Random thoughts on art, technology, stuff, and occasionally Real Estate: October 2007

Vehicles just plain don't belong in real estate photos.  There are several ways to remove a vehicle.  Please keep in mind that Photoshop should be the Method Of Last Resort.

Method Number One:  "Excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you, but do you suppose you could move your car for a few minutes, please?  I need to take some marketing photos of this home.  Thank you, I really appreciate it."

Method Number Two:  "Would you hurry up and move that G** D*** F****** Piece Of S***, Now!!!"

Method Number Three:  Shoot from an angle where the vehicle is not visible.  Walk up and down the sidewalk, try several different views.  Stand near the driver's side door and shoot over the car.

Method Number Four:  When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  Climb on top of the hood of the car and shoot down on the property from that vantage point.  You might find this is a very appealing angle.

Method Of Last Resort:  Photoshop.

I borrowed this particular image from Athol Kay's Bad MLS Photo of the Day

I'm using Photoshop Elements 5 for this demo.   First step:  Look at the image and decide if you can crop a portion of the offending vehicle out.  The more you can crop out, the less you have to clone.  I think I can get away with cropping out the bottom portion of the street.  A little at each side will have to go, too, to try to maintain a normal balance.

Click on the crop tool.

This looks about right to me.  Hit Enter, to finish the crop.

I want to Zoom In a little bit to do the cloning.  Hit View -> Zoom In.

Click on the Clone Stamp Tool.

To start with, I selected a large, fuzzy brush.....

With a fairly large pixel diameter.

Hold down the ALT key and click somewhere in the driveway.  Release the ALT key, click somewhere on the car, and drag.  Keep repeating.  ALT-click in the driveway, click on the car, and drag.

Move to the left side.  Hold down the ALT key and click somewhere in the gravel.  Release the ALT key, click somewhere on the car, and drag.  Keep repeating.  ALT-click in the gravel, click on the car, and drag.  Experiment with dragging in different directions.  Keep repeating until the car is fully covered. 

I cheated.  I brought the driveway and the gravel all the way down to the foreground to avoid having to deal with the sidewalk and curb.

Change to a smaller brush, and a smaller pixel diameter to work on the garage door and the entryway.

Remember that the Undo History palette is your friend.  If you accidentally cloned over the wrong area, and need to back up a few steps, hit View -> Undo History.  Each click is recorded in the History list, the most recent at the bottom of the list.  Scroll to the bottom, then click the last few items to Undo them.

OK.  Good enough.  Now I want to fix the other issue, the home is tilting a bit towards the right.  Hit Select -> All.

Hit Image -> Transform -> Free Transform  (In full version Photoshop this is under Edit -> Free Transform)

Move the cursor to an area just outside of the lower right corner of the image.  The cursor will change into a tiny curved arrow with points at each end.  Drag slowly upward until the horizontal lines appears straight.  When you are satisfied, hit Enter to finish.

Now, you'll want to re-crop just slightly to remove the white space created by the Free Transform.

Zoom back out to normal size by hitting View -> Zoom Out.

You might want to Sharpen just slight.  Hit Enhance -> Adjust Sharpness  (In full version Photoshop this is under Filter -> Sharpen)

Adjust the sharpness controls to your liking.

Would this final image work for a high grade color flyer or print ad?  No, the imperfections from the cloning process would be noticeable.  Would it work for MLS or website photos?  Yes.

With a little practice, you'll find you can clone objects out of an image fairly quickly.  Next up, I'll demo removing an object with the lasso tool.

Yesterday afternoon I was celebrating my new contributing author thingie on http://www.Nelalive.net .  I spoke too soon.  While the sidebar thingie looked great and worked just fine, the individual author landing pages turned out to have some issues with Firefox.  They worked great in Internet Explorer.

I think I can see the issue; but can't quite put my hands on the solution.  It has to do with the way Typepad header modules expand,  and when the expanded code is copied into a new page, somehow FF doesn't render the new page as a web page, FF just displays the html code.

I deleted yesterday's post, I've never deleted an Active Rain post after publishing it before, and I hope Maureen M. won't be too p'd off over losing comment points.  <s>

Much has been written about the differences between Internet Explorer and Firefox in the standards compliance department.  As you may know, Firefox is highly standards-compliant.  IE is a bit sloppy. 

I have the low-road work-around ready in my pocket.  (Creating categories for authors using the category landing page as the author's page.)  I was trying not to go that way since it seemed inelegant to me, but, oh well. 

Tabled until this coming weekend. 

UPDATE:  TYPEPAD TECH SOLVED THE MYSTERY.

WHEN MANUALLY CREATING ADDITIONAL PAGES, YOU NEED TO MANUALLY ADD THE FILE EXTENSION (.HTML) IN THE OUPUT FILE BOX....

Like, aw, man, duuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, I need to reupload all the files I deleted.

UPDATE #2:  DONE AND WORKING.     Each contributor can have individualized sidebars on their landing page.  (They'll need to email with particulars).   Now maybe I should think about those RSS feeds.

