful negatives of nice sky-shots filled with detailed clouds, and he just double-exposed his prints with the sky shots he had laying around. That fixed his blown-out sky problem. This trick made him a lot of money long before he achieved lasting (and, in my book, deserved) fame by perfecting stop-motion photography.

In his defense, Muybridge would’ve used the modern HDR techniques outlined below if he could, but it was really hard to do the double-exposure trick with negatives that weren’t all sky. If I recall correctly, he tried it, and it didn’t work out.

While it is probably possible to get nearly-Ansel Adams-quality exposures out of modern digital cameras, few of us have the patience (or, let’s admit it, the skill) to manage it. So we cheat.

(Relatively) Easy HDR with digital cameras

Every digital camera I’ve owned (going back, now, to 1999) has done an acceptable job of calculating a pretty good exposure automatically, but all of them (from a Fuji FinePix 1300 to a Nikon D50) usually pick an exposure that leaves muddy shadows or blown out highlights — sometimes both in the same picture. Time (read: Improved technology) has improved things, but even today few digital pictures end up ‘perfectly’ exposed.

Happily, though, as quickly as a modern camera can calculate a decent exposure, it can calculate a related under- and over-exposure. This is called ‘bracketing’, and your camera probably offers it as an option.

What your camera will do if you turn this on is take more than the ‘best’ calculated exposure; it’ll throw in others just above or below the calculated ‘best’. For this discussion, we’ll assume you’ve set up your camera to include an under-exposed pic and an over-exposed one. (There are other ways to use bracketing, but you’re on your own for those, champ.)

My guess is that the camera makers included this feature, originally, so that you could compare the three images and pick the one that best suited your intention when you were shooting. What we’re talking about with HDR, though, is taking the best parts of each of the three and combining them into one image (I’ll try to be careful here and not call the results of HDR ‘pictures’).

Side note: I own a D100 that I picked up used (and cheap) as a back-up camera, and it doesn’t seem to bracket as ‘widely’ as I can make the D50 bracket; I think Nikon, when they made the D100, was still thinking that bracketing was for taking three different, but still ‘OK’, pictures. My D100 pics don’t seem to HDR as nicely as my D50 ones do. YMMV

Techniques

So: at this point you should have three pictures that are as near to identically framed as you could manage, but that are spread out in exposure (from ‘ouch, way too bright’ to ‘ugh, muddy and dark’ with a pretty normal looking one in between). Photoshop (the only image editing software I’m going to reference, ’cause it really is good and you should probably be able to lay your hands on it somehow) has a menu item located at File->Automate called ‘Merge to HDR…’ You could go there and then select the three pictures you have and then go along for the ride. Try it. That’s where I got started, but I ended up unhappy with the results; I didn’t feel that Photoshop was making the same decisions I would have, and I wanted more control.

If Photoshop’s ‘Merge to HDR…’ makes you happy, use it. It’ll save you all the work I’m going to outline in the rest of this post (it’ll even save you the trouble of reading it).

Back yet? Let’s try another technique.

First, though, let’s review our goals. We, typically, want to take the middle picture (which should be pretty good, but probably has some blown-out highlights and some muddy shadows) and add the nice bits from the other two photos to it. And we don’t want the results to look horribly fake. Photoshop has some tools that will help us.

The main one is Layers, which will let us stack our three picture on top of each other in one image. That’ll be the starting point. I get there by selecting the three pictures in Adobe Bridge and then choosing Tools->Photoshop->Load Files into Photoshop Layers… Skipping Bridge, you can open all three picture in Photoshop and paste two of them on top of the third. Either way, you’ll end up seeing only the top one on your screen, but if you open Photoshop’s ‘Layers’ Window (accessible in the ‘Windows’ menu) you’ll see a Layer for each picture.

Since we’re going to be seeing parts of all three layers in the finished image, it’s important that they all line up with each other. There is a chance that you held your camera so still that the pictures all line up perfectly, but mine never do. I select all three layers in the Layer window and then go to Photoshop’s Edit menu and choose ‘Auto-Align Layers…’ In the resulting dialog, I choose the ‘Auto’ projection option and hit OK.

If that works, your image will be lined up much more nicely than I can ever seem to manage when I try to adjust the alignment by hand.

Staying in the Layers window, you can re-arrange the layers so that the ‘middle’ picture is at the bottom. The idea here is to leave the ‘too dark’ and the ‘wow, that’s over-exposed’ layers above the ‘meh’ middle picture, but to delete the bad parts of them so the good parts of the ‘meh’ layer show through.

