DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Excerpt from a campaign update from my favorite eco-charity, the Union of Concerned Scientists:

Late last night the Union of Concerned Scientists and our allies won a major victory on fuel economy! Thanks in part to your numerous emails and phone calls, the Senate voted yesterday to substantially increase the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standard of America’s cars and trucks for the first time in over 30 years — setting a target of 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

I’m all for raising CAFE standards, but this sounds like a pretty feeble compromise. I drove a car in 2004 — nearly 3 full years ago — that measured 53.9 mpg over a 4-5 hour commute. Yet in 13 more years, the best average our politicians are willing to demand is 35 mpg?

I suppose what makes this newsworthy is, as noted above, that the numbers have moved at all. The original CAFE standards were proposed in 1975 (when the average fleet mileage was apparently a dismal 14 mpg) and never amended, except for a period in the late 1980s when mileage minimums were lowered. Detroit, you go girl!

Just need to say that this is blowing my mind, and I’m seriously thinking about disabling the locking mechanism on my oven door.

It used to be true that the best way to spend money in a foreign country was via credit card, because the credit companies offered fair exchange rates, and the cards themselves avoided the risks of carrying cash, not to mention the problems associated with exchanging cash at storefronts whose reputations for fairness are not known. But over the past few years, credit companies and the card-issuing banks alike have begun adding sizeable fees for foreign-currency transactions, or in some cases, for any foreign transactions (even when no currency conversion is required).

The fees vary widely, so if you’re planning a trip, it pays to call your various card providers to ask what their fees are. For example, here’s what I learned:

The $10 minimum fee on my platinum Visa was a real shock. But even beyond that, there’s a 3x difference in transaction fees just for the cards I carry.

The following article is dated, but its conclusions still seem relevant: Abroad, not all plastic is created equal

Popular Mechanics’ test of compact fluorescent light bulbs is really great. It not only points consumers at the best bulbs, it provides a first step in holding the manufacturers accountable for their claims, e.g. I don’t think any of the tested bulbs actually produced as much light as the packages claimed.

There are a ton of feeble CFLs on the market — in my experience, most of the $3 six-packs at the warehouse club fall into this category — and they give the industry a bad reputation, thereby turning consumers off one of the cheapest, easiest, most effective energy conservation strategies available. Quality CFLs are truly miraculous, providing tons of light at a fraction of the cost of incandescent “heat” bulbs, and the wide availability of crappy bulbs masks this reality.

So if you’ve been waiting to buy CFLs, check out the ratings at PM and buy yourself some new light bulbs.

(Read more rants about light bulbs.)

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.)