Monday, July 14, 2008

Kaleidoscope Mania

I've been mad to get a kaleidoscope maker for Macs. I found one at Digital Crafts, and have been having much fun experimenting with it. (Once my husband clued me into how Photoshop Actions work, anyway.)

I have a ton of pictures that the focus is off, the focus is on the wrong thing, or the picture just isn't what it was supposed to be. A normal person would probably delete them, but I have discovered that my pack-rattiness also extends to digital photo files. Here's an example of one that didn't turn out as I'd hoped:

The picture is of (IIRC) a macro of a daylily petal that I got too close to, and it's blurry. However, the colors are still great, so I didn't trash it. Enter DCkaleidoscopes06! With this nifty PS gadget, I can take a picture that was otherwise not very useable, and create this:

This image was made using the "Octagonal Kaleidoscope fr Image" Action, three times. The Action also does Hex images, but they produce mandala-like rounds. The one below was made with a photo I took of a rosebud I'd sprayed water on (dry summer, no rain, and I wanted raindrops, darnit): 


So I have discovered (yet again) that it really doesn't pay to throw out anything, because you really might be able to "use that someday"! I will be recycling more otherwise-unusable images soon.

No comments: