I’ve been getting ready to sell my beloved Nikon D70, its lenses and its speedlight to upgrade to a Canon Rebel XSi with twice the megapixels and some nice new lenses. Anyway, before selling the camera body I wanted to clean out the dust in it. It had dust in it when I bought it (used) and I never really noticed it affecting my images I left it. The dust got worse but I never knew how bad it was until I tested it.

Quick Summary

• Find out how dirty the sensor is by photographing a light solid item (sky, paper) for several seconds.
• Choose from one of the following options:
  • Send it to the manufacturer: $50-70
  • Buy a cleaning kit and do it yourself: $40-70
  • Find a local shop with an experienced sensor cleaning person: $15-30
• Evaluate whether or not the cleaning was successful and decide if you need to try another option.
• From now on, only change lenses in a dust absolved vacuum chamber. Naked.

Testing the Dust Level:
To see the dust on your sensor, set your fstop to F22 or as high as it will go and set the shutter speed to somewhere around 4-10 seconds. Then take a picture of something solid and bright, like the sky or a white piece of paper. It doesn’t hurt to move the camera around a bit while the shutter is open because the idea is to see what’s on the sensor - and that that will show up better if there is no detail in the image. When you’re finished, bring the image into photoshop or a similar program and crank the the contrast up or play with levels and curves to see what you’ve got. Mine looked something like this:

Pretty bad. After watching several videos and reading several articles on cleaning your camera sensor, I decided to try blowing it out first. I didn’t have the little rocket pump blower that I see all over the web and I’m a cheapskate so I used a small electric pump that is made to inflate air mattresses. I figured that would be better than me blowing into it and spitting on the sensor.

Blowing it out:
In order to gain access to the sensor, I had to set the mirror lock to ‘on’. This is a setting on the Nikon D70 menu and I would suppose that other cameras probably have a similar setting. This locks the mirror up and keeps it there until you power the camera off. With the mirror up I gave the camera a quick blow with inflater pump and then took another picture to see if it helped. Nothing. I blew it out some more but no matter what I did there was no effect. My sensor was just plain dirty.

Options:
1) Send it in to the manufacturer for cleaning. Cost: $60. Time: 1-4 weeks! Gimme a break.
2) Buy a cleaning kit. There are tons to choose from. Cost: $70. Time: Several days. I’m too cheap.
3) Call around and find someone to do it for you! Cost: $20. Time: 30 Minutes. Hallelujah!

In case you haven’t figured it out based on option 3 above, I started calling camera shops in the area. The first one said they’d send it to the manufacturer and it would take 4-6 weeks and cost $60. No thanks. The next shop I called said they had a guy in house who regularly cleaned sensors and had a cleaning kit to do it with. They used the tape version, which you place on the sensor then lift off (and hopefully lift the gunk off with it). I dropped it off, picked it up after running an errand and then shot the following image:

Nice, huh? I couldn’t believe it! It was perfectly clean. I was fooled, though, because when I looked through the viewfinder I saw dust still. Not nearly as much but some. As it turns out, none of that dust shows up on pictures so I figure it must be in the view finder.

Moral of the Story:
Call around and find a camera shop that has someone who has experience cleaning sensors and let them give it a shot. If you don’t feel comfortable with this, there’re always options 1 and 2. If you’re like me, option 3 is great. They will forewarn you that they may not be able to get it all the way clean. In my case, they were able to. Yippy!

If you live in Utah County (UT):
Go to Allen’s Camera. The kids at the counter may not know what you’re talking about so call ahead and make sure. I visited the Orem store and the owner took care of it. $20!

Tags: tutorials by nils
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• Photoshop Version Used: CS3
• Difficulty Level (out of 10): 5
• Time to Complete: 25 minutes

Sometimes images just need a little something extra. While playing around with brush settings in Photoshop one day I realized that you could really have some fun when you combined the power of a stroked path with different brush setting combinations and layer effects. This tutorial was created in Photoshop CS3 but should work for the last few versions (and hopefully upcoming versions) of Photoshop as well. Let’s get started.
Note- I did this on a laptop with a trackpad (no mouse, no tablet) so no special hardware is required.

