Original Image

One of the nifty things about the BLUR FILTERS in the new Photoshop 6 is that you can apply more than one IRIS filter at a time. This in essence allows you to concentrate the blur areas where you want or need them, leaving the un-blurred areas alone.

When you get ready to begin the process you can place as many BLUR FILTERS down as you like and then you can view the MASK you are creating by pressing the “M” key to see the mask.

You can press the “P” key to toggle between the preview mode and the original of the image. Once you have the blur areas identified you then need to consider whether to add “bokeh”.

When you do this you will need to juggle the amount of blur being applied across the image with the threshold values of the bokeh and also the colors of the bokeh you are willing to allow to form.

Image with applied blur filter and bokeh.

When you visual inspection gives you what you want you confirm by pressing the return key. The blur calculations being and when done you will have a new image.

You can click on either of the images to the right to enlarge it for visual inspection. Note that one additional step was taken here. I created a duplicate layer under the blurred layer. It was from the original image. I gave the blurred layer an opacity of 75% and that made all the difference in having the blur effect be more gradual than I was able to achieve with the four iris blur filters that were applied.

Enjoy!

(Note: For those who have no idea what the description above means, here is a peek into the process when carried out by an expert, Julieanne Kost – Senior Digital Imaging Evangelist • Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom • Adobe Systems, Inc.)

Island Park Path in Geneva, IL

Getting the family out on bicycles is a great way to get everyone away from electronic devices, exercising and doing something together while perhaps exploring the scenery. And the suburbs make it easy to do.

Depending on where you live, you likely can ride around the neighborhood safely. But the suburbs offer an abundance of trails, too, that could be near your home or are an easy drive away.

Major trails

Busse Woods Trail

Ned Brown Forest Preserve, Elk Grove Village and Rolling Meadows, paved: You could call Busse Woods a classic trail that’s popular with families, especially on weekends. And with good reason. Most of the trail is a 7.75-mile paved loop with only one street to cross, at Higgins Road just east of the I-290/Route 53 ramps (and Cook County is talking about building a bridge here someday). There’s an offshoot east of Streets of Woodfield that extends out to Wilke and Golf roads, which is one access point if you ride from Rolling Meadows or Arlington Heights. Or there’s ample parking, including off Arlington Heights Road north of Higgins Road, where you can see the famous elk herd (signs implore you not to feed them), or off Higgins Road east of Route 53.

Poplar Creek Trail

Poplar Creek Forest Preserve, Hoffman Estates and Streamwood, paved: Poplar Creek is a newer Cook County trail accessible at Shoe Factory and Higgins roads, or off Barrington Road south of Golf Road, or at Bode Road and Route 59, or another spot on Bode just west of Barrington Road. It’s a 9-mile, paved loop through the forest and prairie. There also are some busy streets to cross, but the biggest — at Route 59, Bartlett Road, Golf Road — have traffic lights.

Algonquin Road Trail

Paul Douglas Forest Preserve, Hoffman Estates, paved: It’s called the Algonquin Road Trail, but a few years ago Cook County made a surprisingly pretty loop through the forest preserve. You can now ride about a 7.5-mile circle with only one major street crossing, Algonquin Road at Roselle Road. The trail extends east along Algonquin up to about Meacham — you can also ride on the Harper College campus a bit. The trail is easy to access from north Hoffman Estates neighborhoods, but unfortunately not from south of the tollway, and there are no parking areas unless you park at Harper College or somewhere off Algonquin Road.

DuPage County trail system

Illinois Prairie Path and Great Western Trail, nearly all crushed limestone: The DuPage County trail system is nothing short of amazing. The Illinois Prairie Path extends from Elgin to Wheaton, curves southwest and goes all the way to Aurora, with offshoots from Wheaton east to Villa Park, or the Geneva Spur through West Chicago to its namesake suburb. And there’s a Batavia Spur that appears as a fork in the trail as you ride toward Aurora, and a paved Fermilab Trail northeast of that. These spurs connect to the Fox River Trail (below). Access to the system is easy from the downtowns of many suburbs, including Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Lombard and Villa Park, or Aurora right by Metea Valley High School. The trails are mostly crushed limestone, so you’ll need knobby tires. And do be careful, as there will be a number of street crossings.