That leaves us needing to delete the ‘bad’ parts of the light and dark versions of the image. I do this using Photoshop’s Select->Color Range… option. What this option does is automatically select all the pixels in the current Layer that match whatever is set as the Foreground Color, but with a controllable amount of ‘fuzziness’.

Let’s review the steps we’re going to take in English before I lay out the step-by-step Photoshop routine; understanding the process in English will help you keep track of where you are, and to figure out what went wrong when you misstep:

The starting point for all this pixel deleting is a three-layered image with the middle exposure at the bottom (and all of the Layers Auto-aligned). If you aren’t there right now, go ahead and catch back up. Additionally, these steps are based on having the lightest (over-exposed) Layer on top, so go ahead and drag it to the top (if it isn’t already there). (It doesn’t really matter to the outcome which Layer is on top, but I’m only going to describe it in one order, sorry.)

The steps:

In the Layers Window, make the middle Layer invisible and select the top layer.

In the Tools palate, make sure that the Foreground color is set to pure black.

Use the menu item Select->Color Range… to bring up its dialog window.

Select Localized Color Clusters (or not, but I’ve enjoyed the results when I do).

Adjust the Fuzziness to Max (200). (Or less, but that’s for when you get a sense for how Fuzziness works.)

Hit ‘OK’. That will return you to the Layer with a bunch of selection-indicating lines buzzing at you. You can’t really tell by how it looks, but all of the darkest areas (the interesting ones in this Layer)) are now selected. We need to:

Use the menu item Select->Inverse to get everything but the darkest areas.

Hit the Delete key. Voilà!

A side note: If you overlooked the ‘hide the middle Layer’ step, the deleting will reveal the too-dark Layer that’s underneath; don’t panic. Just go ahead and hide the middle Layer now.

Before we move on to ‘fixing’ the dark Layer, let’s pause and play with what you’ve done. First, hide the selection-indicating lines (turn ‘Extras’ off in the View menu, or just hit Command-H). That’ll make it easier to evaluate what happened. In the Layers Window, show can alternately hide and show the over-exposed Layer to get a before-and-after comparison. If the results look more-or-less OK, we’ll move on. If you want to re-do the deletion with different settings, undo (Command-Z) the deletion, Deselect (Command-D), and try the Select->Color Range…/invert selection/delete steps again.

OK? Back to steps.

In the Layers Window, make the middle Layer visible, the top Layer invisible, and select the middle layer.

In the Tools palate, make sure that the Foreground color is set to pure black.

Make the previous selection go away by hitting Command-D (or choosing Select->Deselect).

Use the menu item Select->Color Range… to bring up its dialog window.

Select Localized Color Clusters (or not, but I’ve enjoyed the results when I do).

Adjust the Fuzziness to Max (200). (Or less, but that’s for when you get a sense for how Fuzziness works.)

Hit ‘OK’. That will return you to the Layer with a bunch of selection-indicating lines buzzing at you. You can’t really tell by how it looks, but all of the lightest areas are now selected. We need to:

Use the menu item Select->Inverse to get everything but the lightest areas.

Hit the Delete key. Yes, that was mostly copy-and-paste from the top (over-exposed) Layer’s instructions, but the differences are important. I often do the light-Layer steps on the dark Layer (and/or vice-versa) by accident and have to undo them. No worries, we haven’t saved anything yet. (Funny side-note: I just typed them backwards and had to re-do the typing.)

Go ahead and make all three Layers visible again. The rote stuff is done.

While the image is still in three Layers, you can adjust the Levels (or Curves), contrast, sharpness and even the Transparency of each Layer individually to get the image looking the way you want. After that, you can use the menu that pops up from the Layers Window to flatten the image. Then you can make your final, global, changes.

There is a pretty good chance that your Layers got skewed a little in the alignment step, so you’ll probably have to crop the image a little to tidy it up.

You’re basically done. Congratulations. Me? I do one more step: I copy the HDR and paste it on top of the original middle exposure, crop and flatten that, and use ‘Save As…’ to make the final image. That’s just an easy way to preserve (one third of) the EXIF information along with the HDR.

Enjoy.

“Woof woof” this, motherfucker! [BLAM! BLAM!]

Craig Ferguson is a funny, funny man.

