Thursday, August 7, 2008

Follow-up: rejected Dreamlines images

(SLOW BROWSER WARNING: image-heavy post.)

When I did yesterday's post, about Dreamlines-generated images for various blog-name inputs, I had to pick one image from however many images I grabbed. As certain people have indicated that they are dissatisfied with the image that wound up assigned to one blog or another, and as people seem to like the pictures in general, I'm going to go ahead and post most of the other candidates. Not all blogs from yesterday's post will necessarily have any pictures up today (whether Benjamin Vogt likes it or not, yesterday's picture for The Deep Middle was as good as I thought the pictures got, e.g.).

A Yard in Fort Pierce #3


An Iowa Garden #2


Another Yard in Fort Pierce #3


Faire Gardens #3


Esther in the Garden #3


dAmN pLaNtS #2


dAmN pLaNtS #1


Plants are the Strangest People #3


Plants are the Strangest People #2


May Dreams Gardens #1


Mr. Brown Thumb #5


Mr. Brown Thumb #4


Rock Paper Lizard #5


Rock Paper Lizard #2


Roses in Gardens #4


Plant Crazy #1


Plants are the Strangest People #8


We're Going to Need a Bigger Pot #1


Wicked Gardener #5


Wicked Gardener #2


Tales From the Microbial Laboratory #2


Soliloquy #3


Zanthan Gardens #3


Zanthan Gardens #2


Water When Dry #2


We're Going to Need a Bigger Pot #6


We're Going to Need a Bigger Pot #2


From this batch, I think the ones I like best are We're Going to Need a Bigger Pot #1, A Yard in Fort Pierce #3, and Esther in the Garden #3, though there are plenty of nice things to be said about several of them.

I've been asked how to take screencaps of the images as they go by. This will sound complicated, but it's not that bad if you can cut and paste blocks of text already, which I'm assuming most people reading this can:

I use the freeware program Irfanview. Open the program and press C. A window will come up asking whether you want the program to take a screencap after a certain time interval, or whether you want to press Ctrl + F11. (I go with the keyboard: it's better to be able to choose when the image looks like a good one than to have it just take a picture at some unknown time in the future.) So click Start.

Then go back to your internet browser window, and start Dreamlines running. When you see an image you like, press Ctrl and F11 at the same time, and you'll get a screencap in Irfanview of your whole browser window. Use your mouse to outline the Dreamlines picture, and then press Ctrl + C to copy.

Then press Alt + E (opens Edit menu), followed by D (deletes image), followed by Ctrl + V (pastes the part you'd copied). Then press S, and a Save As window will come up.

It takes some practice to get to the point where you can do this quickly and fluidly, but once you can, you can go right back to the browser window, press Ctrl + F11 again, and take another screencap.

(I suppose if you really wanted to, you could save all the big screencaps without cropping, and then go back and crop out just the Dreamlines picture later, when you're not trying to watch the images go by. This only just occurred to me, though. There's also an option when you first open the program and press C, to have the program automatically save the captures to a particular folder, though I haven't used that personally and it may not be as easy as it sounds.)

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We'll return to our usual plant-related programming tomorrow. Or at least that's the intent.


6 comments:

Frances, said...

Hi Mr. Sub, thanks for giving the crowds more. They are all so wonderful, it's hard a pick a fave, but those orange lips on Mr. Brownthumb #4 speak to me.

VP said...

That's brilliant thanks! :)

I think there's a Mr Subjunctive self portrait in the middle of Plants are the Strangest People #3?

I like Esther's version too.

Lucy Corrander said...

It's really hard to go down the page and refrain from commenting on every picture.

The first three are like 'real' paintings and I love the Yard in Fort Pierce and An Iowa Gardener most so I'm glad you put them at the top!

There must be something about the words dAmN pLaNtS 'cos once again that's come out with something quite stunning.

Esther in the Garden is more interesting than yesterday's . . . but it's odd how, once again, one colour dominates all else. Do you think this has something to do with the words or with your choice?

. . . And I like the Plants are the Strangest People ones much better than yesterday's too.

Some of theses are really pretty.

And Plant Crazy just jumps out at one.

You could keep this up for weeks, Mr Subjunctive.

Lucy
PICTURES JUST PICTURES

Tracy said...

I just love some of this screen shots from this site, beautiful artwork, almost personalized.

Thanks for sharing it with all of us.

Niels Plougmann said...

My choise would be Damn Plants # 2 or Wicked Gardener # 2, they would go well with the colours of my other expressionistic art paintings. But then again what do I know about art?

Anonymous said...

Mr. Subjunctive, thanks for a great toy. I've made lots of pictures from the title of my blog An Instrument of Grace. It took me a while to figure out how to manipulate the images, but it's fun. And I love the images you posted here - almost like an art show.