Babies with Laser Eyes!

Babies with Laser Eyes! is a self-explanatory tumblr site that features babies photoshopped with lasers coming out of their tiny, observant, precise eyeballs. Anyone can submit photos for laserification to laserbabies[at]thefrogman.me.

Which apparently means The Frogman is behind this latest of interweb memes.

Can you hear the sound effects in your head? "Pew Pew Pew!" There you go.

(From Facebook, Pew Pew sound joke from CW)

If The Internet Named Movies

If The Internet Named Movies is a college humor picture/photoshop article about how movies would be titled if the interwebs had a say in it. Requires some knowlege of movie posters, interwebs speak.

Lovely.
(From Buzzfeed)

Photofunia

Photofunia is a silly website by Alexey Ivanov that lets you pretend you're famous. Basically you upload a picture of your face, and it plasters it into the cover of Esquire, or on times square, or at an art gallery. You can then upload said photos to Facebook/MySpace/YourFridge and feel smug about yourself.

They explain it like this:

"PhotoFunia is an online photo editing tool that gives you a fun filled experience. You upload any photo and just wait to see the magic. Our proprietary technology automatically identifies the face in the photo and let's you add cool photo effects and create funny face photo montages.

PhotoFunia is free and very easy to use. Just select an effect you like from over 100 different effects, upload your photo, and PhotoFunia will handle the rest for you".

All the kids were doing it so I thought it was high time to post this.


(From all the kids on my lawn)

Interactive Video Object Manipulation

Interactive Video Object Manipulation is a video by Dan Goldman of Adobe's creative technologies lab showing up-and-coming video manipulation tools.  Basically, it's like new features for a video-Photoshop.  He says if you like 'em, blog about them, and I am.  Features include moving speech and thought bubbles, direction arrows, and object manipulation. Check it:

In Dan's words: "This demo illustrates our research to bring interactivity to video editing: Our system analyzes videos using computer vision techniques, enabling interactive annotation, browsing, and even drag-and-drop composition of new still images using video footage.

This is a joint research project of Adobe and the University of Washington." 

(From Buzzfeed)

Disaster Girl

Just in time for Halloween comes Disaster Girl. Disaster Girl is a picture posted on JPG magazine by David Roth, which shows a mildly disheveled little girl looking mischeviously at the cameraman while Fire Engine 38 attempts to control a suburban house structure fire in the background.  David tags it, "She's just an innocent bystander. Or is she?"

Buzzfeed ran with the idea and started a photoshop contest. My favorite ones are the subtle jobs that add that "Where-is-Waldo" aspect to the silly picture. Someone has gone and animated it. Meme-tastic.

(From Found, Buzzfeed)

FFFFOUND!

FFFFOUND! is a site for image bookmarking. According to their "about" page, it allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, and also dynamically recommends each user's tastes and interests for an inspirational image. An interactive bookmarking experience, if you will, and I will.

Basically, you click "I ♥ THIS" and it will come up with more images you might like on the "New for you!" pages. 

PS: The above Mick and Bianca Jagger wedding photo has nothing to do with anything, other than I found it on FFFFOUND!

(From my friend Guy)

How to create a super shiny pencil icon in Photoshop

How to create a super shiny pencil icon in Photoshop

It's simple and pretty, that's why. 

(From Boing Boing)

You Got Blurred

You Got Blurred is the picture-laden blog-form equivalent of bleeping out unnecessary words in speeches and video clips for comedic effect.  The blog touts itself as "Blurry images for blurry people, made by the editors at Blogofhilarity.com." Ace. 

(From Buzzfeed)

With Extra Duck

With Extra Duck is a Flickr photo set of famous paintings with yellow rubber duckies Photoshopped in.  They were uploaded by duck-obsessed London blogger Misty.  She has been adding these since May last year; so far the collection is 44 photos deep and has been viewed 5,866 times. 

My favorite is her take on WF Yeames' 1878 "And When Did You Last See Your Father?" (above).  Mostly because clearly, that was the missing element all along and that child is being interrogated about his wayward rubber ducky.  The contrast between onerous artistic integrity and frivolous pop culture is fantastic. Enjoy a few gems:

(From Metafilter)

Man Babies

Man Babies is a photoshop blog devoted to pictures of men and babies with their heads swapped. The result is utterly bizarre. What should be a nurturing, feel-good paternal Kodak moment of fatherly devotion turns into a giant cognitive-dissonance fit.  

