David's Images of the Day Photoblog
As Promised, Snow Drops (and more Purple Crocuses). This morning the sun was out and lighting up the flowers across the street. Snow Drops, a field of Snow Drops, Snow Drops in a field of Purple Crocuses, a field of Purple Crocuses, etc. Spring is Coming!
These images of Purple Crocuses Blooming were taken across the street from my home. Weather permitting I will try to get some macro images of the Snow Drops tomorrow. The Daffodils are only a week away from blooming.
There is hope for spring. I saw these purple crocuses starting to bloom across the road when I got home tonight. The snow has mostly melted, but the temperature keeps going up and down. This morning it was 17° F when I left for work. Tomorrow if the weather is good I plan to go out with a macro lens. After taking the pictures, I walked the backyard for the first time since last December, and see that I have a lot of work to clean up more trees and branches down. Presumably the damage happened during the ice storm.
I often use Focus Magic to sharpen images. I prefer using this program since it uses a deconvolution algorithm to sharpen the image, rather than unsharp mask (USM). Here is an example where I used Focus Magic to remove motion blur. On the down side, Focus Magic has not been updated for some time and only runs as a 32-bit application. I can only use it as a plugin in Photoshop CS5 when running the 32-bit version of CS5. For this example I am using an image of a Turkey Vulture in flight (from four-years ago). I tried to improve the sharpness of the head, eye, and beak. The 2nd and 3rd image are 1:1 zooms of the head — first without removing the motion blur, and the second with the motion blur removed (350°, 9 pixels). The results are not perfect, but better than the original image. One of the reasons I do not delete images — new software can sometimes be used to recover and image that previously would have been rejected.
We had a light covering of fresh snow this morning. Based on the new trails several deer and a lone rabbit must have passed through my front yard.
