Last year, I did a lot of stuff with the Panos Animation (HERE), some of it pretty neat, and I had a lot of fun doing all that.
This year, I figure I will do everything manual. Also, make it shorter post (apparently people’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter).
Still, I wanted something neat. By neat, I mean something I would have fun creating. In preparation, we went to the Mauna Lani Charity Trees display with the intent of snapping a few photos for this post. I could have used some of the photos from our past years of decorating our home with all manner of lights and ornaments.
By the way, if bothered by animation or flashing things, you might want to avoid the rest of this post. If so, Happy Holidays to you and yours. For the rest, please continue . . .
That’s right, we used to “celebrate” Christmas. Mind you, my celebration were devoid of any religious meaning, but we did — and still do — like the ornaments, some of the music, and the flashing lights. We just lost the desire to mess with them. Plus, having moved and living in a rental, it’s easier to just enjoy other people’s efforts.
The above animation is the transition from one photo to its post-processed copy. All of the photos used in the animations are included in the gallery at the bottom of the post.
The Mauna Lani Charity Trees display consists of 20+ trees put up and decorated by various charitable organizations. Visitors walk among them, choose a particular charity, and can then make a donation based on the tree or charity they liked best.
We donated to Earl’s Garage . . .
Not much as far as trees go, but the spirit was there.
We are not hung up on the fake controversy of choosing between Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday. Whatever floats your boat and makes you happy, oh dear reader, is fine with us.
Here’s a greeting with both . . .
Some might take us to task for excluding additional greetings . . . I figure the Happy Holidays option encompasses pretty much everyone, and that’s why I prefer it above other choices. Still, I have family and friends who are religious, and I plan on using these animations for my e-mail greetings. We don’t do cards except for people over a certain age, meaning, our age plus ten.
The above animations are nice and all, but I snapped a lot of photos . . . so here’s one more animation . . . the Big Holiday Animation (I was thrilled to see a wolf’s head ornament on one of the trees — it spoke to me; well, not literally, but, you know, it’s my gravatar, after all):
To all my readers, my sincere wishes for a joyous celebration of the season with family and good friends.
That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.
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Note: if you are not reading this blog post at DisperserTracks.com, know that it has been copied without permission, and likely is being used by someone with nefarious intention, like attracting you to a malware-infested website. Could be they also torture small mammals.
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. . . my FP ward . . . chieken shit.
Merry Christmas to you both, and hopes for a Happy New Year. Thank you for the colorful Christmas greetings, which were a lovely way to start Christmas Eve Day!
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Thank you for the wishes and you are welcome for the thank you.
I published it a bit early as some of my readers live in time zones well ahead of us.
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All the best!
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Thank you, GP. I still read your posts even though I don’t always comment. Always interesting, and always learning something new.
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Believe me when I say – I sure do understand!!
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A very unique and definatly “Disperser Tracks” kind of greeting. Looking forwrd to your “stuff” in 2017. M 🙂
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Thank you. Much appreciated and looking forward to my stuff myself.
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Have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I’m sure you’re finding it a lot different celebrating in Hawaii rather than Colorado.
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Thank you, and actually, not much different as far as the actual celebration – a quiet day on our own. The weather, of course, is a bit different.
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I very much enjoyed this post. I should put learning this technique on my Resolutions List but then it would never get done. I’ll put it on my regular list.
Merry Christmas to you and your lovely bride.
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Thank you.
The Text Colorizer can be found here:
http://www.stuffbydavid.com/textcolorizer
The taking of photos and making an animation tutorial is here:
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/how-to/make-animated-gif.html?
The transition between one photo and another is handled by duplicating the phots for each desired frame and gradually changing the transparency of the pair of photos in subsequent frames. For the above:
frame 1 – 100% 0%
frame 2 – 66% 33%
frame 3 – 33% 66%
frame 4 – 0% 100%
then copy in reverse order for a total of 8 frames set on infinite loop.
The overlay of the greeting can be turned on or off for individual frames, so you can have it blink on or off or always be on. It takes some playing around with, but not too long. You can also output it as a movie, but I would then crop to something that looks good on YouTube.
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Love your twinkly flashing holiday images. Don’t know how you did them but they are beautiful. Wishing you and your wife all the very best for the holidays and the year to come. Peace. Joy.
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Thank you.
As for the animations, like most of what I do, it looks more than what it is. I’m all about making myself look good with the last amount of effort that I can expend.
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Very pretty. Merry Christmas. Enjoy your festivities – I’m hoping your dinner includes some spam!
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Thank you. Not much in the way of festivities. A walk in the morning, then French Toast (no spam), then we’ll probably go for a drive, then dinner (salmon, mashed potatoes, a few greens), then a small pie with ice cream and we’ll probably watch Love Actually.
Enjoy your festivities and family.
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Sounds perfect – up to Love Actually – though I understand that some find that to be a feel-good kinda film 😉
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We skip a few parts, but it’s mostly for the humor. And the romance, of course.
Really, I’m just as happy watching Hitman. Or, Six Days, Seven Nights. Or, Joe Versus the Volcano. Or, any of the Firefly episodes. Or, just sitting at the computer doing stuff.
. . . and eating. Always happy when I’m eating.
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Have a good one and I hope 2017 turns into a good one!
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Thank you, and we could all use a good 2017.
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Merry Christmas and happy 2017, my best wishes for you and your loved ones 🙂
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Thank you, Virginia. May your nomadic lifestyle be as exciting in 2017 as it was in 2016.
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Lovely shots. I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday season. Interestingly, my phone didn’t show any animations.
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Thank you.
As for the animations, I’m guessing it has to do with the mail client you use. Not everyone plays GIF animation files.
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Had to wait an age for this to load, but worth it!
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Thanks . . . and these were the small files . . .
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Beautiful choice of photos and animation. I read about Earl’s Garage . . . sounds like a worthy cause. Best of the season to you and Melisa.
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Thanks . . . it was a good opportunity to practice making animations (which I will use when doing more surfing posts).
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Beautiful! Wow! The photos AND the animations! Thank you, Emilio!
Earl’s Garage sounds cool and such a worthwhile cause to support!
(((HUGS))) to you and Melisa! 🙂
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Thank you, diem3. Glad it was enjoyed and yes, Ed’s Garage seems right up my alley.
. . . if I had an alley, and if one could go up it if I had one . . . which I don’t . . . .
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