photo booth mirror-not what you think

Hi,

Welcome to the  Discussions

I know what you must do and have some info on how to do it.
I lack precise info though.

1) Install Developers Tools from your Install Disk (In the Options Installs Folder)
This will give you Quartz Composer.

2) If you go to Hard Drive/System/Library/Compositions you will find the Effects (and Backdrops) and see they are Quartz Files

Quartz Composer is the application that Creates and can Edit these.

3) I would use the Finder to Duplicate the Mirror one and Save it as something like Mirror2

4) Then it is a question of Playing and Learning Quartz composer.

This is the main Window of three


There is a Viewer window as well and the Patch Inspector icon brings up the third.

Clicking one of the boxes to highlight (Blue Edge) will show the bits you can edit it the Inspector Panel.

This Leopard Pic seems to say that the image is split by 0.5 which makes sense.
I cannot see directly on a quick look in Leopard's version how to get this to be the "right hand" side.

The Boxes can be dragged about to what is connect to where.

Some boxes contain more bits inside. Double Clicking them tends to Open them.
You may have to dig inside the Kaleidoscope one (Edit Parent take you back one level)

Hope this helps.



10:14 PM Tuesday; July 20, 2010

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Message was edited by: Ralph Johns (UK)

HI,

EZ Jim did a Search and found this http://tinyurl.com/36rb25s



7:22 PM Wednesday; July 21, 2010

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

Welcome to Discussions, mr.merino

Photo Booth offers no user setting to do what you want.

If you want to program your own effect to do what you want, see Ralph's previous posts.

EZ Jim



Mac Pro Quad Core (Early 2009) 2.93Ghz w/Mac OS X (10.6.4)  MacBook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009) 2.26GHz (10.6.4)
LED Cinema Display  G4 PowerBook 1.67GHz (10.4.11)  iBookSE 366MHz (10.3.9)  External iSight

The underlying Mirror.qtz composition actually does capture the right side. To test this, copy Mirror.qtz to the Desktop and open it in Quartz Composer (which you may have to install first). Following Ralph Johns's image above: On the far left, add a Video Input patch and connect it to the input (left) side of the left-hand "Image (Required)" patch. You'll see in Quartz Composer's Viewer window that Mirror.qtz captures the right side. It's a setting deeper in Photo Booth itself that overrides the composition to capture the left side.

But you can modify Mirror.qtz so that it captures the left side, which PB will then override to grab the right--what you want.

First, copy Mirror.qtz to the Desktop--and make a second copy, too, in case you later want to go back to square one.

Open the copy in Quartz Composer. Add a new patch: Flip-Flop. Set the patch's parameters to "Horizontal Flop." Insert this patch between the left-hand "Image (Required)" patch and the three patches to which the left-hand "Image (Required)" is already connected.

Original connections (as in Ralph Johns's image above):

Image (Required) -- > 1 (Image) Image Space; 2 (Image) Kaleidoscope; 3 (Image Reference) Crop to Reference

New connections:

Image (Required) -- > (Input Image) Flip-Flop (Output Image) --> 1 (Image) Image Space; 2 (Image) Kaleidoscope; 3 (Image Reference) Crop to Reference

Save the composition.

Drag the new Mirror.qtz from the Desktop to /System/Library/Compositions. The OS will require you to authenticate with your administrator password before it allows you to replace the original Mirror.qtz with the modified one.

Photo Booth's Mirror effect (and any other application that uses Mirror.qtz) will now grab from the right rather than the left.

(Tested in 10.6.3)

Hi,

Thanks for that.

I had not noticed that the iChat Mirror and the Photo Booth Mirror effects showed different sides even though it is the same Quartz files that produces them.

That would suggest the the standard switch in iChat is done earlier in the process than the same action in iChat which Normal Display as a Mirrored effect anyway (Even though this is full pic).

I can confirm that this happens even in 10.5.8 and iChat 4.0.9 and Photo Booth 2.0.3

Open the copy in Quartz Composer. Add a new patch: Flip-Flop. Set the patch's parameters to "Horizontal Flop." Insert this patch between the left-hand "Image (Required)" patch and the three patches to which the left-hand "Image (Required)" is already connected.

Original connections (as in Ralph Johns's image above):

Image (Required) -- > 1 (Image) Image Space; 2 (Image) Kaleidoscope; 3 (Image Reference) Crop to Reference

New connections:

Image (Required) -- > (Input Image) Flip-Flop (Output Image) --> 1 (Image) Image Space; 2 (Image) Kaleidoscope; 3 (Image Reference) Crop to Reference

I would go as far to say that the connections are changed with Click and hold at one end of the yellow (or Amber) "wires" and can then be dragged to the new place. (Or if let go and they disappear - click and drag from the stated start to the connection point.)



8:05 PM Thursday; July 22, 2010

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Hello again, mr.merino

Another idea that may be of interest to you...
 
If you are only trying to make one (or a few) of the reverse mirror images you post about, and if you are not interested in learning and writing Quartz compositions, you can take the "easy" approach and use a mirror.

Here is how I did what you ask about in Photo Booth without programming. No " Edit > Flip Photo" menu item was applied in any of the following images.

(1) As a reference, I show this normal Photo Booth image of a left hand pointing left.

 

(2) This image uses the "Mirror" effect on the same hand pointing the same way.

 

(3) To mirror the right side instead of the left side, I selected the Photo Booth "Mirror" effect to make another mirror image. However, this time, I placed a mirror in front of the iSight and positioned the hand behind the iSight. By adjusting the positions of the mirror and the subject (hand) while I watched in the Photo Booth viewing window, I was able to obtain this image.

 



We await your response. Please confirm that the kind of left/right reversal between items (2) and (3) is what you are trying to accomplish.

EZ Jim



Mac Pro Quad Core (Early 2009) 2.93Ghz w/Mac OS X (10.6.4)  MacBook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009) 2.26GHz (10.6.4)
LED Cinema Display  G4 PowerBook 1.67GHz (10.4.11)  iBookSE 366MHz (10.3.9)  External iSight