The idea behind capitalism, as a system, is that people with money available to invest in things actually invest in things that will make these wealthy people more money. A side benefit of this system is that these relatively wealthy people have to hire less wealthy people to put their various schemes in motion. This ’side benefit’ really is a side benefit — if wealthy people could make money without paying any wages, they’d take that option every time. Or not, maybe, but they have done so every time they’ve gotten the chance.

If money itself was a real thing that had real value, this system wouldn’t work very well, but, happily, we have a kind of money that has a shifting value. Typically, when the system we have adopted works correctly, that value actually goes down a little every year. Yup, inflation. What this does for us is make wealthy people worry that if their money isn’t ‘working’ for them, it’ll eventually go down in value and be lost.

Side note: The inflation that helped European countries discover and develop capitalism wasn’t our modern, government-controlled-bank-controlled inflation system, they got their inflation from Mexico via Spain in the form of newly-mined Potosí silver. An historical accident, really. Anyway:

This means that people with cash laying around will try to invest it in things that return more than inflation will take away. Putting that money into a savings account (remember them?) made it available to that bank to loan to somebody who would pay back a little more than the bank would pay you in interest. The guy who borrowed your savings deposit would try and use the loan money to put himself in a position to pay back the loan and still make a little more. Another option was to skip the bank and invest directly in the dude (or gal) who had some money-making idea. That’s a simple way of describing the stock market.

Another side note: A lot of bank loans went to working folks who wanted (or needed) cars and/or homes for their own use. These borrowers were just betting that they were good for the money, and that having a car or a home was desirable; the effect is the same: someone got paid to make a car or part with a home, and the bank made a little more than they paid you for saving with them.

In any event, this whole system was kept going by the idea that money that sits around just goes down in real value, so people with money kept putting it back into the system hoping to stay ahead. So we had a situation where money sought out opportunity. Most of those opportunities involved people earning wages, which is money, so everything kept moving.

This turned out to be a pretty good system, all-in-all, and, arguably, a much better system than communism. (What as, to simplify, communism tried to take ambition out of the equation — with the results history has demonstrated.) Until…

Until

Inflation gets taken out.

Oopsie. Without inflation to worry about, money looks like a great thing to, er, invest in. When inflation goes away, cash is an awesome thing to have in your portfolio. Why invest your money (and risk losing some of it — always a risk even when the system is working correctly) when it’ll be worth just as much tomorrow as it was worth today? Or, maybe, even more?

That’s pretty much where we are today, sadly. A lot of banks have plenty of money (thanks, in many cases, to the fact that they were ‘rescued’), but they’d be stupid to put it into anything risky. There are also individuals who have money — lucky them — who are quite happy to hang on to it.

Where does that leave us?

Snide version: Depends on who ‘us’ is.

Thoughtful version: It leaves us wondering when inflation will come back and money will start flowing into the economy that we rely on.

OK, then, how might (a little) inflation get put back into the system? (A teensy, teensy bit of inflation, I promise.)

The banks can coast indefinitely on their (now healthy) reserves, so until something else comes along to change things, they’re gonna sit on whatever cash they can accumulate.

Yet another side note: Right now, the banks can get cash from the Federal Reserve for, well, pretty much for free. The banks love this cheap cash when cash is so awesome. The Fed is making this cash available in the hopes that the banks will put it into the economy. Good luck with that, Fed.

The government could print more money, right? That would cause inflation, wouldn’t it?

Yeah, but we have a grown-up economic system. The ‘let’s just print money’ thing does appear to add to inflation, but it really just multiplies inflation. Germany and Zimbabwe have both done it in living memory, but they did it to pay bills they couldn’t borrow to cover. They would have borrowed if they could have, but their economies were too messed up. This, in both cases, led to what is called hyper-inflation, which made their money worse than ‘variable’ in value, it made it worthless.

What the United States government is in a position to do is exactly what Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany couldn’t do: borrow.

Just like the potential home- or car-buyer mentioned previously, the U.S. government can tell potential lenders “I’m good for it, I’ll sign right now.”

Our government can get cash, right now, at less than 3%. Being the government (as opposed to a bank), it doesn’t need cash to sit on, it needs cash to invest. If it can get the economy growing again, it’ll have the income to pay back the loan. Just like some person who wants to buy, oh, a hot-dog cart, the U.S. government can say “when I have this cart, I’ll be able to pay you back.”

Here’s the cool bit: Once the government jumps in and starts borrowing (and spending) money, inflation will come back. It doesn’t even matter what the government spends money on. (WWII worked great for this, and WWII isn’t much remembered as terribly productive. Important, Noble, even, but WWII mostly blew shit up.) Once inflation comes back, private money (the money the banks and wealthy people have) will go back into the economy again.