Des Plaines River Trail

Lake County (and Cook County), crushed limestone: The Lake County portion of this beautiful trail along the river covers more than 30 miles in a peaceful forest setting, and with few street crossings. The limestone trail starts at the Lake County border and extends nearly to the Wisconsin border, stopping at Russell Road. Access points with parking are many: The Wright Woods Nature Preserve off Milwaukee Avenue just north of Half Day Road is an excellent spot to start, with a small trail loop within and then no-hassle riding north. Independence Grove is another good access point in the middle of the trail, and then there’s Sterling Lake Forest Preserve at the northern end. The Des Plaines River Trail has a Cook County counterpart that’s a bit more rough-and-tumble, though the city of Des Plaines improved its access point there.

Fox River Trail/Prairie Trail

Kane and McHenry counties, mostly paved: Another classic in the suburbs, this trail system is more than 40 miles long, extending as far south as Montgomery past Aurora, and north to Richmond in McHenry County. In northern Carpentersville the Fox River Trail becomes the Prairie Trail, which goes off the river and into pretty McHenry County. But a favorite family spot is around the Tri-Cities, through St. Charles, Geneva and Batavia. You can ride both sides of the river in spots, or even surrounded by it, on Island Park in Geneva (though the trail through the park will be closed, and users detoured, for most of the summer starting June 12). You can stop in any of the downtowns for dining, snacks or bike shops. Another good spot is East Dundee, where you can start and come back to a Dairy Queen or other eateries downtown. A more out-of-the-way access point is the Blackhawk County Forest Preserve south of South Elgin. You’d have to drive there, but the parking is ample and you can picnic before or after in this peaceful place along the river.

Millennium Trail

Lake County, crushed limestone and paved: Lake County is working on a trail system throughout the county, but for now there are a few segments that make good rides. Its core starts at the Lakewood Forest Preserve at Fairfield Road and Route 176. You can park there and, with knobby tires, you and the family can ride nice loops within the forest preserve. You can also ride to and from Mundelein on a paved trail along Hawley Road. Other segments are along the Round Lake Bike Path, Hook Drive east through Rollins Savanna Forest Preserve in Grayslake, and from Bonner Heritage Farm to the McDonald Woods Forest Preserve in Lindenhurst.

Smaller trails

Deer Grove Trail and Palatine Trail

Deer Grove Forest Preserve, Palatine: One of the older trails in the Northwest suburbs, the Deer Grove Trail offers a simple ride for the family, at about 4 paved miles. And you can ride more paved miles through Palatine on the Palatine Trail. Either one is easily accessed from Palatine neighborhoods, or off Quentin and Dundee roads.

Pratt’s Wayne Woods and James “Pate” Philip State Park

Bartlett and Wayne: Park at the state park off Stearns Road and ride the limestone trails within or the nearby Pratt’s Wayne Woods;http://www.dupageforest.com/Conservation/ForestPreserves/Pratt__39 to the south, where you’ll find a nice loop. It’s a pretty, peaceful ride through prairie and woods.

Hawk Hollow and Mallard Lake forest preserves

Bartlett: If you’re from Bartlett you have easy access to these two forest preserves off Stearns and County Farm roads. They offer pretty rides through the forest and around Mallard Lake, a few miles each on crushed limestone.

West Branch DuPage River Trail

Blackwell and Warrenville Grove forest preserves, Warrenville/West Chicago/Winfield: Go off the Illinois Prairie Path at Butterfield Road east of Route 59 and you can ride into this forested area, circling a loop a couple miles in.

Herrick Lake and Danada

Trails and forest preserves: And farther east off Butterfield Road you’ll find these forested and lakeside trails, about 4 miles’ worth. You’ll find picnic areas here, and a trail is planned to someday connect these trails to the Morton Arboretum.