Site owners Kris and Chase thought they had reached the end of the Interwebs when they saw the original man-baby picture (below). They laughed for 15 minutes and decided to make a site out of it. There is not much more I can say about this, you just have to see it.
(From Boing Boing, Gawker, Everyone and their mom)

Hot Chicks With No Eyebrows + The Closest Marriage

Hot Chicks With No Eyebrows (HCWNE) is a photoshop blog dedicated to removing famous women's eyebrows and causing readers to shudder. It reminds me of the Hot Chicks with Douchebags blog. HCWNE is only 70 posts deep as of yet (two month's worth of entries), and mildly addicting to flip through.

Some of the entries are scary because of their alien-like appearance, and some of them because of the butchered photoshop job. The Natalie Portman in particular looks like someone took a curling iron to her plastic face, then tried to shove the melting material back in place. (Lay off the smudge tool, cowboys!) Clearly, this confirms my theory that if Whoopi Goldberg had eyebrows, she would be normal-looking but not famous. Q. E. D.

Runner up:

The Closest Marriage is a Slate.com piece that could have won, except it runs for way too long. In it, married couple David Plotz (Deputy Editor of Slate.com) and Hanna Rosin (Contributing writer to The Atlantic Monthly) spend a whole day less than 15 feet apart. They deftly juggle kids, bathroom breaks, and that buzzard of a cameraman.

I liked watching David Plotz freaking out about the lack of Frescas in his fridge. He sounds like a whiny man-child. Bonus points for including SNL footage of the Love Toilet (SO GROSS! Haha.). Double bonus points for both journalists being incredibly self-aware and and drawing conclusions from their experience without making it seem like a contrived conclusion to an ill-conceived term paper. Decompressing at the end of the day is an important part of my routine. Good work all around.

(From Buzzfeed, which, BTW... One link? One link is not a trend.)

Adbusters Ad Gallery

The Abusters spoof gallery is super well made. Wikipedia defines Adbusters (or the Media Foundation) as a, "a not-for-profit, anti-consumerist organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada." Basically, they are probably BFFs with Annie Leonard and I figured I might as well cram them both into the same week.

The images are simply astounding, as well as hilaylay. The group itself is, like all fringe groups, a lot extreme. But the ads are fun to flip through. So what the hey, entertainment is entertainment. Great execution. grade: A! (From Wikipedia)

Worth 1000 Words

Worth 1000 Words is a website dedicated to images, text, and Photoshop contests. The site dates back to January 1st, 2002 when it was created by Avi Muchnick and... the Ben Affleck to Avi's Matt Damon, Israel Derdik.

Avi named the site after that overused proverb about pictures being able to quickly convey complex stories (a picture is worth a thousand words, therefore watching TV is like speed-reading War and Peace. Q.E.D. ).

After being laid off as a graphic designer, Avi decided to go to law school. Bored in the 3 months before school began, he came up with the idea for a quality Photoshop contest site, which then ended up consuming most of his time during law school. The site's popularity grew due to its loyal community cultivated around registered users, forums, and regular contests. Contests have now expanded to include photography, text, media, and paid gigs.

Anyone can submit photos to the contests, but shoddily-made entries will be erased no matter how much they like you. Though the site is ironically in need of a re-design, its content is quality. Worth 1000 Words is unabashedly an insult to the field of user interface design. but the pictures are just simply incredible. The galleries and closed contests are fun to flip through, and they are thankfully sorted by best entries first. Overall it gets an A, solely on content. Enjoy a couple of recent favorites.

The winner from the Demotivational Posters Contest #3:
(Because mocking those Successories posters will never ever get old.)

The winner of the Literal Song Tiles Contest #13:
(Duke Ellington would be proud.)

PS: Avi's latest project is Plime, a "Wiki-like" user-editable news aggregator.
(From Wikipedia, Matt Sparkes interview, JD Bliss)

Photoshop Lady

Ah, Photshop Lady. Photoshop Lady (PL) is a website that takes free Photoshop tutorials from around the Internets and collects it one one well-designed place. Web-o-nauts can vote on how good or bad the tutorial is (measured in light bulbs). The tutorials are labeled with approximate time estimates of how long it would take you to follow the tutorial in order to create your own masterpiece, if you were to follow it through instead of just downloading the finished source file.

