The Sweet Life of Sierra Sugar

Working out of town last week and I took my +Influenster #GoVoxBox items with me, including +Aqua Spa Bath Salts to help me relax after traveling over 400miles to work then busy days in a strange office processing 360 charts.  Whew!  

I am usually a shower person and not very big on Lavender. HOWEVER, I have to say the #Lavender  + #Chamomile  Bath Salts

I have been a member of Influenster for some time now, thanks to my friend both in and out of Second Life, Ashley Dickerson for introducing me. This latest VoxBox makes it four times now in the past year that I have had the pleasure of testing several items sent to me from Influenster. This latest being Colgate® Optic White™ Toothbrush + Built-In Whitening Pen. I know from past testing that the Optic White toothpaste works great. I actually like the new built in whitening pen. Colgate uses a gel inside of a pen. Turn the base of the pen two clicks to push a bit of the gel up into the built-in soft plastic brush of the pen the smooth across your teeth. The gel takes a little getting used to, but once you do it's not bad. The gel, while it doesn't stay on as long as the strips for obvious reasons, doesn't have a bad taste and still gets the job done. Other whitening brands use whitening strips. To me those feel funny and after a couple uses the concentration of the chemicals actually makes my teeth hurt. While I brush my teeth twice a day and try to have good oral hygiene, I also tend to drink a fair amount of tea, coffee, and Dr. Pepper. A little extra whitening power never hurts. ‪So many thanks to Influenster and Colgate for introducing me to another wonderful product. Give it a try and see for yourself. Before Day 4 #‎Influenster‬ ‪#‎BrushWhitenGO‬ ‪#‎Colgate‬ ‪#‎Voxbox‬

                                with Nectresse from @influenster Sugar and Spice Voxbox:

For the batter:
6 Tbsp Salted butter
4 Large Eggs
1 cup All Purpose Flour
1 cup Lowfat Milk
1 packet NECTRESSE

For the Compote:
3 Large Peaches, peeled and diced (or substitute 1 can of sliced peaches)
3 Packets NECTRESSE (or substitute 1/2 cup sugar)
2 Bananas sliced
1/4 cup Water
1/4 cup Orange Juice
1 Tbsp salted butter
1 tsp Lemon Juice
Pinch of Cinnamon

Preheat oven to 425

Step 1: Cut butter into 12 even pieces.  Put one piece in the bottom of each section of a non-stick muffin pan.  Put pan on the middle rack of the oven.  While butter is melting prepare the batter.

Step 2: In a blender, add eggs, flour, milk, and sweetener.  Blend on high until smooth, about 20-30 seconds.

Step 3: When butter is bubbling in the muffin tins, pour batter from the blender into each cavity of the pan (1/2 - 2/3 way full).

Step 4: Bake for 22-25 minutes, until pancakes have puffed and are golden brown (You may still notice a slight depression in the puffs with a bit of melted butter, this is ok).

Step 5: While pancakes are baking,prepare the compote by placing all the ingredients (except the sliced bananas) into a saucepan and cooking over medium heat, stirring constantly, for at least 5 minutes, until the peaches are soft and most of the water has cooked off.  Turn heat to low and fold in bananas.

Step 6: Remove pancakes from oven and place pan on cooling rack.  Using a spoon or small offset spatula, pop the pancake puffs out of the pan and place onto a serving plate.  Serve immediately and spoon the warm compote over the top of each puff.

(a little deviation from what i normally blog about.  But i love to cook and bake, and these were a definite hit here in the house.)

"I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes."   (Nectresse)

I love plurk! There are so many amazing people on plurk and they are always sharing pictures, ideas, and just about anything you can imagine.  Today a link to a fun program was shared and I feel like Christmas came early!

Pixlr is a free web-based photo darkroom editor that adds old-fashion film darkroom processing effects, overlays, and boarders to images.  Its incredibly powerful, streamlined, and yet simply and fast to use.  Needless to say I. Am. In love!

Oh!  It gets better. Did I mention that it is also available to DOWNLOAD and use free on your computer, iphone, or android phone?  Oh yes!

Wait.

Wait!

And there is still more. (Do I sound like an infomercial yet?) There is also a free web-based graphics program you can use for regular photo editing.  Its much like GIMP or Photoshop.  The controls are almost exactly like Photoshop.  It too is insanely easy to use.  I forsee this program getting LOTS of use by me in the near and far future.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

For anything you want to do in Photoshop there are a dozen ways to do them. Greenscreen removal is no exception. If you're lucky enough to have a program like Mask Pro by On One, it will do the job nicely with just a few clicks. However, those programs can be expensive, and with just a few extra steps you can do the removal and clean up yourself. This is a method I picked up from a tutorial originally written by Ryker Beck on the old Rezzable website back in 2009 (thank you 1Angel for locating the source since my memory and HD wipe failed). However, this method continues to work well for me when I'm not using Mask Pro. If you have other methods you've found that work well for you please do share them in the comments area. I am by no means an expert in Photoshop. I'm self taught and am always looking for new/easier/better ways to do any given task.

"Greenscreen" is a generic term for any picture where the subject is photographed in front of a solid, bright/neon, primary color. Neon lime green tends to be the most commonly used, however a bright electric blue or hot pink (or any similar striking color) works as well. In Second Life the "Greenscreen" is created using a solid colored prim set to full bright as the background.

For this tutorial I am using an older greenscreen picture taken before my new graphics card, so many of the edges are not as clean as they would be with a higher end graphics card. However it still works for the purpose of this tutorial.

1. Start with your picture. You can see the solid green background, as well as a variety of colors and transparency levels in the image.


Duplicate the background layer. Select the top copy layer and then click on the eye on the original background layer to hide it.



2. Next from your menus at the top of your screen go to Select > Color Range > choose 'Selection'. Your cursor will turn into an eye dropper and just click anywhere on the background where the green would be. Check the Invert box, then ok. You'll notice the marching ants around your image.


3. Copy your selection using ctrl + c. Make a new layer, then paste your copied selection using ctrl + p onto the new Layer 1. At this point I also hide the background copy.


4. You'll notice on the new layer the semi-transparent areas still have green. Always start by working with the semi-transparent areas that have color, and then move to areas that are black and/or white.

5. Ctrl click on the Layer 1 thumbnail to select the entire image. You'll see the marching ants around the outline again. Create a new blank layer on top of Layer 1. Change the new layer (Layer 2) to Color. Go to your eyedropper tool and select a color from Layer 1 that is next to the green that you want to replace. In this case I have a few areas of red in the hair, tan, yellow, blue on the wings, and brown that still have a green edge to them. One by one I select each color sample from the base image, choose my paintbrush tool, a small soft brush and 100% opacity, and paint along the edge. You'll see the green gets covered up with the selected color.


6. After you've painted away the green in all the color zones (leaving only the semi-transparent areas that are either black or white) you can merge your top color layer 2 with the base layer 1. At this point you can use deselect to remove the marching ants outline.

7. Now we want to remove the green from the semi-transparent black and/or white areas. Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. From the drop down box select "Greens". Move your Saturation slider all the way to the left. If you are working with black, move the Lightness slider all the way to the left. If you are working with white, move the lightness slider all the way to the right. Click ok.


8. And there you have your image completely extracted from the Green Screen and ready for any other work you need to do on it in Photoshop. I always create a new layer below the final image and use the paint bucket tool to make it solid black or white to check my image and make sure all the green was removed and I didn't miss any spots.