Why America FINALLY got it right.

One of the awesome things about my job is that have the leeway to spend time actually learning stuff, and get paid for it.

We had been talking about photo manipulation, and I decided to show my coworkers what exactly could be done with effective Photoshop techniques. Now, caveat here is that, while I've been using PS since version 2.0 (back when Freehand was owned by Aldus -- geep), my image manipulation had not involved much use of the "liquify" tool; mostly I've done colour correction and blemish/glitch fixing with the rubber stamp tool.

So, I liquified yesterday. Disclaimer: This was NOT about body image, or making things "better" -- it was more as an illustration of just how far one can take image manipulation, and how body imagery as magazines portray it is just about as unrealistic as it can be these days.

Here's the finished product:

Here's the starting image.

That was 15 minutes of work. Cool, in a creepy kinda way, huh?

Frances and I have been off-and-on fridge magnet-types for a long time. Our past purchases have included a big honkin' Elvis (straight from Graceland), as well as a variety of cool/ridiculous smaller ones. No magnet poetry, however.

The folks at Motifo have taken it to a new level, with a full-fridge magnet set. Very slick and creative; I can only imagine what my chilluns could do to my fridge with that.

There's a contest to win a set over at Random Good Stuff -- check them out, if you have a minute. They regularly keep me plied with time wasters on my lunch hour.