DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Here’s a poor-man’s version of CS2’s “Shadows & Highlights” feature for older versions of Photoshop. If your camera tends to expose for highlights (and therefore underexpose subject matter), or if your images have too much contrast, use this to selectively adjust the exposure of the image’s underexposed (or overexposed) areas.

Even if you haven’t blown your two CS2 licenses on desktop machines, leaving you on the road with a laptop and a leftover (but still legal) copy of PS7, this approach actually provides more control than Shadows & Highlights.

Macintosh key commands are indicated; Windows users should by now be adept at translating. Menu items are from PS7.

1. While holding the Option key, select Image->Duplicate…
2. In the duplicate image, apply a mild Gaussian Blur, e.g. 2-4 pixels depending on resolution.
3. Press Cmd-M (or Image->Adjustments->Curves…) to access the Curves dialog; drag both control points horizontally toward the middle of the line, until the image’s dark and light areas are well defined. Specifically, be sure the areas you want lightened are very dark, and the areas you want to stay the same (or darken) are very light. The image can and should be heavily posterized, with blown-out highlights and black shadows — you’re just making a selection mask here, not adjusting the final image. Click the OK button to apply the curve correction.
4. Press Cmd-Shift-U (or Image->Adjustments->Desaturate) to convert the image to grayscale.
5. Cmd-A, Cmd-C (or Select->All, Edit->Copy) to select the canvas.
6. Click in the original image to bring it to the front.
7. Select Window->Channels to display the Channels palette.
8. At the bottom of the Channels palette, click the “new channel” icon.
9. Cmd-V (or Edit->Paste) to paste the greyscale image into the new channel.
10. Now drag the new channel to the dotted-circle icon at the bottom of the Channels palette. (Or, Select->Load Selection… and then pick the new channel from the Channel pulldown.) Important: The image’s highlights are currently selected. Assuming you want to operate on the shadows, press Cmd-Shift-I (or Select->Inverse) to invert your selection.
11. Select the RGB channels with Cmd-~ (or click the RGB channel in the Channels palette).
12. Press Cmd-H to hide the marching ants.
13. Bring up the Curves palette (Cmd-M) and adjust to suit. For example, click to add a control point in the middle of the line and drag either up/left or down/right (depending on whether your palette is configured with dark at the 0,0 or 255,255 corner, respectively).

You can of course jump into Quick Mask mode prior to the final Curves correction to hand-edit the selection, but in most cases this shouldn’t be necessary. Note too you can re-load the selection from the Alpha channel to operate individually on the shadows or highlights.

This technique actually gives you more control than CS2’s Shadows & Highlights command, because you have direct access to the selection, and to Photoshop’s entire complement of editing tools, rather than simply an exposure control.

Screenshots are left as an exercise for the reader. (Hey, I’m on vacation.)

Do the planet a favor today and click on over to the UCS’s Earth Day Challenge.

I think Scott Nathanson of the UCS is right — most Americans have no idea Toyota makes a hybrid minivan. I’d probably have bought one instead of the station wagon if I could have.

The toyota.com website has an undated press release about the Estima Hybrid Minivan, but no pictures or specs.

Hello Toyota, could someone take my order please?

parsley
hard-boiled egg
pickle
French fries
slice of tomato
chicken
tuna

…or first names from the personalized souvenirs at Cuxhaven harbor

Bernd
Jorg
Krawumm
Ernst
Krch
Rong
Flupp
Joachim
Wumms

1. The carpets: The 500 West Hotel was built in 1924. I think this is when the carpets were put in. I suspect they may have been listed with the National Register of Historical Artifacts, as that would explain why they haven’t yet been hauled into the desert and summarily burned.
   
2. The bathrooms: The hotel website makes impressive claims about them:

   Every bathroom is lockable, self contained and private. Our professional housekeeping staff restocks and cleans every bathroom around the clock, 24 hours a day. If you think the bathroom at your home is clean, wait until you enjoy one of ours!

   Don’t believe the hype. At one point I hung a dirty towel in one bathroom as a test; it was still there the next morning. Convenient, in one sense, but sort of gross in another.

   Some of the bathrooms are worse than others, not because they’re more soiled, but ironically because they’re more clean — due to the wall-mounted Ecolab dispenser that squirts disinfectant into the room… and its occupants.

3. The irons: burned and sticky. I went for the wrinkled look.
   
4. The broken elevator: Actually, the fact that this one was out of order could be considered a safety feature, considering how badly the other elevator shakes.
5. The nearby train crossing.
   
6. The expired safety permit for the one elevator that still works.
   
7. The flaky wifi connection.
8. The mattress condom.
   
9. The apparent hotel policy of 1 blanket per guest. Requests for extras will be met by front-desk staff with a cheerful smile, a scratch of a pen on a scrap of paper, and … actually, that was the end of the exchange.

   Which brings us to:

10. The indifferent desk clerks: They smile, they nod. They don’t produce clean irons or spare blankets.

    On the other hand, they did promptly call the San Diego police when one of the guests threatened to break down the door of her neighbor.

So, you get what you pay for. At $50/night, the 500 West is one-sixth the cost of some of the other hotels in the area. It’s the most affordable, or even the only affordable hotel downtown. But ultimately the question of whether it’s worth it cannot be easily answered… at least not until my pathology report comes back.