[Choc-Ful-A]

Definitely. I’m going to ask if I can have a larger version of the one with Kat and the faerie babby for a desktop background.

But most of them are really cool.

Some of the truly gifted PS’ers jumped in and entered the Mash-Up contest, including at least one that rarely posts anymore. I was delighted to see all the entries and I think it bodes well for a repeat sometime in the future. And I agree that the entry from wickedfish is really magical. It caught my eye the minute I saw it. I hate to single that one out, since there’s an overload of creativity in there. But since you mentioned it…

[Choc-Ful-A]

I have no dragons available to be photographed before the contest, none in my archives, and no good idea for making something suggesting one. Given the celebratory/memorial nature of the contest I really wanted to entry, but I’ve got nothing so I’m sitting this one out. However, I will be voting and wish all the participants lots of luck with the (unpredictable, confusing and random) voters.

[Choc-Ful-A]

Also, voting is closed on the Farktography contest, so there’s no way people can go back and vote when the PS contest goes live on Wed.

[Choc-Ful-A]

I’m hoping for a second wave of voting once the average Farker sees the PS contest. I have no idea how much overlap there is between the people who vote in Farktography threads and those that vote in PS threads. I suspect that while there is an overlap, there are bound to be those who fit exclusively in one group or the other.

1. It seems that an open theme might not be such a great idea for a Farktography theme. In all fairness to the person that suggested, it really did sound like a great idea. I sincerely hope that the PS crossover didn?t have a negative impact in either Farktographer participation or voter turnout. It works for the PS contest but that makes it a bit too one-sided for my taste.
2. Some PS’ers found the restriction to submitted photographs overly restrictive. I might have argued the point at one time, but someone was kind enough to demonstrate exactly what he meant. He tied together several photographs with an outside source to make an outstanding entry. (HansensDisease http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4469116#c52285970 Thank you Sir, point well made)
3. Given all of this, I’d suggest that the any future contests be derived from one of the normal Farktography contests and the PS rules be further relaxed to something like “Using one or more images from the linked Farktography thread and any outside sources that you might need?? This would allow the Farktography contest to run normally as long as submitters are aware that their entries might be shopped. Which brings up the next subject?.
4. I?m extremely uncomfortable with the idea that a Farktographer would feel excluded from a contest because they didn?t want to see their work mangled. I?ve seen a couple of approaches suggested in these forums and would like to add my own suggestion to the mix; If we are going to do this sort of thing again, the thread would first be declared as a possible PS source ahead of time and anyone who wished to participate in the PS contest would need to ?opt in? each image that they are willing to see used, abused, or otherwise distorted. If an image is not marked as ?opt in?, it is off limits (I really don?t like opt out)

Just my opinions here, but for what that’s worth…

on #1 (wide open Farktography contests)
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I’m up for trying anything. The reason I think a broad theme, as opposed to “cats”, “things smaller than 2 inches”, etc… will work better is that a strict theme makes the associated PS contest rather narrow as well. With a week’s worth of contest to choose from, PS’ers will just work on a different contest if we make it too restrictive. For instance, there’s 18 contests in the queue right now. The linked PS contest has to compete with that. But there’s definitely room for something in between “post anything” and a very narrow Farktograhy theme though. So if we can find the right middle ground I’m all for it.

on #2 (no outside sources)
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I didn’t think that was a part of the current linked contests and would definitely argue against it. From a PS perspective it’s way too restrictive and would make policing the PS contest a nightmare for the moderators as well.

on #3 (refinement of the description used next time)
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I’m all for it and frankly thought that’s what we were doing this time. 🙂

on #4 (Farktographer’s have to “opt in” for PS’er to use their photos)
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I think it’s way too complicated and bound to fail. I don’t think I would participate in either the Farktography or PS contests if the photos had to be marked “OK to use” and the PS’er had to only use the ones so designated. The potential for disputes and hurt feelings is too high for me. And again, it’s likely to be a real headache for the moderators as well. I think if people are aware that a contest is intended to be used as source images for a PS contest, they can submit entries or not. I think complicating the process is problematic.

