Here is another old, recycled post, but this is a good one. This will make you want to get Photoshop and play with it.

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If you do not like your world, change it…

Photoshop lets you play with reality like you are a minor deity. And face it, reality can suck…

Sometimes you eat with the lions…

And sometimes the lions eat you…

I have been playing with Photoshop for years, and I am still not really good at it. That is partly because I can’t follow a manual or instruction book, and partly because Photoshop has endless button and menu and tool options and combinations that even normal people take years to master. Just do what I did… Jump in, get a photo of yourself in there, get some funny pics off the interwebs, and play like a kid in a toy store.

I mean think about it. You can be anyone you want to be, anywhere you want to be, any thing you want to be. You have the power, now use it wisely.

I can’t teach you how to use Photoshop here and now, but I can give you some useful tips and fun ideas to start you off.

Here is a handy thing to have…

Make a ‘face sheet’, or face page, if you will. First, open a big, new, blank picture. Get a bunch of good photos of you,… (looking in different directions is good)… open them all up, then go through them one at a time, selecting the area around your head and copying it. Paste each head in your new picture as you go, then save the picture with a clever file name,… (like face sheet, or face page)… Now, you always have the right head for any background. (Don’t worry, you can resize, re-angle, or flip the heads to suit your needs)… Having a face sheet of your own heads will make you appear so pompous and self-centered that people will automatically assume you are a true artist!

Now take some of those heads and put them into humorous backgrounds. Play with this concept until you perfect it… Don’t worry about channels and paths, cloning tools, hues, saturation, modes, layers, filters, magic erasers, layer masks, effects, adjustment options, grouping, color ranges, feathering, modifying, blur, fade, noise, pixelating, rendering, stylizing, textures, fills, gradients, RGB color verses indexed color verses CMYK color, curves, thresholds, contrast, drop shadows, beveling, Gaussian blur, distortion, displacement, diffusion, extrusion, or glowing edges… (These are all real tools and menu options, by the way)… or the fact that each of these can be used in combination with each other as well as in conjunction with multiple keyboard command options… Just have fun with it!

Mess with your friend’s heads by doing funny things with their heads, if you see what I mean…

(This must be about 1979, when I was 19. My hair is still short after a stint in the Navy. I am on the right. That is Chris on the left, and Bryan in the middle. Don’t ask me to explain why this photo was ever taken. No doubt beer was involved).

Not my best Photoshop work either!

(Hey, that’s my friend, Andy. Same time period, judging by his hair)…

Say hi to Matt… (He is saying, to some girl, “Hey, my eyes are up here”)…

Start off simple…

Learn from the process…

Blow their minds… (That is my friend, John Sullivan. He is dead now, and I miss him a lot. Somehow, this helped, and I know he would have liked these)…

You can mess with your family…

(Oh, Jessica, you would be an awesome sidekick)…

Let your world become a fantasy…

Or just see what your mom would look like with a really big head…

You can do useful projects as well…

No, I don’t mean becoming a counterfeiter,… (is that the right word?)… We handed these out at my mom’s big birthday fiesta as cute keepsakes…

Lastly, you can use a digital camera to take set up shots…

Go, Uncle Bert…

The payoff is worth the effort…

There is no better way to blow off steam when someone annoys you than putting their face on Jabba the hut or Newt Gingrich. Feed them to a polar bear or put them in a compromising position with a llama. Or with the Dali Lama, I don’t care. Make them into a piñata surrounded by hungry kids with baseball bats. The possibilities are as open as your mind…