(A Retrospective)

Diving right in!  We’ve decided to start off this project by learning Python- specifically, the manipulation of pictures.  Sara and I are using Mark Guzdial and Barbara Ericson’s “Introduction to Computing and Programming in Python, A Multimedia Approach”, and after skimming the first few chapters and reading up on the three-part makeup of pixels, we tried a few problems of our own, with questionably professional test images.

“clearRed” was easy enough to understand- I’m loving how simple for-loops are in Python compared to Java or C; we basically pick an index to represent each pixel of the function’s input picture, and then cycle through each pixel and modify the numeric value of- in this case- the “red” component.

So, this is Zon, our source image and the result after we applied “clearRed”.  It’s really the sun, but it took us about ten minutes to figure out that “zon”, which was the file’s name, is not German, but in fact Dutch.  I know, right?  You learn something new every day.

Zon and Apocolypse Zon

After getting used to single for-loops and manipulating (or removing) colors, we tried Posterization, which lumps values together based on their luminance, “flattening” a picture (like a poster!)

Next we moved on to nested for-loops and multiple input images, which lets us get into more interesting effects like blurring (averaging the luminance values of surrounding pixels) and line-detection, which looks at the absolute value of the luminance of surrounding pixels.

Basically, a whole lot of fun in which we messed with a picture of a monkey.

George, Posterized George, and Blurry/Line-erific George