Morton Arboretum

Lisle: Speaking of, the arboretum touts its 9 miles of paved roads inside, and even offers bike rentals. The main entrance is off Route 53.

Springbrook Prairie

Naperville: About 7 miles of crushed limestone trails, most in a loop, offer a nice ride quite literally through prairie in this preserve on Naperville’s west end between 75th and 87th streets. A windy day makes for a tough ride here, but otherwise it’s peaceful.

In the neighborhood

You might know better than anyone if your neighborhood is a good one for taking the family out on the side streets. But many suburbs offer marked bike routes.

Schaumburg: Schaumburg marks bike lanes on many, many of its streets, providing many bike trips without worrying about major traffic. The village offers bike paths along major roads, too, even up to the Woodfield area, but the neighborhoods are definitely a nicer option. Its bike map offers “Schaumburg’s Top Ten Bike Paths.”

Arlington Heights: You’ll find “bike route” signs throughout, providing many ways through the village and to and from downtown with minimal fuss.

Naperville: You can get a map provided by the city where its bike routes are marked. You can easily get to and from downtown, including via a paved trail along Hobson Road and 75th Street.

Bartlett: Off Bartlett’s downtown you’ll find paved trails up Stearns Road or down South Bartlett Road, connecting to the Hawk Hollow and Mallard Lake forest preserves. Or a few more miles of paved trails take you through the village.

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Want more?

This doesn’t nearly cover all the trail and riding options in the suburbs. Find more info at:

• Mikebentley.com: Loads of links to maps and information
• TrailLink.com is run by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and provides links to several Illinois trails.
• The Active Transportation Alliance offers an excellent map showing all the bike trails and bike-friendly roads in the suburbs and Chicago.
• And consult county, forest preserve and village websites for information and any closures and construction updates.

Key bike safety tips

The League of Illinois Bicyclists, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the best local bike shops offer common bike safety tips.

• Wear a helmet: Yes, it’s common advice despite some holdouts. All it takes is one bump on the head to create a major injury.
• Properly fit the helmet: Too many kids’ (and adults’) helmets are tilted backward on their heads. The helmet should be level so that it covers the forehead, and the straps should be snug on the chin.
• Properly fit your bicycle: There should be 1 to 2 inches between you and the top bar if using a road bike and 3 to 4 inches if a mountain bicycle. The seat should be level front to back. The seat height should be adjusted to allow a slight bend at the knee when the leg is fully extended. The handlebar height should be at the same level with the seat.
• Check your equipment: Before riding, inflate tires properly and check to make sure your brakes work.
• See and be seen: Wearing neon, fluorescent or other bright colors is recommended at all hours. Have reflectors and perhaps lights, too, on your bikes.
• Watch for road or trail hazards: Be on the lookout for hazards such as potholes, broken glass, gravel, puddles, leaves and dogs. If you are in the lead, yell out and point to the hazard to those behind you. When in doubt, go slower.
• Go with the traffic flow: Ride on the right in the same direction as other vehicles.
• Obey all traffic laws. A bicycle is a vehicle and you’re a driver. When you ride in the street, obey all traffic signs, signals and lane markings.
• Be predictable. Ride in a straight line and single file. Signal your moves to others.

The League of Illinois Bicyclists offers “bike safety sheets” with which you can teach and quiz your kids. Download them from bikelib.org/safety-education/kids/bike-safety-sheet. Also see websites of bike shops like The Bike Rack in St. Charles, thebikerack.com

Related media

Related files

• Millennium Trail map
• Schaumburg Bike Path Map
• Schaumburg Bike Top Ten Morton Arboretum map
• Deer Grove Trail map
• Lake County trail map
• Bartlett bike map
• Arlington Hts bike map
• Des Plaines bike map

by JOHN GREENFIELD on APRIL 16, 2012
Source: http://gridchicago.com/2012/bike-and-proud-red-bike-and-green-promotes-cycling-to-african-americans/

Last Saturday’s kickoff ride – photo courtesy of RBG

All Chicagoans should have a chance to reap the benefits of urban biking: cheap, convenient transportation, improved physical and mental health, and good times with friends and family. The proliferation of nonprofit bicycle shops and youth education programs, along with the rising popularity of fixies among inner-city teens, is starting to broaden the demographics of cycling here. But the local bike scene still doesn’t reflect our city’s ethnic and economic diversity. Eboni Senai Hawkins, 34, wants to change that. She recently launched the Chicago chapter of Red Bike and Green, a nationwide group that promotes bicycling in the black community.

