Leonard FFT Cohen

[Hannie]

Hubby and myself went to see Leonard Cohen perform last night, open air venue.  It was an amazing show with pick of the crop musicians and singers, what a performance.
I was too far away from the stage to take decent photos but I took a few from the video monitor next to the stage.  Even then I had to resort to digital as well as optical zoom so the photos have some noise.

In Photoshop I used the FFT filter on 2 of them and the results were good surprisingly enough.  There were a lot more white stars to paint over in the red channel this time than for instance would be usual in a textured photograph.

Hannie

[Tess (Tassie D)]

They cleaned up extremely well Hannie. :up:

[hoodman3]

Wow! Wow! Hannie we can only hope that you will get another chance to see a great artist like Mr. Cohen. Did he look OK? This guy is definitely a trooper, and I read something recently that he's really excited about touring and putting it out there, so he must be really energized even at his age. Hallelujah! Photos are  fine for the memories and they definitely give a good portrayal of the event

Thanks for sharing.

Pete

[Mhayes]

Hannie, that is really neat what you pulled off with the FFT filter! Now it looks like you got a front row seat. Sounds like a wonderful performance and you didn't get rained out!

Margie

[jneil2]

What an amazing feat of restoration, Hannie.  I tried out that filter a while back, it is really incredible.  Leonard Cohen?  I must check out his music, looks like someone I might enjoy!
Jan

[Hannie]

Jan, I only knew Leonard Cohen as a very good poet/songwriter when I was soooo very young (some 40 years ago).  I never thought much of his stage settings then.  A friend bought us the concert tickets and I wasn't prepared for the musical feast that was waiting for us.  The musicians came on stage wearing beautiful black suits and fedoras, what a great first impression! 
They played the weirdest instruments like an electronic wind instrument (Leonard called it an "instrument of the wind"!)
Different beautiful mandolins, guitars, harp, upright and el. bass and they played them so well and not once showed off.
Then there were these lady singers, 1 girl from LA and the 2 Webb sisters from the UK.  When the girls sang Cohen's "If it be your will" you could hear a pin drop.

Leonard Cohen's voice sounds better today at 74 than it ever did when he was younger, yes Pete, he looked healthy and much younger than his age and he looked really happy!  The crowd was ecstatic, the reviews of his tour so far are all raving.  If they ever make a DVD of this tour it will be worth while to buy it.

'Back on topic, I'm still surprised how the FFT worked on these photos.  The video screen photo has a very fine completely symmetrical black mesh alll over it.  Some of the columns and rows of this black mesh are filled up either too dark or too light thus showing up as streaks.
Now, the FFT filter left the black mesh completely intact and only removed those rows and columns of light/dark streaks.  The mind boggles... :wow:

Hannie

[jneil2]

Hannie, I listened to Leonard Cohen on Rhapsody. Wow!   He has quite an interesting bio--did you know he spent the 90's doing hard labor in a Buddhist monastery? 

Jan

[Hannie]

Jan, that's right and now he actually is an initiated Buddhist monk!

Hannie

[glennab]

Hannie, I love the fact that you get to so many wonderful concerts and that you know so much about the artists.  What a woman!

I'm very interested in what the FFT filter did.  That's amazing.  Do you know if there's a version for Macs yet?  If not, is it a stand-alone program or a plug-in?  Hubby has a PC but we don't have Photoshop on it.  My current restoration is making me crazy, because it has a texture on it like dried mud, and when I try to overcome the muck, I lose too much of my subject's face.  If I understand correctly from what I've read, FFT only works with a consistent pattern.  Is that the case?  Help!  Need input!

G

P.S. If you haven't seen it, there's a wonderful video on wherethehellismatt.com with gorgeous exotic music and a delightful guy named Matt Harding who does a, shall we say, distinctive dance in many parts of the world, since he loves to travel and the dance is a consistent theme during the filming of his sojourns.  There's one segment where he's dancing in a field of tulips in The Netherlands and another in Amsterdam, and I think "Hannie!" every time I watch it (which is several times a day, because it always makes me smile). In fact the video reminds me of OPR and its global reach and all of the wonderful people who are part of our effort. If you get a chance, check it out.  A word of warning: it'll probably make you cry and laugh at the same time, and it's addictive!

[Hannie]

Glenna thanks for that wonderful Mat Harding link.  The 2008 version made me smile all the way through, so much joy!  I also had a look at some of the others, dancing on that huge rock wedged between 2 cliffs...what a guy!  (I bookmarked this site, it is a great remedy for when I am in the lemon face mode...)

The FFT RGB that I use is a plug in for Photoshop.  It works when there is a repeating pattern of texture. There is a Mac version called Image, it is not a plug in but a complete program and you need  Java installed on your computer.  You can free download it here:

http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/download.html

This link has the manual:  http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/docs/

And here is an other article that may be helpful:  http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/docs/menus/process.html#fft

I hope that this will be of some help for your project, if there is any regularity in the muck it will work.
One tip, in some tuts it says you paint over the white stars with gray or black but it is better to use black only or there will be some pattern left over on your image.

:hug:

Hannie

[glennab]

Hannie, thanks for the great information on FFT.  I'll check it out.  I don't think it'll work for my precious mud-caked little boy, but there have been several instances when I could have used it.  Kurt was sweet enough to run one of my early efforts through FFT on his PC and then pass it back to me, and it did an incredible job.  (By the way, where is Kurt?  Has anyone heard from him?)

I'm glad you enjoyed Matt.  I adore the guy.  A friend happened to send me a link to his video the week I was so down, and I played it over and over and cried and cried (happy tears) because it's so simple but so affecting, and I needed a lift like I never have before.  I've read some of the responses to the latest one, and it seems to have the same effect on many people.  They cry, but they don't know why they cry.  At work I keep a window open in a small part of my monitor so I can listen to the music and take a break every so often to watch the video AGAIN (I'm in "Lemon Face Mode" - love that term - quite often at work)! His web site is a treasure trove of journals, comments, interviews, and since I couldn't work that week, I'd go to his site any time I could drag myself to the computer.  I think it helped me get through.

Cheers!

G

[stringcheese]

My first post here  !  Do you know if he did any of his old songs like " closing time "  or " bird on a Wire" ?

[Hannie]

Hi Stringcheese(great name!) and welcome , it is great to see a new face on the forum!
Yes, Leonard Cohen did both the songs you mentioned and many more.  The man performed for well over 2,5  hours, gave 3 encores and still had the energy to dance off the stage at the end!

Hannie

[Tess (Tassie D)]

Welcome to the forum stringcheese. I had to look those songs up, very nice. You can watch them here.

Closing time

Bird on a wire

[stringcheese]

Thank you , Hannie and Tess .  Thanks for the links to the videos also .  Sounds like a great concert, I would love to see him .

He really is in a league all by himself .