There are a number of people that specialize is searching out "bad MLS photos".

http://www.orlandorealestatephotography.com/bad_mls/bad_mls.html

http://www.reagentinct.com/category/bad-mls-photo-of-the-day/

http://activerain.com/blogsview/217901/BAD-PHOTO-Sinking

And I know there are many, many more examples out there.

Some of the photos are bad simply because no one asked the resident to remove his or her clutter-stuff before the photos were shot.  Some are bad because they were taken from a particularly bad perspective:  I.E., Nothing in the shot except one blank wall.  Some are technically bad:  Out-of-focus, underexposed, or over-exposed. 

Some are bad, but fixable.

And that's my proposal for all you Photoshop Gurus out there.  Find some bad but fixable photos, fix them, post the before and after, and the information about what you did to fix them.

Thanks to Kevin Tomlinson, I'm kicking off this series with a really easy fix.  A couple weeks ago Kevin posted this in his "Heinous MLS Photo of the Week" series.  And in Kevin's own words "This picture isn't that horrible, if you can keep from noticing dustpan IN THE CENTER OF THE PHOTO".

So, here goes, Let's Fix It:

This is the original photo:

Yeah, that DUSTPAN has got to go. 

In Photoshop, the Clone Stamp is the tool for the job.  I'm doing this in Photoshop Elements 5 -- I figure that's what most members probably have right now...

The Clone Stamp can be found here in the Elements toolbox

(I like the way the book "Photoshop Elements 5 The Missing Manual" describes the toolbox icons:

"Like any good toolbox, the Elements Toolbox has lots of hidden drawers tucked away in it.  Many Elements tools are actually groups of tools which are by tiny black triangles on the lower-right side of the tool icon".)

Go ahead and click on the Clone Stamp Tool.

First select a "donor" area by ALT clicking somewhere in the walkway.  Then click on the dustpan to "paint" the color from the donor area over the dustpan. 

I've said this before, but it bears repeating:  One secret to successful cloning is to keep reselecting the donor area.  Each time maybe from a slightly different position to pick up minor color variations.  Think of an artist dabbing his/her palette, then dabbing on his/her painting.  Then back to the palette-dab a little more, back to the painting-dab a little more.  Back and forth, back and forth.  Dab the palette, dab the painting.  That's the idea.

After wiping out the dustpan, switch to a smaller brush to cover the dustpan handle showing at the bottom of the doorframe.

Keep on with the dab-and-cover thing until you are satisifed with the result.  This is good enough for now:

This image has one other problem.  The wall on the left is leaning.  That's an easy fix, too.

Hit  Select -> All

At this point, I alway grab the lower right corner of the "canvas" and drag it outwards to create a little working room for the next step.

Hit Image -> Transform -> Skew  (In full version Photoshop this tool is under Edit -> Transform -> Skew).  Grab the left upper corner -- see the tiny square handles? Grab one of those -- and drag outwards.  Try the opposite corner.  Try the lower corners.  Work with it until the vertical lines appear straight, then hit Enter to "commit" to the transformation.

OK.  Good enough for now.

So, here's the gig.  If you spot a bad MLS photo (that might be fixable)  send it, post it, whatever, and let's see what the resident experts here can do with it.  <s>.  I do hope they're all reading this blog this morning. 

This post may seem alittle strange, unless you know the background.  Carole Provenzale is a Feng Shui Master, and an Active Rain member. 

A few days ago, she blogged about The Five Element Theory in Feng Shui.  In her blog, she included a link to The Five Element Personality Test.

Of course, I took the test.  I must have been feeling pretty fluid that day, since my score came back:  Water 43%, Wood 1%, Earth 17%, Metal 21%, Fire 15%

In the ensuing conversation, Carole suggested that I might want to enhance my wood, she also stated:  and "some people would suggest a wooden chalice, not for religious purposes but to "contain" some of that water."

I said, "No problem, I have one of those".

Like any High-Functioning Hoarder, I knew I had it, I had a pretty clear mental image of what it looked like (though in my mental image it was a bit shorter, more like a Margarita glass), I just had to remember which storage box it was in.  Well, it turns out it wasn't in a storage box at all, it was on a shelf at my office. 

So, Carole, I brought it home this afternoon.  Now what do I do with it?  Which area of my home do I place it in?  What types of green objects should I place in it?  Ivy leaves, maybe?  I suppose the leaves should be real, not silk or plastic fakes.

And here's the photo of the chalice that I promised:

(For photography people, this was taken on top of my stove; I set a white foamcore board behind the chalice and one under it.)

Thank Goodness!!!    Now that Bob Carney has sorted out his move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org  I can stop diddling around with WordPress ... 'cuz I wuz only doing it to see if I could help out.  Carney can take over the WordPress tutorials.

So don't look for any further WordPress posts from me here.  I am going to get back to the job of maintaining my TypePad blogs.   (Oh don't worry, I'm not leaving AR.  You'll still see plenty of Photoshop, photography,  and general commentary posts.  I'm just closing the book on WordPress.)