Raised in New York City, Hawkins first experienced transportation cycling as a teen after she won a scholarship for a study abroad program in southeast Thailand, doing volunteer work with Laotian and Hmong refugees. “There were no phones and biking was the main way to get around,” she says. “If you wanted to talk to someone you had to bike to their house in heavy traffic.” Her interest revived when she moved to the bike-crazy San Francisco Bay Area seven years ago for art school.

In Oakland, a multiethnic East Bay city with a large African-American population, she began riding with Red Bike and Green (RBG), named after the tricolor Black Liberation Flag. Jenna Burton founded the group there in 2007 with the goal of creating a “relevant and sustainable” black bike culture. “She’s kind of the momma of it all,” says Hawkins. Burton drafted a “3 Point Plan” outlining the power of cycling to address some of the challenges facing African Americans: health problems caused by lack of exercise and access to nutritious food, economic hardships and exposure to air pollution due to “environmental racism.”

Hawkins at Blue City Cycles, 3201 S. Halsted – photo by Richard Pack

Hawkins at Blue City Cycles, 3201 S. Halsted – photo by Richard Pack

In addition to monthly cruises for families with kids, RBG organizes First Friday rides to Oakland Art Murmur, a gallery open house which takes place on a street that’s been closed to car traffic. “It’s a predominantly white art walk, very much the clash of the hipsters,” says Hawkins. “There’s that whole conversation about who’s allowed to be in public space. So riding through Art Murmur is a way for RBG to be visible and show unity within the African-American community.” The rides currently draw dozens of participants, mostly young adults in their twenties and thirties, and the group now has branches in New York and Atlanta as well.

Hawkins moved to Chicago last year for an internship at the Museum of Contemporary Art, drawn to the city’s growing sustainability movement, but she missed the camaraderie she’d felt with other cyclists of color in Oakland. “I really wanted to bring my Bay Area community here and feel connected to them while forging connections here as well,” she says. In October she partnered with theMajor Taylor Cycling Club, a mostly middle-aged group that organizes South Side road rides, launching the local RBG chapter with a two-wheeled tour of Hyde Park and Bronzeville that highlighted black-owned businesses and historical sites.

Last Saturday she ushered in the warm-weather biking season with a leisurely, ten-mile tour of African-American landmarks on the Near South and Near West sides. This summer she plans to organize monthly rides and collaborate with other black bike groups like The Pioneers, a South Side club that does social rides, and she also wants to promote urban agriculture with bike tours that visit community gardens in African-American neighborhoods. “I feel like there’s a lot of ‘silos’ right now and I hope that RBG can be a connector between those silos,” she says.

Photo courtesy of RBG

Hawkins acknowledges that pushing pedaling in Chicago’s African-American community will be more difficult than it was in Oakland, a much smaller city where cycling was already a fairly mainstream form of transportation. “The bike community here seems to be very neighborhood-driven,” she says. “From what I’ve seen of the South Side, bikes are really just for recreation and not for running short errands or getting to other places. Things are so spread out that convincing someone to choose a bike over a car is going to be really hard.”

“In the Bay Area there was such a culture around it,” she adds. “I would ride my bike to the club and no one would think anything of it. You have your toe clips and you have your heels on, you bike to the club, you lock up your bike and you go. I haven’t tried that here yet but I hope to this summer and to be more of an example that way.”

