How to avoid flickering in the Windows application?

If you have ever programmed a windows based application (level editor for instance) in .NET you probably encountered one serious problem - GUI flickering or some other artifacts with controls being not properly refreshed or painted when the form is being loaded. If not, probably your GUI was rather simple and you will come across it at some point :)

A more interesting approach to black & white

Just a few days ago I described the effect to achieve a vintage look in the game. Today I will describe similar effect but it will join black & white and the vintage look techniques into one (a bit sepia like but as I don't like sepia very much I will describe something different). The problem with regular black & white is that it's rather cold in general. Cold images are not that pleasant for our eyes as warm images are. Vintage look effect can make the image warmer and make it more interesting and appealing. If you want to apply it be sure to take a look at the mentioned entry as this one will base on it.

Slideshow from Rome

Just a quick note on photography.

This February I had a chance to visit Rome and spent there a few days (amazing city!). During this stay I took hundreds (thousands to be honest ;) ) of photos and here is the compilation of some of them I found the best. I would suggest watching it in HD as it reveals much more detail. There are a lot of different shot types: HDRs, architecture, panoramas, tilt-shifts, detail/texture and even a few nature shots. I hope you will like it!

Vintage look

One of current trends in photography is trying to give a photo a vintage look. Not the black & white but rather pink & blue tone. With a photo editing suite it's just a matter of a few clicks. Recently I came up with an idea of porting this effect to HLSL as it is very interesting effect in my opinion (works very well not only to make image look older but also warmer).