After having found out by being told on Flickr that it is possible to adjust the compression of pix when saving I had a good look at Paint Shop Pro 11 and found there is also in the later series a reasonable shadows etc. lightener.
So I decided to see what could be done with Infrared pic. Used the following for the Nailsea Wall pic.

In PSP 11 select Adjust – Colour – Red/Green/Blue
In this instance
Red 62
Green –37
Blue –39

The change to Image menu select Grayscale.

Back to Adjust - Smart fix
In this instance
Overall 28
Shadows –30

Highlights 20
Saturation 99
Focus 89

I think this will work better in future than dodging between programmes.

Went out to Nailsea Wall and tried out some Infra Red pix. Some Ok but one set very bad. Will try again tomorrow perhaps.

There was a discussion on Flickr with someone asking a question about flash. I took some pix of my flash arrangement for macro and insect stalking.

I think the Stiz bracket with the adjustable angle for the flash gives the best result.

Saw a new Phalaenopsis orchid in Morrisons and it looked quite pretty. Decided to treat myself, bought myself a bottle of cooking whisky at the same time to celebrate.

Had the squash back for one week and then the head gasket blew.

It took 10 days to get the head off after stripping the engine of superfluous stuff.

Trouble was the engine is an alloy one and there was reaction between the head studs (Iron) and the alloy of the head.

Had plenty of advice from the 'Plastic pig' club.

1st. Don't use WD40 to infiltrate and soften the gunge - Use PlusGas it is thinner.

2nd. make up a 'stretcher' to aid in lifting the head. This is a piece of iron about 10inches long 2 inches wide and 1/4 inch thick. Drill holes in it to allow the rocker studs to go through it. Put it down over the rocker studs and let it rest on the head studs. Put spacers on it and then gradually screw down on the nuts. The pressure will then lift the head.

We did this and got a good 1/4 inch gap on the spark plug side. NOW plastic is softer than alloy? cut a couple of slips from a piece of plastic around 1/32 inch thick.

Put them into the gap around halfway across the head. Meantime all this while slowly drip plusgas on the head of the studs. Don't flood them it will just run off, but three or four times a day put a couple of drops on the top of the stud. It will gradually make its way down the threads and then into the gap between the stud and the alloy.

Every time you do this take a wooden drift and bang down on first the spark plug side and then the manifold side of the head. I was advised that even if it is only half a millimetre movement this will gradually cause the gunge to let go.

It worked and the head lifted off with no more trouble after a week of this treatment.

Some had said of having to take out the engine and lift it by suspending it, others had said they had had to cut the head off. We managed without taking the engine out just using time and patience.

Got the "squash" back from MOT on Monday and on the road again. Got about in spite of the weather, snow here not as bad as other places thank goodness.

Rugby today? On or Off?

Tried an experiment, I took a flash picture of a flower head using 800 ISO. Edited it with Elements 3 and slightly over sharpened it.

Then in PSP 7 I went into Effects - noise and used 'Edge preserving smooth' set at the highest resolution.

Next I went back to the original and without over sharpening it I also used Edge preserving smooth.

The result shows well in the lower pic.

This was taken from the centre of the composite.

Top left over sharpened. Top right oversharpened smoothed.

Bottom left original,

bottom right original smoothed.

It shows better viewed large there is a slight overlapping in the pasting of the copy images.