PS – I went back and read the rules in the PS contest and checked Hansens Disease‘s entry and see what you meant now. I’m in complete agreement that rewording to make it clear that included non-trivial outside content is a good thing. I thought the phrase “the restriction to submitted photographs” meant no outside content at all. That was my bad…

[Choc-Ful-A]

yeah, me too. Maybe collaborate on a theme next time too? Our theme > their theme kind of thing.

I was wondering too… Not sure if it’s a good idea, or even possible, but what about doing the greenlighting of our crossover contests so that their contest and our contest start a day apart and hit the main page on the same interval?

The problem with that sort of schedule is that the PS’ers don’t get the source material with enough time to pull their entries together. Some people would still manage, as evidenced by the fact that some entries were posted before the Farktography contest hit the main page. But it would seriously limit the number of people that could (or would) participate.

[Choc-Ful-A]

I made my first ever photoshop entry, but I used one of my images as the source. (Ranger Joe provided the other part.)

It works, nice job! I’m very happy to see the PS’ers jumped on this so quickly. I think there were 6 PS entries posted even before the Farktography contest hit the main page.

And I think Mopsy‘s birds (zebra finches?) are going to make a lot of appearances…

[Choc-Ful-A]

Thanks, guys 🙂

Elsinore, my first photo timestamped 2009-06-17 10:50:18 PM, is showing up as a text link at the moment. I assume that means the hosting site returned an error at some point. But it’s working now, so can you re-enable it? I don’t expect to get any more votes at this point, but I would like the photo to appear in the contest thread when people pull it up.

Thanks in advance!

Just checked the thread and it’s showing up now, so you should be good.

Thanks! I see it now too.

[Choc-Ful-A]

Elsinore, my first photo timestamped 2009-06-17 10:50:18 PM, is showing up as a text link at the moment. I assume that means the hosting site returned an error at some point. But it’s working now, so can you re-enable it? I don’t expect to get any more votes at this point, but I would like the photo to appear in the contest thread when people pull it up.

Thanks in advance!

[Choc-Ful-A]

I’ve just got one technical question. Should we provide an unwatermarked image? I always put a watermark on my pics, but I can link to on without if necessary.

My opinion only here… But if the watermark doesn’t make it difficult for the PS’er to cut something out of the photo or to add something to it, I don’t think it will matter that much. But if someone does work with your image they may very well crop the image to get rid of the watermark, pull out elements from another part of the image, cover it up with elements added to the image, or might even edit the area to get rid of it. Any of those things could happen if leaving the watermark visible would make the resulting PS look weird.

[Choc-Ful-A]

Uhh… here’s a potentially dumb question… but what the hell are we voting on in the farktography thread, exactly? “Best” photo? Funniest? Most PS-able? What exactly is the criteria for what gets a vote and what doesn’t?

Throwing a bunch of random photos into a thread and then telling people to vote is an interesting social experiment, but it’s a bit unnerving for those of us who actually pay attention to our “stats” on the FSM. (Yes, yes, I know; paying attention to farktography voting = doing it wrong.)

That’s a very good question and it’s tricky to come up with an answer for this contest in particular. In the end I think for this one, like most other broad/open themes, voters will rewards photos they like without considering how well they fit a particular theme. That’s just my opinion, so if this group wants to try to direct people to consider some other criteria, then let’s go for it. I just think we have limited influence over voters in general, and it’s even less for broad/open themes.

[Choc-Ful-A]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Well, that makes sense. Now I’ll have to reread all the pages. What happens if someone’s photos aren’t picked up by a PS person? We enter 3, correct? Are we voting for everyone’s normal three entries and then voting a second time on the PS entries? OR just enjoying the PS entries? It probably explains all that in the discussion thread. Time to reread!!!!

