FlashVars in ActionScript 3.0

July 30, 2007

FYI, when accessing FlashVars in AS3.0 you can no longer access them by _root.myFlashVar. Instead, use:

root.loaderInfo.parameters.myFlashVar

Categories:	ActionScript, Flash, flex, webdesign

AS2.0 Convert Number to Whole Number

July 28, 2007

Thought I’d let free this little code snippet from a banner ad gig I had last week. I needed to convert a number into a whole number, and since I had to use AS2.0 I came up with this:
function makeWholeNum(num:Number):Number { var returnNum:Number; num = Math.round(num); var numToString:String = String(num); if (numToString.indexOf("-") != -1) { returnNum = 0; } else { returnNum = num; } return returnNum; } }

Categories:	ActionScript, Flash, webdesign

And I got the small one.

July 23, 2007

Categories:	travel

In a Dark Dark House

July 12, 2007

Boy, this is a testament to how behind I am with blogging. I went to see Neil LaBute’s In a Dark Dark House during a press showing (the night before the premiere) and have finally had the chance to blog about it–weeks after its run has already ended. Oh well, I can mark seeing a LaBute play off my list of
todos in NYC. Abusive fathers, pedophiles, rape, and a whole lot of “dude” and “bro” from Ron Livingston; one wonders why so many people flock to Wicked when theatrical gems like this are around…

Categories:	NYC

Kwik-E-Mart

July 10, 2007

Too all my friends back home who don’t have the luxury of a Kwik E Mart, my sympathies…

Categories:	NYC

Adventures in LAB Colorspace

July 6, 2007

I recently purchased a book that delves into color correction in the LAB colorspace (If the time of my post is any indication, It’s definitely something that’s go me excited). I decided to try some of what I learned to the test, so I pulled this photo from my archives:

It’s a picture of the mountains in Sedona, AZ that I took around 2005. All I did here was balance the levels and save for Web at 85%. I have a habit of taking a ton of photos (which any good photographer knows to do), but in my book, this was a dud–it just didn’t capture the saturated color of what I saw in person, and the composition is nothing amazing. Hence, I never bothered to clean it up.

For the sake of this exercise, though, I figured, “what if I did try to clean it up?” So, in RGB, I cranked up the saturation by 50%, and then created some contrast by doing a levels S curve.

Here’s the LAB version:

So, the difference? The LAB version took less than half the time to tool with. I simply created more drastic angles in A and B, and then gave it a bit of an S curve in the lightness. To top it off, I did an unsharpen mask (I unsharpened only the lightness channel in the LAB version).

I tend to like the LAB version a bit more, as I think the trees in the RGB version create some unnatural colors. I’ve read that the saturation tool in Photoshop tends to lighten images along with saturating them. Not only that, but the saturation tool creates much more artifacting, as seen here:

(RGB is left, LAB is right)

All in all, I feel like a kid in a candy store, and I’ve just gotten started. Learning this now is kinda bittersweet, though, as it makes me wonder how many photos of mine I’ve destroyed in the past simply because I didn’t know the best way to color correct them (thank goodness for RAW!).

Categories:	photography

Simpsons Avatar

July 5, 2007

Well, enough friends have one, so I figured I’d join in. I guess it doesn’t look that much like me, but when you’re in Simpsonsland, your physical trait options are limited.