It gets better. Timed right, the government can jump back out of the borrowing market before rates go up much and let the private money take over. That should leave the economy growing faster than the 3% the government can borrow at today.

Which means:

Our government could pay back all the loans with less money than it borrowed. And save the economy, which is to say “the capitalist system”.

So, you are advocating for increasing the deficit?

Yup. Deficit spending is the only tool we have to keep capitalism alive, and capitalism is the best system we have right now.

I had thought that villains had taken two of the steering wheel handles, but we found the missing ones today in the footwell. Somebody unscrewed them, but at least they left them there for us.

There’s a red wing blackbird nest under the pilot’s seat, and, man was momma bird pissed at us today. Not sure how that one is going to work out.

We got the heater taken apart. It may just need some cleaning, but I have a replacement burner for it if that’s what it ends up needing.

We’ll be in the water early July if the current schedule holds up. Here’s hoping…

I didn’t have to go to Hawaii because those folks have their shit together enough to figure out how to merge papers using their current software on their own. I didn’t have to go to Canton because they’re so far behind that there wouldn’t be enough work for me to do. Either way, cool with me.

I’m planning on going to visit Centennial tomorrow. It’d be nice to get her in the water soon (meaning in a week or so), but, well, we’ll see. There isn’t much in the way of dropping her really, just a little paint touch-up. There is one project that I’d like to complete while she’s on dry ground, though.

There is a roughly square hole that goes right through the boat, the one that the engine pokes out through. At a glance it looks like a clever solution to the problem of fitting a motor, but reflection exposes an annoying flaw. To elaborate, the hole the motor sticks out through functions as a speed brake; it interrupts the smooth flow of water from stem to stern.

I am pretty sure that this is a big cause of my tacking woes. I have a sheet of copper on the way that I’m going to fashion into a fairing that will smooth over this opening. We’ll see.

Rand Paul is a self-identified libertarian, and has, now, exposed some of the problems I have always had with libertarians. Chiefly, the libertarian idea that the occult hand of the market will correct errors — any kind of errors.

The spot where young Dr. Paul has gotten into trouble lately is on civil rights legislation; he has given the impression that he feels that having the government step in and tell business owners that they can’t refuse service to customers based on, oh, whatever, is wrong and that the market will punish said business owners perfectly adequately.

He seems to think that having the government telling business owners that black people have to be treated like, er, people is redundant, what as these businesses will go out of business if their business practices are, what? Unsound?

Seriously, WTF? Has this motherfucker ever been to Mississippi?

I’m annoyed that an eHarmony.com ad made a big deal about intellect being one of 29 things that they match people up by. Seriously? Intellect and 28 other things? Um. Fuck eHarmony.com.

How about Intellect and then twenty-eight other, less important things. That may or may not matter. Stupid eHarmony.com.

Hat tip to the incomparable @hodgman.

Priceless.

The whole thing is available online from PBS here.

To break through that, you need hard-hitting campaigns and simple slogans. And I have a sinking feeling that once again, the Obama team is going straight for the capillaries. Let’s hope they prove me wrong.

Maybe just go read it, but, still, “straight for the capillaries” is Nobel-worthy.

Then he eagles the next hole. This guy is killing me.

Not Phil, please not Phil. Doesn’t my booing count for anything?

C’mon, Phil, use the driver on 18. That club never lets you down.

Three wood? Pussy.

but they remembered, roughly, what they’re supposed to do.

The mainmast in the picture on the left has been removed from that painting (it was crooked), but these two fellows looks pretty good to me. Especially considering how rusty I felt while executing them.

Back to work tomorrow, but there’ll be a little time after to add to these.

A note: these are small test paintings, 5″ by 7″.

I went on the Googles and found a dearth of yacht portrait painters, so I figure that with a little work on a portfolio, I might be able to cover some sailing expenses (as low as they look like they’ll be) with a commission here and there.

For now I’ll be experimenting with some techniques on a small scale, and I’m researching the history of marine paintings (no need to reinvent the wheel).

This will end a 20 year stretch of no oil painting; wow.

UPDATE: it’s official -

UPDATE II: Painful, but rewarding, I guess.

My nephew Ivo now prefers a more formal look. He will still rock a pirate outfit (among others), but seems happiest in suits. Kids today.

Christmas was fun, and I got a ton of swag for the boat. Now I have to deal with our office moving, and then some more moving; updates to follow eventually.