I've been watching TechTV's weekly Photoshop trick on The Screen Savers, and I've been pleasantly surprised to find that every Photoshop trick they've shown can be done under PSP. Last week's trick was how to use the "Levels" dialog rather than contrast-brightness controls to improve an image without losing anything. PSP calls it "Histogram equalization", but it works just the same.
Latest neat feature that I'll probably never use = the ability to script and write filters in Python using PSP's new embedded Python interpreter.
Rented a movie last week for you folks who might be suffering from the disappointment that was Matrix 2. It's Equilibrium, and it's available at your local Blockbuster's. It's basically the Matrix's kung-fu transplanted into a dopey Fahrenheit 451 plot. It's not a great movie, and I'd even say it's a stretch to call it a good movie, but it had a couple of moments. The fight-scenes, for example, were actually exciting because you felt that there was the possibility of someone actually being injured. There were some pretty cool scenes of gratuitous sword and gunplay.
I also rather liked the scenery of the film, which was a blatant borrow-and-update of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. In fact, there were some scenes that were borrowed wholesale from Lang's film, like the "Worker's March" to the factory. While this isn't even on the same plane as Metropolis, it was cool to see a re-tooling of an art-deco future.
Again, it's not a great film, but it didn't bore me.
Finally, it didn't feature any dreadlocked white cyber-ghosts, Larry Fishburne monologues, or 37 scenes of spinning frozen "bullet time".
And that's a good thing.