The ride stops at Bronzeville Community Garden, 51st and Calumet – photo courtesy of RBG

The ride stops at Bronzeville Community Garden, 51st and Calumet – photo courtesy of RBG

The idea behind RBG is to build the African-American bike community, but what’s the policy if other folks want to come along for the ride? “In the Bay Area where there’s such a culture of inclusiveness, there has been a lot of misunderstanding of what the rides are and who they’re supposed to support,” she says. “In Chicago I haven’t encountered that misunderstanding. People get it. From a visual perspective, I do think it’s important for neighborhoods that are predominantly African-American to see a critical mass of African Americans on bikes. But if somebody wants to join the ride and they understand that this is a group to promote health, economic vitality and environmental awareness in the black community, and they want to support those goals, hey that’s fine.”

In fact, Hawkins also wants to organize multiethnic events in Chicago, bringing together cyclists from various backgrounds in a city that’s still heavily segregated. For example, she currently lives in the largely Puerto Rican Humboldt Parkneighborhood and is interested in staging a joint ride between RBG and local bike education center West Town Bikes as a show of solidarity. “In Oakland it was so multicultural there was a need to establish an African-American identity,” she says. “Here it’s kind of the reverse. There isn’t always that multicultural element to the bike community so there’s a need to unite people through cycling.”

by NPR STAFF
April 14, 2012

Bad Religion (cover)

The United States ranks as the most religious country in the developed world. And New York Times columnist Ross Douthat says that despite our politics, debates and doubts, this country is as God-besotted today as ever.

But in his new book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, Douthat argues that religion has fallen into heresy (hence the feisty subtitle). Douthat recently spoke with NPR’s Linda Wertheimer about why he thinks American Christianity has become distorted.

Interview Highlights

On the decline of institutional Christianity

“Institutional religion in the United States — institutional Christianity in particular — is much, much weaker today than it was 40 years ago. But religion itself is as strong as ever. … But the eclipse of institutional faith, and the eclipse of what I would say was a kind of a Christian center that the country used to have, has created a landscape where religion divides us much more than it used to.”

On heresies

“The heresies that I write about are what flourish in the vacuum that’s left by institutional Christianity’s decline. So if the country remains religious, but the institutional churches are weaker than they used to be, what steps into the breach?”

On the heresy of The Da Vinci Code

“I start with the project to basically go back into the gospels of the early church … and to sort of fashion a Jesus who seems to fit the modern world better than the Jesus of the Nicene Creed. And this project is best embodied by Dan Brown and by The Da Vinci Code. … Brown himself is very explicit that he has a theological, philosophical message about what direction Christianity — what direction religion — should go in. And that direction is toward this alternative Jesus that he’s sketched out, who is … a much more congenial figure for a lot of Americans than the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”

On the heresy of the prosperity gospel

Josh Haner/Free Press - Ross Douthat's conservative commentary has been printed in The New-York-Times, The Atlantic and other publications. He is the author of Privilegeand the co-author of Grand New Party.

“From there I move toward heresies that are about money, basically, and about the idea that God wants you to get rich. This is the prosperity gospel. It’s Joel Osteen. It’s the televangelist you see on TV. All of these heresies I talk about speak to aspects of contemporary life, where traditional Christianity rubs up against the way we live now, and people don’t like it. … We’re a rich country. We’re a capitalist country. We’re a country of strivers and go-getters. And the prosperity gospel says that’s what God wants. God wants you to be rich. Which is not precisely the message of the New Testament.”

On the heresy of Eat, Pray, Love

“From there I move to what I call the god within, which is the heresy of Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love, of Oprah Winfrey, of Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle. … It’s less that God wants you to be rich and more that God is there to make you feel happy about yourself. And that the point of spiritual wisdom is not necessarily strenuous prayer and fasting and moral transformation. It’s more sort of blessing impulses you already have. … This ends up putting a kind of Christian stamp on narcissism, where the things we already want to do, we tell ourselves, are things that God wants us to do, too.

On what Christians should do about these heresies

“I don’t have sort of a five-point plan for rebuilding Christianity in America. … The main point that I’m trying to make is that whatever happens to the institutional churches, individual Christians can try to essentially be better Christians, and honor the complications and paradoxes and tensions of this ancient faith a little better, and not just go as quickly to the easy answer.”

