Alright, let me tell you about my “traffic pearly queen” adventure. Buckle up, it’s a bit of a ride!
It all started when I was messing around with some image processing stuff. I wanted to see if I could make a cool visual effect, something that looked like light trails or maybe even some kind of iridescent sheen. So, first things first, I grabbed a bunch of images of traffic at night. You know, those long exposure shots where the headlights and taillights turn into streaks of color.
Then came the fun part – the coding. I started by trying to isolate the bright parts of the image, the light trails themselves. I messed around with different thresholding techniques, basically trying to say, “Okay, everything above this brightness value is part of a light trail.” It took a while to get the right balance; too low, and I’d get all sorts of noise; too high, and I’d lose the fainter parts of the trails.
Once I had a decent mask of the light trails, I started playing with color manipulation. I experimented with shifting the hues, adding saturation, and even trying to create a gradient effect along the length of the trails. The goal was to give them that pearly, iridescent look – like an oil slick or a soap bubble.
One of the trickiest parts was blending the modified light trails back into the original image. I didn’t want it to look like they were just slapped on top. I tried using different blending modes (overlay, soft light, etc.) and adjusting the opacity to get a natural-looking integration. I also played around with blurring the edges of the trails to soften the transition.
After a lot of tweaking and experimenting, I finally got something that I was reasonably happy with. It wasn’t perfect, but it definitely had that “traffic pearly queen” vibe I was going for. The light trails had a subtle iridescent shimmer, and they seemed to blend seamlessly into the background.
Here’s a quick rundown of the steps I took:
- Grabbed a bunch of traffic photos.
- Isolated the light trails using thresholding.
- Messed with the colors to create an iridescent effect.
- Blended the modified trails back into the original image.
- Tweaked everything until it looked somewhat decent.
It was a fun little project, and I learned a lot about image processing along the way. I’m thinking of trying it again with different types of images – maybe some landscapes or portraits – to see what other cool effects I can create.
