How to Add Rainbows in Photos

Since colour is the theme of the week, I will provide a technique to add a realistic rainbow within an existing picture. I'm using Paint Shop Pro X but you may get the same type of effects with any other equivalent image editing software such as Photoshop or GIMP. Don't forget to download the rainbow gradient and put the format your software requires in its gradient folder.

Materials

• a landcape photo
• Rainbow gradient (PSP/PS/GIMP formats)

Instructions

1. Open a copy of the image you wish to manipulate.

2. Add a new layer and draw a 50px high horizontal plain raster line width-wise (if you draw your line in vector mode, you'll have to convert it to a raster layer) using the provided gradient in linear mode (no repeat, no angle) as filling colour. Your gradient must be set in inverted mode or else you can still flip your line vertically afterwards. Make sure your line is in the middle of the layer.

NOTE: Since to the top pixels of my line weren't smooth, I drew a rectangle selection above it overlapping the “hard” pixels using a 4px feathering then I clicked on the Suppress  key. Thus I got blurred edges (do not forget to unselect once you've erased the top part).

3. Apply the Warp effect (to give the line an arc shape ):

Horizontal = 0
Vertical = 40
Size = 100
Strength = 60

4. Apply Motion Blur effect (angle 0°, intensité 20%).

5. Add Noise (4% - uniform - monochrome).

6. Position the rainbow where you want  and set blend mode to Overlay en and opacity to 80% for a natural look.

For the above variation, I used a different rainbow gradient, drew a thicker line keeping the same ratio and erased the parts overlapping the skyscrapers save for the white one in the background.

Feel free to experiment with blend modes and if your picture contains reflective surfaces (such as water), remember to reflect your rainbow by duplicating its layer and changing its opacity, blend mode, size and orientation according to the kind of effect you wish to create. But why should you stick to landscapes? This technique may also apply to portraits or other types of pictures to create surrealistic effects. When it comes to creativity, there are no limits, no censorship, so let's be wild and burst the colours!

© La Pensine Mutine. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited.

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Fly Me Away

On a nice sunny day, in April of this year, I paid a visit back to the land of my ancestors in Upper Normandy where we spent the afternoon in Étretat, a small seaside resort of worldwide renown and listed among the “wonders of France” due to its arches dug into the chalk of impressive white cliffs. From the top of the Falaise de l'Aval with its famous “needle”, at about 300 feet above the sea, I was fascinated by the gulls as I watched them fly literally beneath me as if I, too, had wings. It was just magic and I wanted to share this moment as a caption for the above composition I designed a couple of years ago.

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Across the Universe

Words are flowing out like
Endless rain into a paper cup.
They slither wildly as they slip
Away across the universe.

Pools of sorrow waves of joy
Are drifting through my opened mind,
Possessing and caressing me.

Jai Guru Deva Om (Hail to the divine guru)

Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

Images of broken light, which
Dance before me like a million eyes,
They call me on and on
Across the universe.

Thoughts meander like a
Restless wind inside a letter box
They tumble blindly
As they make their way
Across the universe.

Jai Guru Deva Om (Hail to the divine guru)

Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

Sounds of laughter, shades of life
Are ringing through my opened ears
Inciting and inviting me.

Limitless undying love, which
Shines around me like a million suns,
It calls me on and on
Across the universe

Jai Guru Deva Om (Hail to the divine guru)

Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

Jai Guru Deva (Hail to the guru)
Jai Guru Deva (Hail to the guru)
Jai Guru Deva (Hail to the guru)

Original text by JOHN LENNON

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Drifts

Hues and cries
Over the flying gull
Floating upwind
Towards the mast tower
Never dripping encores
Until the squid-ink has dried out.

Riding the breaker,
Skimming the sea,
Drifting afloat,
Blurred words
In a pint of bitter.
Afraid to go for a dip,
The castaway gets drowned.

Sunk, stranded
Down in the hold,
Crashed by the waves
Over and over again,
Battered by the swell,
Eager for a change of course,
To approach new horizons,
Incorporeal and waveless,
And no more scuttling
Sirens for figureheads.

Take the helm,
Sail high,
Check out the waters,
And come what may!

© La Pensine Mutine. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited.

Cover picture: M. Matuszak

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2+2=5

Released in 2003 — this song one is the opening track on the album. Thom Yorke's paradoxical, kind of ambiguous lyrics  (quite a challenge for me to translate into French) were actually inspired by doublethink:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.

1984 © George Orwell

Ey@el

Are you such a dreamer
To put the world to rights?
I’ll stay home forever
Where two & two always makes up five.

I’ll lay down the tracks,
Sandbag & hide
January has April’s showers
And two & two always makes up five.

It’s the devil’s way now,
There is no way out.
You can scream and you can shout,
It is too late now
Because...

YOU HAVE NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION!

I try to sing along,
I get it all wrong.
Ezeepeezeeeezeepeeezee!!!

Not: “I swat em like flies”
But: “Like flies the burgers keep coming back”
Not: “Maybe not “All hail to the thief””
But: “I am not!”

Don’t question my authority
Or put me in the dock

COZIMNOT!

Go and tell the king that
The sky is falling in
When it’s not.

MAYBE NOT...

Thom Yorke, 2003

About this song

This song was premiered in San Sebastian, Spain on July 31, 2002.

The song’s title recalls the symbol of unreality from George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the book, inhabitants of an authoritarian future state are made to engage in doublethink, replacing their own conscience and beliefs with those imposed from above. The ‘Thought Police’ in the novel coerce self-aware citizens into admitting that two plus two equals five to prove the point that even though two plus two does not logically equal five, logic does not matter when no one else is willing to agree that two plus two equals anything else, under threat of pain or death.

Read more...

© La Pensine Mutine. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited.

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Blame It on Mercury

I walk down the staircase,
Magnetic pull,
Back to the other place
That I cannot go.

"Staircase", Radiohead (2008)

While you've been feeling unusually awkward, absent-minded, foggy or unfocused of late, you might blame it on good old Mercury moving backwards. With his caduceus and winged sandals, he was used as messenger by the Roman gods (he was also known as Hermes in Greece and Thot in Egypt). He was also the patron god of traders and travellers. On the 15th of May, during the Mercuralia festival, merchants would celebrate him by sprinkling their heads and merchandise with water taken from his sacred well at Porta Capena, in Rome.

His name was of course given to the smallest and closest planet to the Sun due to its velocity. Its astronomical symbol is a circle set on a cross topped with a half-ring shaped like horns as a reminder of Mercury's caduceus. In astrology, Mercury is the ruler of Gemini, the zodiac sign of the mind, communication, trade and travel which it is currently transiting — in retrograding motion from 22th May to 12th June after which it'll turn direct again. This backward movement is actually an illusion that results from the Earth orbiting the Sun at higher speed.

Retrograding transits are usually periods of transition and profound changes, delays occurring to redirect your awareness or activities. Now, with Mercury retrograde, you have to focus your mental energy inside rather than outside as you usually would. This is therefore not a good time to communicate with others nor to engage in transactions or travel. But it is the perfect time to meditate, reflect, investigate, carry out self-examination and see things differently. And if you're feeling kind of blue or down at the moment, you may also blame it on the arm twisting game between Mercury and Neptune, an incredibly nebulous planet, that might cloud issues, making us less practical and thus more prone to hasty outbursts and deceit. Patience and prudence are the keywords there.

© La Pensine Mutine. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited.

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