Read an excerpt of Bad Religion

On Christianity’s staying power

“I’m not without hope. I mean, Christianity is a 2,000-year-old religion. And if you look back across these various crises in Christianity’s past, there’s again and again been an assumption: Well, the Roman Empire is falling and Christianity will fall with it. Islam is rising, and it’s going to just erase Christianity from the map. Charles Darwin has just disproved Christianity, and nobody’s ever going to hear from it again. And Christianity has been very resilient.”

Bike The Drive - Southern Terminus

A collection of images made over the past half decade of the Bike The Drive cycling event.

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The folks at Adobe have been busy putting the finishing touches on their latest Creative Suite release. Photoshop is moving to CS6 and with that comes a rafter of new features. One of this is related to “controllable” blur effects.

In the past the blur was indiscriminate in that it was not feathered to simulate the way in which a lens moves from unsharp to sharp and then back to unsharp as you eyes searches out the focal point of the image.

Original Image

Original Image

In this image taken with a 10mm Nikkor 1 prime lens for the Nikon 1 V1 you can see that there is a generous amount of depth of field. In 35mm terms this lens is a moderate wide-angle probably equivalent to a 27mm for that format.

The first step in the processing is to adjust the exposure, tonal range and noise reduction in Lightroom 4. This image like all the ones I take are usually in NEF format. NEF is a proprietary version of the RAW format. During the import of my images they are converted into DNG format which though proprietary is the “open source” variant used by Adobe.

For those of you who are interested in arcane information the NEF format contains additional information about the Active D-Lighting settings used in your camera during exposure. This information is used by products like Nikon Capture NX2 to control the contrast range of the image being rendered.

Today however with the advent of Adobe Camera RAW 7.1 you really don’t have to rely on proprietary data like that available in Nikon NEF files. You can literally “pull out” shadow detail in DNG files that are nearly as wide in dynamic range as HDR images! And you can do all of this with a single exposure rather than two or more.

Field Blur Added

Field Blur and Bokeh Filter Applied

Adobe now offers at least three blur filter variants. These are:

• Field Blur
• Iris Blur
• Tilt-Shift Blur

The idea is to allow you apply one or more of these filters in one or more places on your image to “build up” an image made with what appears to be a lens with shallower depth-of-field and a healthy dose of “bokeh“.

As you can see by using a shallow depth-of-field you can cause the viewers eye to focus on that specific area of interest in your image that you desire. It can of course be used to excess but it is nice to know that you can (by means of relatively inexpensive software) give an occasional image exactly what you might have gotten with a very expensive lens.

And because you can apply this all after exposure it gives you the freedom to apply it to images made with any lens in your arsenal. Normally a 27mm lens for a 35mm camera would never be able to render an image with this shallow a depth of field at this focal distance. It could produce a similar effect if used inches away from a much smaller subject.

A Short Video

Julieanne Kost is the Senior Digital Imaging Evangelist for Adobe. If you have the time and the interest you can watch her describe how these blur filters can be applied. It is a well done video so even if you are not quite ready to plunge into this area of post processing it might still be a way of piquing your interest for a time in future when you might just decide to head in this direction.

Liquified Leaves (Click to Enlarge)

Adobe Photoshop has a nice filter that can be applied to just about anything. This one is labelled “LIQUIFY” and essentially gives the image a look reminiscent of that used by David Hockney back in the day when Polaroid SX-70 film was still available.

The leaves that have undergone this filter look as if they are underwater. It is a very calming and soothing effect from my point of view.

Enjoy!

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Foliage in our yard.

An assortment of the plants that provide a border around our front yard.

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Summary

Haymarket Square Memorial

Rode to the Haymarket Square Memorial Statue and waited for the group to arrive from Humboldt Park. But we discovered that the flat I had fixed in the parking lot had not held. So we decided to drop out of the ride. When I got home it was finally discovered that the patching had worked but there was some reason that the Presta valve was not seating internally and was leaking. Eventually got that problem solved.

Cyclometer Info

Distance: 2.6 miles
Time: 0h 22m 11s

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Experimental images from the Forest Home Cemetery series.

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