John Gannon going on a calibration tour in south Florida. He is going to be arriving in West Palm Beach July 23 and departing August 2. Send me a PM if you are in south Florida and are interested in having John come out to calibrate your CRT.

Thanks,
Tim

I want to publicly thank John for coming to my house and calibrating my NEC 6pg xtra. Not only did he do a terrific job straightening out the gray scale, but he went the exta mile to make sure things were correct. He spent about 5 hours the first day making sure that the pj was set-up correctly and working on calibration. But, due to my having to leave, he did not have the time to get the black level correct. So, the night before he was supposed to fly back to Detroit, he drove 1.5hrs north from West Palm Beach arriving at my house at 930pm, worked on the pj until 1230am, and then drove back to West Palm. That just emphasizes to me how important it is to him to ensure the job is complete.

John, thank you! :)

I want to publicly thank John for coming to my house and calibrating my NEC 6pg xtra. Not only did he do a terrific job straightening out the gray scale, but he went the exta mile to make sure things were correct. He spent about 5 hours the first day making sure that the pj was set-up correctly and working on calibration. But, due to my having to leave, he did not have the time to get the black level correct. So, the night before he was supposed to fly back to Detroit, he drove 1.5hrs north from West Palm Beach arriving at my house at 930pm, worked on the pj until 1230am, and then drove back to West Palm. That just emphasizes to me how important it is to him to ensure the job is complete.

John, thank you! :)

John is obsessive compulsive when it comes to video displays and Thai food.
No one's any better at setting up video displays or eating hot Thai food!!!@@@
We miss him here in Arizona!!!

OK, when I saw the thread subject I just had to do it. If you're going to have a calibration tour, you obviously need a tour t-shirt.

With apologies to Guns'N'Roses and the Appetite For Destruction tour:

http://www.perisoft.org/calibration.jpg

...Shirts will go on sale for $35. Hats are $50. Shirts that fit are $95.

OH, you have to pay extra for the fitting, that makes sense!

Great graphics, Perisoft, if we could move that green gun up a wee bit to represent the eye chakra I think we'd be closer!

Thanks Mike, enjoy!

As for YOU, Steve, I'll be close for CEDIA, then driving right by for CES, it'll be that time of year again in another moment...

You're along way from home bring me back some sun in a jar for this winter would ya. :D :D :D Hope all is well.

OH, you have to pay extra for the fitting, that makes sense!

Great graphics, Perisoft, if we could move that green gun up a wee bit to represent the eye chakra I think we'd be closer!

Thanks Mike, enjoy!

As for YOU, Steve, I'll be close for CEDIA, then driving right by for CES, it'll be that time of year again in another moment...

Gannon, if you are driving by, by all means, touch me up. Won't take 2 days this time!!!! You can hear my new Theta Enterprise amps, too!!!

Hah! PeriSoft, that is awesome!! :D

Out of curiosity, what did you use to change the titles? It came out great!

John is obsessive compulsive

....and on a caffeine buzz is scary! :D :D :eek:

Hah! PeriSoft, that is awesome!! :D

Out of curiosity, what did you use to change the titles? It came out great!

This is where the mad skizzles come in. ;)

It's photoshop, of course. The titles are actually the easy bit; it's the backgrounds that are tough. The original had this mottled, stippled-ish background gradient to it. If it had just been a gradient, or if it had just been a texture, I could have cloned out the letters, but the clone tool isn't really set up for that.

So, for each section with a letter at the top, I:

-Selected the letter and surrounding area - or a half letter if a letter covered more than one gradient change - , out to the edge, and a bit past the area where the letter was.

-Selected foreground and background colors with the eyedropper based on the colors at the left / right edge.

-Did a gradient fill to match the existing gradient as closely as I could. This wasn't perfect because the real gradient is arced and mine were straight.

-Add noise, gaussian, monochromatic, power 25.

-Dust and scratches, 3px.

Those last two steps recreated the mottled effect in the background.

Then I'd history-erase the edge to blend (and to blend the arced gradient in with mine).

After that (which went quick once I decided what to do) it was just a matter of digging up a reasonably close font, stretching it vertically to match the original, and applying it first with a basic curve to approximate the arc and then - this is the key - rasterizing the layer and using the warp tool to make it match better. This shirt was hand drawn, and a perfect arc would never match - and the human eye is fantastic at spotting perfect things admidst imperfection. If you're trying to replicate something, you need to replicate its flaws as much as its successes (a prime reason I massively respect George Lucas' sfx work in Star Wars).

The bottom text doesn't really match too well; it was actually an eroded kind of font but I didn't really have time to do it right, so I just threw some filters on it to make it look beat up. If you look at the original it's not too close in style.

It all actually doesn't take that long; the trick is you just had to have spent about twenty thousand hours learning the tools beforehand so you intuitively know stuff like, "gaussian monochromatic noise 25 + dust and scratches 3px will replicate this texture" :p

If anyone wants their own t-shirt or themselves photoshopped into a movie poster for their HT room, let me know... I have a blast doing this stuff. :D