Archive for August, 2007

How do you slim someone down in Photoshop you ask?

This was a challenge that was posed to me the other day, and I wasn’t sure of the answer myself. I hadn’t ever tried to take a photo of someone with clothes on, in a group of other people, and make them look a little less fat. The camera adds 10 lbs and all that rot.

Well, I did some searching. Tutorials in Photoshop on “slim”, “fat”, and “weight”. I found a tutorial that spoke about making someone look more fat, but the principal was the same. They suggested a lot of patience, some skill, and use the liquify tool.

The liquify tool is under the “Filter” menu in Photoshop. You can also access it by this shortcut;

Ctrl + Shift + X = Liquify Tool

The idea is to drag the existing person’s boundaries inwards to make them smaller. Now, my subject was on a darker background, with darker clothes. So, I think I got lucky with this challenge. The darker colors would mask more inconsistencies and “drag” lines when working with this tool.

But basically, make the brush size large enough to try to avoid getting blurring drag lines and start pushing pixels in.

Here is a snippet of that other tutorial that I found. It is a multipage document…

A good place to start is the face. The best tool for enlarging the contours of a face is the liquify tool. The brush size is important. A larger brush will create less ‘drag lines’ but naturally will give you less control than a smaller one. You’ll have to experiment a bit here to choose the right size for your job but my rule of thumb is to use the largest size brush that will still give you the control you need.

Set the brush just inside the outer line of the flesh contour and carefully pull the flesh outward to the amount desired. You’ll have to repeat that around the entire area you want to enlarge and adjust brush sizes accordingly. Patience and care are virtues here.

If you want to find the full tutorial, I am not going to provide a full link, but search on Worth1000.com for a tutorial called “Fattening Folks” and you should find some more pages of walk through as well as visual examples of what you may get when slimming or adding fat to people in Photoshop.

I dread sending large boxes in the mail, many-fold.

• First, I have to find the time during working hours to get over there.
• Second, a lot of times it is crowded when you make it just before the end of the day, so you have to wait forever.
• Third, I never have boxes around the house to put larger objects (like arcade game PCBs) in for mailing.
• Fourth, if I even have supplies to wrap the game boards up nicely, then I have to cover the whole box with wrapping so that no wrapping is showing.
• Fifth, it is relatively expensive to mail any classic arcade items, let alone PCBs.

But, the box with the Space Invaders PCBs is out, and I hope when it comes back, I am done with this game completely. It is becoming like the Dig Dug. I am approaching a year with this arcade game, and I don’t know what I have learned. Other than, be very careful when it comes to buying classic games if it looks like there is a board issue.

Don’t get me wrong. Alex Yeckley of Elektronforge has been great so far. He does excellent work, and he is pretty affordable if you buy the arcade game machine cheap or want to keep it. He is fast, he does ok on email, and he stands behind his work.

I at least I supposedly have a buyer, and although I am getting close to my investment threshold for what the Space Invaders Deluxe is actually worth, I am not totally tapped out and I have confidence the buyer will come through.

That was our day:)

We got up and walked the dog before church.  We went to late service, which made things super fun because we were going to have Lori over for breakfast.  Sarah had blueberries, so we were going to have pancakes with bacon.  I am sure everything tasted good as we wolfed it down, trying to make it to a 1:00 showing of Pirates of the Carribean - At World’s End (Finally at the cheap theaters).

The movie was pretty fantastically executed and had some stunning imagery.  But, I didn’t find it nearly as entertaining as either of the first two.  Maybe that is why it earned so much less than the less one.

We made a quick stop afterwards at Best Buy for some laptop cleaner.  We saw Jeff there, he was really out of it, very weird.  We almost ran him over trying to get his attention and then even when we drove up to block in his truck he just seemed very out of character.

We stopped in just briefly at home to see that the Tigers won, and then headed over to McCartney’s for a little going away party for Aaron who is going to boot camp.  We were only there for about an hour, but in that short time I volunteered to do Habitat for Humanity in two weeks.

When we got home the rest of the night was work for the both of us.  Her parents called and talked for a little bit.  I did some more blog transfers, and she did school work prep.  I also took the time to try to figure out how the R-Type was put together so I could put a different monitor in it to try to get it sold.  I got a better understanding, but no answers really.

Got through miscellaneous pieces of the seps.  I started on the large ghost, I worked on the middle ghost at the bottom, and I also worked on the little Ms. Pac at the top.  I also deleted some of the extra layers and separates out the easy patterns.

Have to figure if Alex Yeckley at Elektronforge needs the angled pcb supports or not, but the Space Invaders Deluxe game boards and the power supply are one step closer to being in the mail to be tested together and hopefully finally fixed for good.

Figured out during the day today what I need to replace them, and the part number.

Will call or stop at Meunier tomorrow hopefully to see if they have replacements, along with the fuse.  I did notice that the diodes symbol points different directions on the bottom of the chassis.  You can tell how much I know.  That is good that I noticed that, so they are directional.  But the D401-404 are all the same so that makes it easy.

Well, as I thought, things started late and slow, but finally some progress has been made. The truck is moving through Missouri tonight and probably stopping there somewhere. The loop is pretty grand, I would have to doubt that the truck would make it to our place by next weekend, but still, whenever it happens, it is an awesome deal.

Here is the progress the guy who is orchestrating the trip posted tonight.

I think it is time to sell the R-Type. With the possibility of getting the Jr. Pac-man late next week, I will need the monitor from the R-Type, and I think it just feels like time to sell it. I can put it on the Mame machine. I can move the Pac Mame machine out, put a monitor in it and get all of the parts inside and maybe finally finish that project up.

I looked in back of the machine tonight and…no isolation transformer. I emailed Bob Roberts, he confirmed this. So, I will need to put one in. There is also a switching Power Supply already inside, but it doesn’t have the screw tops, but a molex system instead that I have not the foggiest how to hook up power to the monitor.

So, yet another issue to deal with, and I would like to have the game gone before next weekend. Either I would have to do an abridged auction on ebay, or wait longer.