It isn't fair

[mickeyobe]

Snow. 9 May.
Where's the justice?



Mickey

[nikonbob]

You call that snow? Irritating though isn't it.

Bob

[Randy]

44 degrees here in Ohio. I had the electric blanket on last night, my piggies got cold.

[Deleted]

"'Fair' is where Grandma takes the pickles in the fall." A little over 60 F today and sunshine but our spring has been much colder andmore windy than usual.

Wayne

[PeterW]

Hi all,

Been away from the computer for a week or so, partly busy and partly because, as our Australian friends say, I was feeling a bit crook. But I'm back now and firing on all cylinders. Quite a load of postings to catch up on.

Mickey,
"Please critique mercilessly"

I hope I'm never like Keats' Belle Dame but for my taste I think you've overcooked the colour saturation a little on this one, particularly the blue.

Apparently the snow you've got in May in Canada is because of global warming. This seeming paradox was explained by a climate expert on television a month or so ago. It appears that general warming, and we're talking only a degree or so, is causing a slow melt of the southern part of the polar ice cap.

Chunks of ice and water at near zero fall into the most northern parts of the Atlantic, and drift south

The North Altlantic Drift, or Gulf Stream, keeps this very cold water away from the UK and pushes it towards Canada and the north eastern US so that when an east wind comes off the Altlantic it carries near-freezing water vapour which falls as snow when the wind reaches land and rises to about 20,000 feet.

That, at least, is one school of thought. As usual, other experts challenge it, just for the sake of challenging it. They say things are being triggered by all the hot air that's pouring out of the Icelandic volcano.

No-one mentions the hot air that pours out of the mouths of climate "experts".

Definition you won't find in the dictionary:
Expert: x is unknown and a spurt is a drip under pressure.
So an expert is an unknown drip under pressure.

PeterW

[mickeyobe]

Peter,

I am glad you are now uncrook. You must stay that way.

My poor little Matrix is weeping uncontrollably. That is its real uncooked colour which varies considerably depending upon the lighting and the viewpoint. The only Photoshop here was to try unsuccessfuly to uncook the burned out snow. When the grass and leaves and asphalt are wet their colours are generally enhanced - Mother Nature's Photoshop.

Our foul weather usually comes up the Mississippi valley which is south of Canada last time I checked. The cold air comes from the north and meets the nasty wet air that our American friends send us from below the 49th. Voila! Precipitation - snow or rain or worse.

As for the melting arctic glaciers in this era of so called GLOBAL warming. Is the antarctic not part of the GLOBE? Perhaps one of our friends from Oz can explain why Ayers Rock or Coober Pedy don't see much snow.

The glaciers have been building and melting and calving for thousands of years and will continue to do so despite the fear mongering of, now somewhat discredited demagogues and their hockey stick charts. They should stick to pie charts which at least are edible making it much easier for them to eat their words.There will always be cycles of warmer and cooler weather and more or less precipitation.

There were the "dirty thirties" that came and did their destructive damage and passed into history. And there were eras of bitter cold that behaved in the same manner.
One hundred and fifty years ago the easiest way to travel overland in Canada was on the solidly frozen trails in the winter. Most of the waterways, including lakes Erie and Ontario, were frozen solid. Much too hard for birch bark canoes. In the summer the trails were overgrown and subject to the predations of black flies and mosquitoes.

I recall one global warming advocate, a faculty member of the Al Gore, David Suzuki academy of panic who, in the news last summer, warned that Lake Superior was lower than it has been in 69 years. I desperately wanted to ask him what happened to the globe in the subsequent 69 years but my TV is only for incoming propaganda, not outgoing.

I am pleased to say that I am an x spurt on no subject although my meat loaf is becoming world famous ...... OK. Notorious.

It is now 1:12 am. I am going to copy Samuel Pepys. G'nite.

Stay well, Peter.

Mickey

[PeterW]

Mickey:

My poor little Matrix is weeping uncontrollably. That is its real uncooked colour which varies considerably depending upon the lighting and the viewpoint. The only Photoshop here was to try unsuccessfuly to uncook the burned out snow. When the grass and leaves and asphalt are wet their colours are generally enhanced - Mother Nature's Photoshop.

I believe you have Photoshop Elements and I'm not sure how cut down that is compared with the full Photoshop but I'm sorry I can't agree that the only Photoshop remedy was to try to uncook the burned out snow.

