Trefil quarry

I went to Trefil quarry the other day, what a place!, it's like a Dr Who film set, weird buildings, tunnels, and some great views, not to mention the disused planet look of the quarry (well all the old planet scenes were filmed in quarries)
Heres one proper pic for the visit I'll post some of the more interesting ones when I get time.
Wayne

Fake HDR

Here's a fake HDR done in Photoshop CS5 using only the camera raw settings. What you do is take recovery, fill light and clarity all the way to the right, tweak the black and viberance sliders to suit and Bob's you uncle.
This rock is on a mountain near Merthyr.

A few new images (for a change)

It's been a little while since I posted any images, I haven't stopped taking them, I have just been fairly busy with things. Here's a few taken over the last few weeks, sorry about the quality of some, they are from a compact camera (I'm rarely without a camera of some sort) they are the rape seed ones, I was planning to go back with a proper camera but haven't had chance.

Photoshop CS5 (more information)

Well I have had CS5 for a few weeks now and have a better idea of it good and bad points.

The puppet warp tool has staggering possibilities, you can infinitely warp pretty much anything not only people, that mountain in you landscape a bit small... not any longer!

The new masks panel is pretty good as well, now making the quick selection tool far more powerful. With the ability to vary the feather in different parts of a selection, and the refine edge making things like hair easier to extract it'll make a big difference to those who cut out lots of things.

Content aware fill is pretty amazing, now if you rotate and loose the corners it'll simply put them back in for you, or if you have wires across your shot it makes removing them so much easier.

On the whole a big update... but.. (there's always a but isn't there) A few "issues".
Contents aware fill uses a heck of a lot of RAM, so if your on an older computer or working with big images you may find yourself running out of RAM.

Mini bridge ( a shrunk down version in photoshop proper) has more than it's share of problems, it's painfully slow to load on my machine (bridge was never fast to start with) and a number of people are reporting issues with it not working at all and staying blank, Adobe do know about this and have some ideas of a fix although as mine works I haven't tested the fix.

Is it worth the money? well if like me your using it every day then it's probably well worth the upgrade price, it's got a lot of new features and theres a lot of new possibilities for "playing" about with your images.
Wayne

Photoshop CS5

Well although it's not on sale yet I have managed to have a sneak preview of the newest version of Photoshop CS5.
There's a lot of new stuff in it, content aware fill for the healing brush looks very promising. Then there's a new masking system, a puppet warp tool for re-posing subjects (you can move the arms/legs etc) that also has a lot of possibilities, as does the new brush tool for mixing colours.
To look at it's pretty much the same as CS4, the changes being "under the hood" so to speak, so far it's run ok on my XP machine, although I have had some problems with the graphics card compatibility, time will tell if thats a bit or small problem.

Motorways

Over the last few weeks I have done a fair bit of motorway driving, trouble is it's a pain in the arse.
First off the motorway network in Wales has a terrible Mobile phone coverage, this means staying in touch is at best a struggle, at worst dangerous if you need the emergency services in a hurry.
Second off fuel is not only hard to come by but dammed expensive... not however as expensive as the food at the services! That's ridiculous! £3.90 for a sandwich and £2.20 for a cup of tea, I mean whats it made of? rare exotic herb, an orchid perhaps? no just a normal bloody ham sandwich. The words RIP OFF come to mind.
Another thing why have huge illuminated signs saying pull over if your tired when there's nowhere to go? The services are about 30-40 miles apart so thats around a half hours driving to the next one if your lucky, and you dare not just come off at any old junction, many of these lead stright onto another motorway, so now your not only tired but going the wrong way as well. Maybe some pull off rest areas might be sensible, but I suspect too much to hope for.