The Original Image
If you’d like to follow along with this image, click on it to view the full size version and then download it.

1. Create a Path with the Pen Tool.

Using the pen tool (P), click on the path button in the toolbar (see image above). Start to create a path, point by point, keeping in mind any areas that might wrap around or travel through the existing objects. To create smooth bezier curves, just click and drag as you create a new point. This will extend handles from the point that you can manipulate to adjust the path. ideally, you’ll want to keep your curves smooth and graceful. Below is the start of my path.

Continue the path until it is complete. The images here show the points and handles used to make my path. If a point doesn’t come out just how you’d like it to, simply use the Direct Selection Tool (A) to grab either the points or their handles and drag them until you’ve got a good looking path. Be sure to use the white arrow direct selection tool- the Path Selection Tool (black arrow) will not work.

2. Prepare the Brush Settings

Once the path has been created, we need to get our brush ready. We’re going to start by selecting a solid orange color. I used #ff8a00 in this case. Set it as the foreground color.

With the color loaded, select a brush shape that has some unbalance to it. The grass brush, the leaf brush or one of the faux finish brushes will work fine. If you select a round brush, there won’t be much texture or flame on the path. The next set of adjustments will vary based on the size of the image you’re working on and how big a flame path you want.

Open the brushes palette (F5) and check the Shape Dynamics box. Set the Size jitter to 100% and the Minimum Diameter to 30% or less. Set the Control method to Pen Pressure. This will allow the ends of the path to taper down. Set the Angle Jitter and Roundness Jitter to around 10-20%.

Next, click on Scattering and set as shown below. Adjust as necessary to get a jagged path.

3. Create a New Layer(Shft Ctrl N). For the sake of reference, I’ll name this layer brush1.

Activate the Paths tab (Windows>Paths) again and right click on the path that you created. Select “Stroke Path”.
Make sure that the “simulate pressure” box is checked as this will cause the tapering at the ends. Voila! You should now have a textured line of orange fire.

Because the paint that we just laid down is on its own layer, we can manipulate it at will without effecting the path that we have stroked. In this example, I’ll actually be manipulating additional copies of the original image rather than the stroked path.

Copy the iphone image layer (layer 1) using ctrl j (command j on a mac) and drag this newly created layer above the brush1 layer. I chose to rename this layer “coverup”.
Using a selection tool, such as the marquee tool (m), polygonal lasso tool (l) or any other method you choose, create a selection around the object that the fire will wrap around. You really only need to focus on the areas where the fire will go behind or in front of the object.
Then, use the eraser tool (e) to erase the section of the object where you want the fire to be visible. Once that is erased, invert the selection (ctrl i, command i on the mac) and erase the rest of the path that is outside the object, as shown below.
The object of this layer is just to cover up part of the path where the object is (the iphone in this case) to make it look like the fire wraps around the object.

The next step is to apply an outer glow to the fire whip. To do so, double click on the ‘brush1′ layer (the fire layer) and select “outer glow”. I chose a red glow with the settings shown below:

Now it’s time to create the next part of the fire path. Duplicate the brush1 layer and name it brush2. Delete the contents of the layer by selecting all (ctrl a, command a on a mac) and hitting the backspace key (delete key on a mac). Now activate the brush tool (b) and select a round solid brush, about 9px in diameter.
Choose a nice orange or yellow color as your foreground color. Open the paths palette and stroke the path just as you did the first time. You may want to go back to the layers palette and play around with the transparency of the brush2 layer that you created. We’re just about finished.

To finish the image off, we’re going to create a reflection of the fire whip at the bottom of the object. To do so, use the polygonal lasso tool (l) and select the area just outside the iphone. Be sure to select more of the fire whip than you think you’ll need as we’ll be erasing a bit of it.
When you’ve got it selected, copy merged (edit>copy merged or ctrl shift c, cmd shift c on a mac) then paste it (ctrl v, cmd v on a mac). Make sure the newly created layer is above the other visible layers.

