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General Update – S.E.E.D Released, Server Added and Other Goodies

General Update – S.E.E.D Released, Server Added and Other Goodies

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Hello everyone!

The last week or so has been quite busy for me and things don’t seem to be letting up in the foreseeable future, which of course is not a bad thing. For starters, the AvP style fanfilm by Pete Mander finally arrived in my studio in raw format last week for some Divx loving. You can check out this 30 minute fan made film at the official website at www.seedfilm.com. A huge congrats goes out to Pete Mander and his cast and crew at finally releasing this 2 year project!

The secondary server has finally been implemented for Pixel2life Studio owned websites to handle the extra traffic. During peak times, the server was starting to bog down a bit due to all the activity on Pixel2life.com. We’ve added a second dual CPU server to process HTTP and other services, and the main server will process MySQL queries only. This should sufficiently balance the load for us to allow for growth and handle huge spikes like Digg or other large portals generate from time to time. The new server has been installed for a couple of days now and appears to working with the other box perfectly. I’m keeping close eye on things over the next little bit to calm my nerves more than anything.

I’ve also been working on some new articles and managed to finally release my DMCA Law tutorial, which teaches webmasters how to take action when their website content has been stolen. I think this is a subject that is easily understood, yet so many don’t have the faintest clue of what’s involved when it comes to copyright infringement. I hope this will be a huge help to many people in the future.

The good folks over at Layers Magazine recently signed up for some advertising on our network ad system and sent me a few copies of their magazine, and let me tell you, this is a MUST HAVE for Photoshop and Adobe enthusiasts or professionals alike. So, a big thanks to them for the ad purchase and the magazines! Be sure to check them out at www.layersmagazine.com for information on subscribing and for a slew of online Adobe goodness.

I went out for dinner and some pool playage with Eric from Photoshopsupport.com a couple of Fridays ago and had a blast, despite losing 5 games to 7 in a display of complete and utter loss of skills. I’ll be scheduling a rematch in a couple of weeks. I emailed Alex, fellow Montrealer and webmaster of www.idigitalemotion.com, for some brewskis as well, but no word from his end of the city yet. If any of you fellow Montreal readers (Or visitors to the area) want to get together for some drinks to talk shop and share some laughs, drop me a line and we’ll make a date!

Last, but not least, Jay is having a hilarious contest to customize his version of our network logo on his Blog site. You can get the details at the Pixel2life Forums and see the current mascots in action on twod.co.uk.

That’s about it for now folks, be good and we’ll see you next update!

Dan

Photo Repair – Recent Project for a Good Friend!

Photo Repair – Recent Project for a Good Friend!

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It’s a fairly unknown fact that I really enjoy restoring old destroyed photos to digital beauty ever since i was handed some old photos of my grandparents that my mother had kept, despite being somewhat damaged by water. The end result of that project was pretty good, but over the years I’ve been fortunate to learn some fairly advanced tricks and techniques, and when I get time, I pull out an old photo and play around. I think of it as a photo CSI… working out how things were destroyed and how to best fix it up. The more destroyed a photo is, the more I enjoy it and I try to “fudge” as little as possible whenever I can. I probably completely restore about a dozen severe photos a year and my first of the year was a real doozie and I thought I’d share it with my friends that read this journal blog.

Here’s the situation… I was given a photo by my very good friend Chris, and it it was a pic of his parents together in Niagara falls during the 80s. The photo obviously meant a lot to him, but it was in very rough shape. Here’s a look at the before photo (click for a larger view):

Sample

Here’s a list of issues with this photo so you know what I was dealing with:

1. First off, the photo was actually STUCK to the glass that was in the frame, so I couldn’t even get the glass off to scan it in, so the scan was done as is. I wold have to clean up the light refraction issues as I restored the photo.
2. The huge blue blob areas are where the photo is stuck to the frame. There is no way to remove that photo from the glass without destroying the photo, so all the blue blobs would have to be digitally repaired.
3. The entire bottom left corner is torn right off with only the backing of the paper showing.
4. Moisture spots cover the entire base of the photo… you can see these purple and yellow marks in the darker areas such as the rock base of the fence, their pants, and her mother’s coat and purse.
5. There is a thick film of cloudy grime along the left and right edges of the photo, and a very thick band of it all along the bottom of the photo. That dirst is on the photo itself, not the glass so I can’t just wash it off. Any detailing on the bottom of the rocks is totally gone.
6. The “glued” part covering the section of waterfall to the right of the mother has complete swallowed up the detailing of the falls.
7. The sky is covered in dust and dirt particles. You can see some of the larger pieces of dirt in the sample photo above.
8. The paper is badly discolored due to age and light exposure.
9. There are two ripples in the sky caused by the photo being rippled and warped. I can’t flatten it because it’s glued in place on the glass.

So that’s the major issues… now, bear in mind the sample above is roughly 800 x 600 pixels, which may not seem to large or time confusing. Nice try, but this is just a down sample for you guys to quickly look at. The real digital copy that I modified was in fact an 8″ x 10″ photo at 300 DPI, so that’s actually about 2400 x 3000 pixels to repair. It was going to take a lot more than the clone tool!