The one biggie I still need to create in TypePad for http://www.nelalive.net  is some kind of guest author showcase widget.  A la Bloodhound's rotating contributer widget.  Except mine probably won't rotate.  Whaddya think I am, a programmer?  Sheesh!!  <s>!!!!

Last week, I posted a video of Springsteen in the 1980s and there were some interesting comments about how much we have all changed in 20 years.

Well, let's consider this (hang in a minute while the videos load):

Here is Joe Cocker performing "A Little Help From My Friends" in 1969.  He's young, he's lean, he's intense.  In fact, he's so deep into the groove you might be concerned that he suffers from a physical affliction (Check out Leon Russell playing guitar, too). .

This is now -- This is Joe Cocker in 2002 performing the same song.  The hairline has changed, the waistline has changed.  But the intensity, the passion, the voice and the heart .... those are even better.....

I learned something on Brad Anderson's blog here:  Active Rain Settings & SEO Benefits - Very Powerful  -- something about finding stuff here on Active Rain.

Usually, when I want to search for information here on AR, I go to the bloghome page, and click search, like this:

Which gives me a simple search box , like below.  I often grumbled about the absence of any "advanced" search features:

After reading Brad Anderson's post I learned there is, in fact, an "advanced" search tool.   It looks like this (below)  and it is found ONLY by going to this URL http://activerain.com/blogs

Note to Active Rain designers:  Why not make the advanced search function also accessible from the bloghome page?

UPDATE:  Nope, this advanced search still isn't the answer.  It doesn't include a keyword search.

Example:  Suppose I want to find Brian Brady's post "Don't Mess With My Monks" from January .... well,  wouldn't it be cool to be able to search by Brian's name and the keyword "monks"?  Alas, I think Brian has deleted the post anyway, which is too bad.

Oh now I get it.  A Six Pack is supposed to contain my favorites chosen from MY OWN blog posts.  Why didn't someone spell that out for me IN CAPITAL LETTERS? I can be a little slow sometimes.

Choosing six favorites from my own stuff isn't too hard:

Photoshop Elements: The Text Tool

Occam's Razor And The Troublesome Trash Can

Photoshopping Paparazzi Style

Photoshop Elements: Beyond The Lasso

Photoshop: 1st Grade Primer On Layers

And these three Photography posts, kind of all flow together .... and I've added them here not because my writing is all that great, but because I think the subject matter belongs in the group .....

Photography 101: The Basics In A Nutshell  + Photography 101: Depth Of Field  + Photography 101: Exposure Trilogy: The Third Fundamental

Yeah, I do like writing tutorials.  Wierd, huh? 

PS. A caution for anyone else writing six packs:  You'll probably be writing with more than one window or tab open.  Remember to close down those windows/tabs before you publish ... or copy and save your writing before you publish .... because the Lost Post bug loves to bite when there are multiple windows open :-)

I didn't realize until just this morning that the little blog rating thingy is gone.   And then I finally connected the dots between the demise of the rating thingie, and the "Six-Pack" posts I've been seeing.

In case any one else around here is equally dense, are are links to several members informative posts, and their personal Six-Packs:

Laurie Manny:  http://activerain.com/blogsview/243258/In-Memoriam

Chris Griffith:  http://activerain.com/blogsview/243915/The-Six-Pack

Sarah Cooper:  http://activerain.com/blogsview/243973/My-Six-Pack-and

Bob Carney:  http://activerain.com/blogsview/244556/Six-Pack-Attack

Midori Miller:  http://activerain.com/blogsview/243961/Midori-s-Six-Pack

Karen Hurst: http://activerain.com/blogsview/244503/Ocean-State-Six-Pack

I'm sure there are other Six-Packs out there.  Is everyone tagging them SixPack, or Six Pack, or what?  Are they being added to a specific group.If you know of one that is not on this list, please leave a link in the comments.

And to keep to my Process Manual Nerd roots, think of this as an excerise in DataBase Normalization.

Update:  OK, it looks like "Six Pack" with a space, is the prefered tag .... so here is a link to the list based on that tag:  http://activerain.com/blogs/tags/six%20pack

I confess.  I haven't made the time to go workout on Facebook for a while.  I keep receiving emails that people are poking me, befriending me, and whatever else, but I am afraid I have been MIA.

This announcement yesterday on Inman News might change that:

The LivePads application, available at http://apps.facebook.com/livepads, allows Facebook users who are searching for a home to enter their desired criteria for a home, to view a list of possible matches pulled from the Google Base site, and to save houses they like to their Facebook profiles. They can also choose to share these sample homes with a real estate agent or their personal network.

Home sellers and real estate professionals, meanwhile, can use the application to add information and photos about the properties that they are selling to their Facebook profiles and to share those homes with their networks.

I think maybe I'll go check out LivePads on Facebook later today.  And while I'm there I can return all those pokes.  :-)