To make it look reflected, Transform the reflection layer (ctrl t, cmd t on a mac), right click on it and select “flip vertical”. Hit Enter to apply the transformation. Use the move tool (v) to drag it just below so it lines up with the existing iPhone reflection.
With the new fire whip reflection in place, activate the eraser (e) and soften the edges all the way (shift [) and make sure the eraser is large enough to create a soft and light erasing. You may decide to adjust the opacity of the brush to make this task smooth but even at 100% opacity you should be fine.

That's it! Hopefully your "fire whip" turned out well. Please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions below. Thanks and have fun designing!

Tags: photoshop, tutorials by nils
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There’s nothing more annoying than scratching your head and seeing a mist of nasty dead skin cells showering down before you. Welcome to my life. I’ve been using dandruff shampoos for at least six or seven years now and have managed to control it fairly well. This summer, however, I noticed that it was really getting out of hand again. This is a review of what I’ve learned.

Head & Shoulders, Pert Plus: For many years I just used Head and Shoulders or Pert Plus along with some conditioner and that kept the flakes under control. When my scalp needed some variety, I would switch it up a bit. Eventually neither of these seemed to do the job.

Selson Blue: For the past couple of years I have been using Selson Blue and have been pleased with it. I’m a dry scalped guy but the Blue seemed to keep it in check. I used it every day and then conditioned afterward. This has been all fine and dandy until about six months ago when the Blue just wasn’t cutting it.

Denorex: Thinking that my scalp may have grown accustomed to Selson Blue and perhaps needed some shock therapy, I bought a bottle of Denorex. I used it for several months and noticed that my dandruff only seemed to get worse. It got really bad. Itch my head all night kind of bad. Wipe my shoulders every two minutes kind of bad. Could make a black sheet of paper turn white with a few scratches kind of bad. Anyway, I was none too impressed with Denorex. It sits in my shower caddy still, unused, unwanted.

Neutrogena T-Gel: After doing some internet research I learned that some others have had success with Neutrogena’s T-Gel shampoo. I tried it out and have been using it for about a month now. I’m pleased to announce that the dandruff is mostly controlled now. It’s not totally gone but it is better.

Nizoral: My next step is to move to Nizoral if the T-Gel doesn’t completely cut it. Nizoral has a patented ingredient proven to be effective against dandruff and the early disposing of skin cells. I think it’s more expensive than the others but they’re all pricey if you want the good stuff. At this point, I’ll happily pay $15/bottle if it means not having do deal with the flakes.

LESSONS LEARNED

• Keep it Fresh - Your scalp (or at least mine) tends to grow somewhat immune to certain shampoos. Changing things up once in a while might do the trick.
• Not Just Your Scalp - Your scalp is not the only thing effected by Pityrosporum ovale, or P. ovale (the wee little fungus that causes dandruff) - it can effect your face (especially by the nose), neck, shoulders and chest, too! I have dry flaky spots on my face on either side of my nose and sometimes just above my nose. These have been almost directly correlated with my dandruff but I never made the connection until reading this article. So if you’ve got dry spots that are dandruff like, but not on your scalp, use the dandruff shampoo on them, too!
• It Takes More than Shampoo - Many things can contribute to dandruff including stress, lack of sleep, poor hygiene, diet and many more. In my case, I only sleep about four or five hours a night and I can’t just fix that. I’m a busy guy. So I hope to overcome the effects of improper sleep by finding the right shampoo - if that’s even possible.
• Let it Tingle - If you’re in the habit of applying shampoo, lathering it in and then quickly rinsing it out, break the habit. In order for dandruff shampoo to work effectively it needs time to work its magic. Let it sit for a few minutes. Sing a song. Repeat your daily affirmations. Shave something. Do whatcha gotta do to let the stuff work.

If you have any insightful advice or experience to share please leave a comment. Like so many others, my quest to conquer dandruff is far from ended.

-Nils

Tags: random insights by nils
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