IN A HYPOTHETICAL VIDEO GAME…

In a hypothetical 1980s 8-bit video game based on the works of prominent Pittsburgh architects…

…this is the monster that eats you if you make a wrong turn in the maze.

Coraopolis Methodist Episcopal Church, 1924, architects T. B. & Lawrence Wolfe. Photograph by Father Pitt.

. 2 comments.

Comments

  1. Belfry Bat says:
    July 17, 2024 at 8:07 am

    SO! How did the Doctor (or was it Father Pitt?) avoid the weirdly tapered walls effect?

    Reply
    • Dr. Boli says:
      July 17, 2024 at 8:25 am

      Every image editor of any complexity—GIMP, Affinity Photo, Photoshop, Pixlr, etc.—has a perspective adjustment for that purpose. Dr. Boli asked Father Pitt which one he used, and the answer was that for this purpose, RawTherapee, the raw developer, is his usual choice, because it has a single button to push. The program recognizes vertical lines and adjusts the picture to make them all vertical; it works, he says, four times out of five, and the fifth time the results are so comical that it was worth trying the experiment anyway. And although RawTherapee is primarily a raw developer, it can be used on images in any common format.

      Before the days of image editors, the usual method with a cheap camera was to hold the camera level and stand back far enough to get the whole subject, cropping out the irrelevant parts of the image later. For architectural photographers, view cameras with a bellows that would shift the lens up or down while keeping it in the same plane accomplished what can be done in an image editor now.

      Reply

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