DISQUS

Community Guy: Community Contest 2007: Sharing is Participation

  • Michael E. Rubin, GasPedal · 2 years ago
    Jake,

    This is a terrific contest, and thanks for introducing us to Picnik. Here is my entry into today's contest. It's my take on the dream imagery from the last portion of the film "Until the End of the World." More details can be found on the Flickr page:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/75551777@N00/17604...

    Cheers,
    Michael
  • Lawrence Salberg · 2 years ago
    Wow. This was very interesting. I've been waiting for an excuse to try Picnik and have to admit I was a bit skeptical at first. After all, when you have Illustrator, Photoshop, and Fireworks installed on all your machines, you have to kind of wonder about the purpose of an online editing tool. Not to mention, my photo library tools all have similar tools built in to them as well.

    Turns out I practically subscribed right on the spot. Very handy. I will be surprised if Flickr (uh, Yahoo) doesn't buy Picnik out in the next six months. They should. In fact, the only reason I didn't subscribe was that I noticed at the last moment that one of the prizes was a subscription to Picnik itself. A-ha! I'll wait at least one day and hope for the best.

    I chose the building shot of NYC. After adjusting the color and the exposure, I chose to crop out the left side. I liked the tall buildings and the lines it gave. After cropping it, I decided to increase the contrast to make the lines more noticeable and give some strength to the power of the buildings. To do that, I had to rotate the picture to get inline as the angled shot didn't do much for me.

    Then, I reread your instructions and noticed you wanted a "bad ass" variation of the original shot. So, I went back and toyed with the exposure, contrast, and saturation a bit more.

    I like the final version I came up with. It's a very warm, retro, high-contrast image of the buildings that still gives focus to the strong lines and shadows of the buildings, creating an almost art-deco look, but not looking too cartoonish.

    My only difficulty was on the rotating. I have to blame the camera lens (what 'ere it was) on this, not Picnik. There is a noticeable barrel distortion that becomes more apparent when you crop and rotate the image trying to get the building lines to parallel the image edges. A more advanced program like Photoshop could have fixed this, but in keeping with the spirit of the Picnik experiment, I left it alone. I couldn't tell from Picnik's documentation (which seems to consist mostly of a blog and some Ajaxy window popups) whether or not the premium version included such a feature.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/88567532@N00/17604...
  • Jennifer Van Grove · 2 years ago
    I also choose the building shot of NYC. You can check out my creation on my blog. Thanks for encouraging me via a bribe to finally check out picnik!

    http://insidetherabbithole.com/2007/10/26/a-hal...
  • Marcia · 2 years ago
    Wow this is an awesome giveaway, oh and picnik is way cool! Thats for the chance at this giveaway!
  • Marcia · 2 years ago
    http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2184/1776726811_... sorry for the second comment, but here's my picture. I just love the 3D effect, totally awesome!!
  • Gina Welker · 2 years ago
  • Janey · 2 years ago
    Hey Jake, Picnik is a cool program, I had never used it before, and enjoyed the process.

    I used the Kennedy Space Center picture, and wanted to make it a bit more hard core. After seriously greying it down, kicking up some heavy contrast, going for a tight close up, and giving everything hard edges I added one of my favourite quotes about space research and exploration. http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1796986...

    "The penetration of humankind into the universe, into its study and mastery, is not an expression of the inability of human beings to grapple with earthly difficulties and problems, not flight from them, but a qualitatively new and often even unique, irreplaceable means of solving many of the most important tasks of science, technology and the economy."
    A. D. Ursul, "The Human Being and the Universe"

    JaneyRedBrick@gmail.com
  • Matthew J · 2 years ago
    Scarrrrrryyy...

    <img src="http://hotimg14.fotki.com/a/70_112/212_61/Blood-Light.jpg" alt="Blood Light ..."></img>