You still suck at Photoshop. Season 2, by popular demand. This week: Smart Objects. Go Ronnie Go!

Deke McLelland has lost his marbles. Guess he’s lived in Boulder too long.

Here is a transcription. (free registration required)

Standardized testing in action.

The rumor mill is gearing up to grind out all sorts of nasty stories about Unilever and the Dove ‘Real Beauty’ campaign. Retoucher Pascal Dangin’s comments were placed in the wrong context on the New Yorker website, and a bunch of people are jumping up and down claiming that the photos were retouched. (The New Yorker profile, by the way, is quite amusing. The writer, Lauren Collins, seems inexperienced, in love with Dangin, and gullible. “He has been known to work for days tinting a field of grass what he considers the most expressive shade of green.” Puh-leeze!

The real story, parts one and two, is available on the AdAge website.

Why do so many assume that the bad or unpleasant is the truth?

I don’t even know where to begin. Just go and look. Oy.
photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com

This big. I bought “retouching” and it links to my retouching site. $10. I even got this nice free button! Check out The Big Word Project and buy someone something useless.

I was surfing around, reading up on the latest skin retouching techniques,
and I found a tutorial… on brain surgery!
Very handy.

If you paste "&fmt=18" at the end of any YouTube URL (up in the address bar of your browser), it will force YouTube to load the hires version of the video (if there is one). I think it’s using the H.264 iPod-compatible version of the video.

Example

Here is a lowres:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rb8aOzy9t4

And here is a hires:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rb8aOzy9t4&fmt=18

Makes YouTube almost watchable.

click for video

I found this rattling around in the bottom of my old Mac. It’s an ancient project I did for a Celestial Seasonings sales meeting. It’s certainly not up to today’s standards, but it got ‘em giggling, and that was the point. (be careful, it’s kinda loud)

Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray in a beautifully choreographed argument. It’s like a visual version of a Mike Nichols & Elaine May sketch.