I took the liberty of copying your posted picture and adjusting it in Photoshop CS3 which isn't the latest version but does all I want. To save flicking back and forth between postings I've put the two pictures here:


original


adjusted for colour balance and hue

These were the steps I used:
Hue/Saturation:
Select master (all channels) and pull down the overall saturation a little.
Select blue channel and reduce saturation more to bring the roadway and drive-in nearer to the colour of wet asphalt and the alloy wheels of the car nearer to an alloy colour;
Select yellow channel and increase saturation slightly to improve the natural look of Maytime grass.

Select local dodge tool set to Highlights at 8% and run over the snow on the car, the front door and garage door of the house across the road, which I assume are painted white, and very lightly on the flowers in the foreground grass to bring those out a little.

Select local burn tool set to shadows at 4% and lightly go over a few of the darker shades to give them more depth.

I think you may have all those tools in Elements?

I think the overall result looks more natural for a picture taken under an overcast sky and flat lighting with very little shadow, but I don't know if the colour of the car body is nearer to its actual colour. What do you think?

PeterW

[John Parry]

Ah forget it - the weather's due to the atomic testing...

Were the old harbingers of doom right? Is somebody testing atomic bombs and not telling anyone else?

That Icelandic volcano has belched out more greenhouse gases than the whole population of the world has managed in the last ten years.

And I was scraping ice off my car this morning, in the middle of May. As I think I've mentioned previously, my favourite theory is the one that says that the onset of the next Ice Age is just being held off by global warming!

Regards - John

[herron]

John ... over here if it's in the 40s in May it's just good soccer weather!

(and it isn't snow unless you can't see the lines on the pitch!) ;D

[mickeyobe]

Peter,

I am waiting until tomorrow morning when I hope the light conditions will be the same as when I took the picture - minus the snow. Then I shall try to duplicate it.

My car is a medium to light metallic blue, not grey. But it is interesting how the colour varies with differences in lighting and surroundings. At times the car appears to be various shades of mauve. Notice the green reflection of the grass on the doors. I can make out at least six different blues in the car body in my picture. And that long concave section near the top of the front fender and doors is tending toward mauve as is the bottom of the bumper just in front of the front wheel and the rocker panel.

The picture was taken in the morning shortly after the street lights went out.

The garage door is white but, as you know, white can reflect the colour(s) around it.

The wet asphalt is black not grey and being wet is subject to some reflections mainly of the cloudy sky.

GeneW once said my colours were like Fujichrome and he, like you, preferred more subdued colours. I did reduce the saturation setting in my camera for a while but, having used Fujichrome almost exclusively for many years I eventually wound up putting it back to its original setting. I am a sucker for saturated colour. Not supersaturated but bright and I think realistic.

I have Photoshop Elements 4.0. I am not nearly as advanced in the use of it as you are though.


John,

"That Icelandic volcano has belched out more greenhouse gases than the whole population of the world has managed in the last ten years."

I sure hope your new Prime Minister makes you his primary aide. Britain needs some clear thinkers.


Mickey

[herron]

I'm reading about your Photoshop use and feeling down. Just upgraded to PS CS5, and discovered there's a problem with my old AMD Athlon processor. CS5 has a dll that tries to find something the Athlon doesn't support.

Apparently, there are a lot of us. Adobe is supposedly trying to fix it. I hope so. Will return CS5 within 30 days if they don't. Not going to buy a new computer for one piece of software!

[herron]

May 11, 2010 19:04:29 GMT -5 mickeyobe said:

John,

"That Icelandic volcano has belched out more greenhouse gases than the whole population of the world has managed in the last ten years."

I sure hope your new Prime Minister makes you his primary aide. Britain needs some clear thinkers.

Mickey

American politicians still have the volcano beat, when it comes to belching out smoke and hot ash.

[mickeyobe]

"Peter,

I am waiting until tomorrow morning when I hope the light conditions will be the same as when I took the picture - minus the snow. Then I shall try to duplicate it."

Yesterday came, rain and clouds. I took 9 pictures. Most of them were almost identical with each other. But I could not duplicate the colour in my first photo.

I could pry a piece off the car and send it to anyone interested in colour fidelity who wants to try to match it to my photo.

Mickey