It’s Free Reign over at Sally’s this week. Not really, it is just the fourth Monday of the month, which means that the challenger can pick a subject from a list of many.
If it weren’t for the Laws of Physics and Law Enforcement I would be unstoppable. With that in mind I am thinking outside the box today and combining this week’s subjects of Abstract and Objects and then merging that result with the Fifth Monday topic of Editing and Processing. In short, I made an Internet Meme and will provide a quick look at the steps I used.
Wikipedia defines a Meme (/ˈmiːm/ MEEM) as, “…an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” Wiki goes on to describe an Internet Meme as, “…an activity, concept, catchphrase or piece of media which spreads, often as mimicry, from person to person via the Internet.”
Last week we had a brief rainstorm, which is a cause for celebration here in Northern California. I was in a parking lot and about to get out of my car to go into an appointment when I took a good look at the raindrops that were falling on my windshield. The sky above was a beautiful grayish-greenish blue and the thought came to me that this would make a beautiful background for something one day.
I took out my iPhone, selected the Hipstamatic app and started taking photos thru the glass. At one point I pulled back to minimize the presence of the raindrops and capture the color of the sky. The five steps that follow will illustrate how I came up with my final image.
1. You can vaguely see a blur from the raindrops on this otherwise blank image.
This is the photo that serves as a starting point for the meme.
2. After saving this image to my iMac I opened it in my desktop version of the AutoDesk Pixlr app and started adding textural overlays.
This shows the effects of adding overlays from Pixlr’s Acoquest and Echo collections.
3. If a little bit is good, then a lot more should be better, right? Not so much. I added an overlay from the Bokeh collection and adjusted it to a very light setting but the end result was a bit dark. This could be a problem when text is added to the image.
The addition of a Bokeh overlay has darkened the image.
4. Pixlr allows the me to add text to an image from a pre-selected list, or from the Font Library on my computer. I decided to use my own font, P22Kane, and entered the quote that you see here. I love the deep vibrant colors of the background and unfortunately the quote is lost in that beautiful lapis blue.
A few experiments at changing the text color to a lighter color only succeeded in losing it in other portions of the image.
5. I opened the image with the Snapseed app and used the brightness feature of the Center Focus control to lighten the dark area along the left side of the quote.
Snapseed to the rescue! The text is now legible across the entire image.
It’s a Wrap!
So there you have it, gentle readers, my gift to the Internet. Feel free to share this image if you wish—or better yet, make one of your own.
For those folks who enjoy the easier softer way of doing things, this link will take you to an online site where you can easily generate your own meme.
Please send me a link. I would love to see whatever you create.
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