Altered Images

Technorati tags: Humor, Art, Image Manipulation, GIMP

This is a very self-serving post, with no real socio-political significance whatsoever. So, if trivial things don’t excite you, then by all means, please move along.

But if you like to look at images that are somewhat unreal, then read on.

It’s just that Walski has been keeping himself busy honing his image manipulation skills, playing around with online tutorials for GIMP, an open-source image manipulation software package.

It works as well (some claim better) than the industry standard Adobe Photoshop, and it’s free. The difference between GIMP and Photoshop is the terminology used, so if you’re a Photoshop user, it may take some getting used to. In recent years, many tutorials have been posted online making it quite easy to learn and practice certain techniques.

This is an example of what Walski’s done.

Penang Rocks v2

Don’t worry, Walski didn’t actually go around the Penang Heritage area with spray paint cans. He merely gave it a virtual make-over. With a lot of help from GIMP naturally. 
(more altered images, in the full post)

As you probably have gathered, Walski was recently in Penang, with the Mrs and her family for Chinese New Year. And it’s been a few months since the last time he was up here.

One of the things we did was to go around Armenian Street meeting with some artists that we’d like to collaborate with at Artemis Art, the fledgling gallery the Mrs runs, with Walski assisting. More about the gallery in another posting.

The original image Walski captured is shown below, which is close by to the renowned Khoo Kongsi heritage site, along Armenian Street.

Rather drab, he thought, so Walski went to work adding some color and stuff…

The wall has been left exactly as he found it, without a scratch. Although Walski appreciates graffiti art, some things should remain the way they are. In such instances, GIMP comes in handy.

Armenian Street, a small street that branches off from Beach Street (Lebuh Pantai) has many interesting buildings and a photographer could literally spend several hours exploring the area. Many photo opportunities to be found here.

Walski was fortunate to find this trishaw (beca) parked along the curb side, without as much as another vehicle driving past. Using GIMP, he desaturated the background, leaving only the beca colored.

Penang - the Old & the New (Memoirs of a Beca)

Walski thought that it would be cool to leave it to the imagination of the observer what’s old and what’s new, using a play of colors (and lack of it) and words. He’s also wanted to call something Memoirs of a Beca for a long time…

Image manipulation is fun, and when done right can produce something that defies reality. Here’s one last image to prove this point, combining two different images that Walski captured on camera, with a little bit of graffiti thrown in.

Penang Dragon Rocks!

Yes, he thought that he should take some time off from commenting to the silly politics that seems to be plaguing us. Walski figured he might as well have a bit of fun.

And so, to the question "is Walski having fun yet?", he only has this to say: he’s just getting warmed up!