The Dark Room

The Dark Room

One of the aims in creating this site was to acquire some skills required to build web pages. The Dark Room is where ideas are developed which may go on to become part of the main web pages.
However what is more likely is that the half-baked ideas will end up here permanently, so be warned that anything you find on this page may well not work correctly.
Some of the features on this page require JavaScript to be enabled on the browser. If it is enabled on your browser then your local time will be displayed on the upper right corner of this page.

Animation

This is an attempt to create an animated image. The original image was from one of the classic advertising campaigns from 1950's, the Playtex Living Girdle. Some of the other adverts showed that you could practice archery or even throw a javelin while wearing a girdle.
Considerable effort was required to extract, repair and clean up the individual frames and the action was compressed into a much smaller space to reduce the size of the file.
There is now also a much less obvious animated image somewhere on this page.

Animation Original

Animated Ad Original Ad

Restoration

Before	After

This was an exercise in repairing images and learning how to use graphical editors. Most of the images on this site required some editing to remove imperfections and adjustment of colour balance.

The most useful tool is the clone brush which can fix spots, scratches and recreate whole lost areas. The most difficult is the colour balance, even automatic colour tools seemed to get it wrong.

This is the worst image that could be found and was restored in about one hour. However learning to use the various tools in the graphical editor took about 4 weeks. Click on the Before image to view it's imperfection in more detail and then marvel at the transformation in the After image.

Activation

MaidenForm

This section is a small attempt at using JavaScript to make this page more active.

One of the recurring themes in lingerie advertisements has been the image of a fashionably dressed woman adjacent to an image showing the her wearing the foundation garments needed to achieve the look. The MaidenForm advertisements of the late 50's and early 60's were a fine example of this.

You can see a larger image of the foundations worn by clicking on the image and a larger image of the dress is available by clicking on this icon.