So, 10 working hours later, here is the fixed result of my efforts (click for larger sample):

Sample

The look on his face when I handed him the final printed photo made every minute of this project 100% worth it. He’s actually going to Hong Kong in a week so he’ll be bringing a copy for his brother who still lives there. I ended up making 3 versions for him… one with the date restored like in the original, one without the date, and one without the birds I added for the heck of it.

Anyhow, that was my fun project last week, hope you like it!

Dan

General Update on What’s New and What I’ve been Up To

General Update on What’s New and What I’ve been Up To

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Hi all!

My apologies for the long delay in updating, but things have been very busy in the studio in the last week or two, and I have a ton of projects on the table, with more on the way. Doing some serious head scratching on the schedule, but thank goodness I’m on a full time gig now more or less.

So what’s cookin? First off, a friendly conversation or two with prop and short film designer Jamie Vierra has turned into the birthing of a new collaborative effort on Jamie’s various projects, including the re-launch of his personal portfolio site as well as his film production company site, which currently doesn’t exist. I can’t get into too much detail because I’m not sure what I can and can’t talk about at this point, but I can honestly say that this is one of the most exciting and challenging design projects I’ve had my hand in. We’re only a couple of weeks into our initial design brainstorming and I can already tell that I will be learning a TON on this and growing my design skills in directions I’ve never experienced.

Here’s a little sneak peek logo from Jamie’s personal portfolio site design that we’re rebuilding:

Jamie Vierra

Jamie is extremely professional, creative and loves a challenge, and I look forward to seeing where this business relationship ends up. Hollywood? You never know 😉

In other film related news, my other movie website project known as S.E.E.D is in full swing, with the final pieces of the printed media puzzle sent off to the production studio and film’s director Pete Mander. With the mini-posters and DVD covers done, we’re all set for the film’s big screen premiere in Toronto on March 11th 2006! The cast and crew will be at the showing for post question and answer sessions, to sign posters and DVDs and to raffle off some prizes, including two replica Predator Bio Helmets featured in the film! If you’re going to be in Toronto that weekend, you should definitely go check out this fan-film production! You can get all the details on the official S.E.E.D site, as well as download the trailer and other film details.

Just a quick note to some of the critics out there: This is NOT a paid studio production. It’s a fan-film put together by everyday people that shared a common interest and goal by putting this film together. There are no paid actors etc… The costumes and props are all from the amazingly talented hands of Pete Mander, and this is his film debut and I can’t congratulate this guy or his cast and crew enough on their amazing accomplishment with this film. Congrats guys and best of luck at the Premiere!

Meanwhile, things are very busy in the P2L realm of the internet! Jay and I are working very hard on the Hammer-Time project and we can’t wait to bring this new product to the community! We think this will be a break-through project in every aspect, so hold onto your parachute pants, because we’re going for a ride! In the meantime, I’m busy working on new tutorials and articles to post, and I’m working with Chaos King on my personal pred site and other goodies.

So that’s about it for now gang, hope all is well!

Dan

PhotoshopSupport.com interviews yours truly over some brewskis!

PhotoshopSupport.com interviews yours truly over some brewskis!

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Interview

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting my buddy Eric, the own of www.photoshopsupport.com, to whom I have only spoken to via email in the past and we continually promised each other to meet in person here in Montreal. Well, we finally made it happen and it was a real blast to swap stories and talk shop for hours on end in downtown Montreal as we watched the night life come alive around us. Eric is a true online professional and has years of advanced webmaster experience under his belt, so I learned a lot from him and he’s a really cool guy. I look forward to our next outing, and it’ll be my turn to give the interview next 😉 You can read the published interview here!

Thanks again Eric! Beers in two weeks are in order! We’ll work on spelling my last name correctly because obviously we didn’t drink enough the first time around to get it right.

Dan

Mag Mention: P2L Gets 2 Mentions in Practical Webdesign January 06!

Mag Mention: P2L Gets 2 Mentions in Practical Webdesign January 06!

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One of the most frustrating things I deal with, luckily not frequently, is when something really cool happens with one of my projects, and I don’t hear anything about it until months after it’s passed. A typical example of this is when P2L gets mentioned in a magazine, which seems to be every couple of months if I’m to believe the people that email me telling me about it after it’s impossible for me to find a copy of the publication in question. Call me a pack rat, but I like to keep a scrapbook of these little articles, no matter how small the blurb is. Anyhow, Jay just happened to pick up a copy of January’s issue of Practical Webdesign, which is a UK publishing distributed worldwide, and Pixel2life.com gets 2 mentions! How cool is that? So I ran out and bought a copy, so I FINALLY have so on-paper proof of one of my sites being in a magazine.

The first mention is on page 41, where Marc Peter from on-IDLE talks about one of his site designs and there’s a section talking about what’s he into, what’s he’s been up to etc… Under “What sites have I been visiting this month”, P2L is 1 of the 3 he mentions. Thanks Marc and I hope you enjoy the site and get some use from it!

Here’s a snip from the article:

Mag Mention

The second mention is on page 104, where they have this massive list of valuable links in a section called “140 of the BEST web building resources”! Thanks for listing us PWD and we hope our next projects impress you folks just as much!

If anyone ever finds P2L or anything else I do in some form of printed media, please let me know ASAP so I can try and get a copy locally or bother you to pick one up for me. *grin*

Take care!
Dan