Here’s how I understand things will work…

The Farktography and PS contests each work like a normal contest. For the Farktography contest that means we all submit up to 3 photos, and any can vote for as many as they like when the contest goes live. The votes are tallied like normal. For the PS contest that means anyone can enter as many PS creations as they want. TF’ers can enter as soon as the contest is scheduled and non-TF’ers get to add theirs when it goes live. At that point anyone can vote for as many entries as they like.

So yes you can vote on the Farktography contest and the PS contest. The PS contest will go live roughly 5-7 days later, but if you are a TF’er you can check the entries from time to time before that if you like.

And given the math involved I think it’s almost certain that a number of photos in the Farktography contest won’t be used in a PS contest. It’s nothing personal though. The number of photos entered in Farktography contests is generally higher than the number of entries in PS contests. So unless lots of PS’ers combine multiple photos, or there’s a higher number of PS entries than normal, that difference alone would rule out all photos being used.

[Choc-Ful-A]

The theme is just post any photos you really like that you won’t mind if they get photoshopped later (there is our normal contest and then there will be a photoshop contest taking any photos from our contest and going nuts with them).

Exactly! I can’t speak for everyone else. But all the other comments I posted were just ideas for people who needed to reduce a group of photos they like down to 3. Photos you like that you would enjoy seeing people use to create PS entries is the only real criteria though.

[Choc-Ful-A]

Also with boats the water around them helps isolate the thing you want in focus. So it might be easier to avoid distracting artifacts that are blurred when they should be clear (or vice versa).

And speaking of water, here’s two b-sides of surfers in Pacifica CA that didn’t make the cut this week.

Original pic versus faked tilt shift

and the second one,

Original pic versus faked tilt shift

[Choc-Ful-A]

I read the news earlier while and work and felt like something jumped off the page and hit me. Even as someone who barely knew pangolyn, hearing what happened is a shock. So I can’t imagine what her family and loved ones are going through. Other people have done a great job expressing how even as casual acquaintances pangolyn managed to have a positive impact on this impromptu band of creative folks. So even though I’ve never met her, I’m sorry to hear she’s passed away and offer you my most sincere sympathies orionid.

[Choc-Ful-A]

I’ve had decent results in Gimp using this process (in case it helps other people).

The assumption is that the original photo is landscape mode, meaning the width is bigger than the height, and the band in focus will be horizontal. The same sort of thing should work with portrait mode photos or diagonal focus areas. But the specific numbers to use and the way you select the blur areas would have to change.

1. Use the rectangular selection tool to select the band I want to stay in focus. Make sure to expand the rectangle to cover the entire width of the image to avoid blurry edges.

2. Then “Select -> Invert”

3. Then “Select -> Feather” and pick a value that’s about 10% of the width of the photo

4. Pick “Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur”, hit the icon that forces the horizontal and vertical blur amounts to be locked. Adjust the values so that the horizontal is bigger than the vertical. I’ve been using ~20-25 for vertical and ~25-30 for horizontal for a 1600×1100 photo. Adjust up for bigger images. Hit “OK” to blur.

5. Then repeat step #1 expanding the selection above and beyond the original area about 10% of the width of the image. Meaning, select the original “in focus area” and some of the area you just blurred.

6. Repeat step #2

7. Repeat step #3

8. “Filter -> Re-Show ‘Gaussian Blur'”, increase the amount of blur in both directions about 25% and hit “OK”.

Repeat #5-9 until you hit the top and bottom edges of the image. Each time you’ll pick a smaller area to blur, and blur it more.

Essentially it’s a way to blur the image more and more the farther away from the band that you want to stay in focus. The feathering makes the transitions smooth enough to appear continuous. Here’s an example of a Florence cityscape using that process. I did it without paying much attention to what I selected, but I think it gives a sense of what the results will look like.

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