If you create a user name, you can save up to 9 favorite tutorials on PL by clicking and dragging them to the left side of the screen, where they will be stored indefinitely (until the end of time or when their server crashes — whichever comes first). So far there are 131 tutorials to choose from, sorted under 7 possible categories: 3D Effect, Abstract Effect, Drawing Effect, Photo Effect, Text Effect, Texture & Patterns and User Interface Design.

The source of the tutorial is prominently displayed with link backs. Clicking on the title of the tutorial will take you outside to the site that originally posted the tutorial. One could say that while polite and lady-like, this makes PL nothing but a fancy mask. It doesn't contribute anything, because it doesn't create anything. Poppycock. PL edits. It adds enormous value to the Internets by filtering out all the crappy tutorials and presenting the good ones in one soothing place.

Some of the tutorials are cheesy, sure. Okay most of them are. But so's your face. Tutorials are a fun way to level-up on Photoshop techniques. It's nice to not to have to suffer Donnie's abuse or sort through long-winded drivel whose clarity rivals a Vicodin-addled 3-year-old's.

My favorite part of the site are the pretty pictures that let you know right away whether or not it's worth trying the tutorial. The site could be improved by a sort-by-most-light bulbs feature. Overall, Photoshop Lady shows that you don't have to choose between great form or function: a site can have both. A+. Bravo.

Pixeloo

Pixeloo is a blog only 6 posts deep so far, built around 2 images. But the images are of such high quality that we'll make it today's most awesome thing on the interwebs today.

According to the super-brief profile, the Pixeloo author wishes to remain semi-anonymous, uses Photoshop professionally and a Wacom Intuos tablet, and enjoys a questionable shade of turquoise for a background.

The author Photoshopped Homer Simpson and Mario as they would appear in real-life. The textures have been gathered from a slew of pasty white men.

Behold Homer (The googly eyes are especially haunting in 3d.):

























Lo, Mario!
Is that a moustache, or did someone eat a fox?

Sweet nightmares, everyone!
PS: Happy Easter.

You Suck at Photoshop

So Donnie teaches Photoshop techniques in a YouTube series called You Suck at Photoshop. This series is really cool if you are familiar with Photoshop, and strange and depressing if you're not. Donnie is the abusive teacher you don't wish on anyone. The episodes all have a background story, usually involving cynical Donnie and his failing marriage, or life.


In episode 4 he puts up his wedding band for sale, while teaching you how to use paths masks.


My favorite part is episode 5 where he is trying to cut out a complex hammock from a white background. Donnie explains how you, little buddy, can take your juice box and Fruit Roll-Up and use the magic wand tool... he'll see you in 6 hours... or you can Photoshop like a real person and use the "select color range" option. So sardonic. So right.

My least favorite part are the constant Skype interruptions, where his buddy tries to get him to stop Photoshopping and start playing World of Warcraft. Also, the strange panting at the end which paints all sorts of weird images in the imagination. We get it, Donnie's a loser nerd. An often super annoying nerd.

Overall, a solid B. The Photoshop techniques are great. The stories are fun, short, interesting, but could use more judicious editing. Like this post.

If I were smart, I would have ended this post right there. But I can't. Basically, there is no way the following is interesting to anyone, and I suggest even the strong pace themselves. But I just can't stop the compulsion... must post all episodes... for completeness!!! Enjoy.

All the Episodes So Far:
YSAP 1 covers distort, warp, layer effects;
YSAP 2 is about covering your mistakes with the lasso, marquee, Gaussian blur, multiply, opacity tools;
YSAP 3 covers the clone stamp and manual cloning;
YSAP 4 is about paths and masks;
YSAP 5 deals with selecting color range;
YSAP 6 shows how to use the liquefy filter;
YSAP 7 is about the patch tool and levels;
YSAP 8 covers 3d layers.

From Andrew T.

Photoshop Disasters

Today on the internet, metafilter found a fired photo-editor's dream blog: Photoshop Disasters. It is devoted entirely to nitpicking awful photoshop jobs.

Between Demetrius (Hook) Mitchell's head-severing dunk, Ann Coulter's hGH-deformed hand, and the finger nubbin on the FHM model, this is internet gold.

To date, the site is only 12 posts deep so we'll knock it down a letter grade. B+, internet. B+.

(From metafilter)