Read and learn

Histogram Basics

Arguably, histograms are the most useful tool available in digital photography. At the same time it may also well be the least understood.

Never trust your monitor. Never trust your laptop on location in the middle of a desert in direct sunlight. Never trust the LCD on the back of your camera.

Always trust the histogram.

The numbers, they don't lie.

I use this on the GIMP

Liquid Resize Liquid Resize is a "content aware" image resizing application for Mac OS X and Windows. Liquid Resize is now available for download as a Product Preview from onOne Software.

Gonna give it a whirl nowas a OSX demo.

Annoying

One of the most frustrating things about being a retoucher is that clients don't believe you when you tell them you can do something and then won't believe you when you tell them something else is impossible. ....sigh.

Damn good idea

John Carlin on why Iceland has the happiest people on earth | World news | The Observer
All the more so because if you are in a job the state gives you nine months on fully paid child leave, to be split among the mother and the father as they so please. 'This means that employers know a man they hire is just as likely as a woman to take time off to look after a baby,' explained Svafa Grönfeldt, currently rector of Reykjavik University, previously a very high-powered executive. 'Paternity leave is the thing that made the difference for women's equality in this country.'

The Replacements

Shared a cigarette for breakfastShared an airplane ride for lunch Sitting in between a ghost And a walking bowl of punch Can you play a little hunch?

Predicting a delay on landing Well I predict we'll have a drink Lost my money on the first hand Got burned on a big fat king

And your ears are gonna ring And your eyes just wanna close Nothing changes I suppose

It's too late to turn back, here we go Portland, oh no It's too late to turn back, here we go Portland, oh no

We'll wait away the raindrops Look out boy, you'll catch cold Serving boy can chain nothing That ain't anchored to his throne But at least he's going home

Sitting like a backwoods junkie Caught down in a servant trust Look at the funny monkey Putting silver in his cup

And your silver turns to rust And your secondhand clothes Trust no one I suppose

It's too late to turn back, here we go Portland, oh no It's too late to turn back, here we go Portland, oh no

Shared a cigarette for breakfast Shared a pack of lies for lunch Credit card almighty Bringing in the next little bunch

And you owe me on a hunch And your eyes just wanna close And nothing changes I suppose

It's too late to turn back, here we go Portland, oh no It's too late to turn back, here we go Portland, oh no

good read

The Dumbing Of America - washingtonpost.com

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.

Retoucher in the New yorker

The World of Fashion: Pixel Perfect: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

To avoid such complaints, retouchers tend to practice semi-clandestinely. “It is known that everybody does it, but they protest,” Dangin said recently. “The people who complain about retouching are the first to say, ‘Get this thing off my arm.’ ” I mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual “real women” in their undergarments. It turned out that it was a Dangin job. “Do you know how much retouching was on that?” he asked. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.”

Retouchers, subjected to endless epistemological debates—are they simple conduits for social expectations of beauty, or shapers of such?—often resort to a don’t-shoot-the-messenger defense of their craft, familiar to repo guys and bail bondsmen. When I asked Dangin if the steroidal advantage that retouching gives to celebrities was unfair to ordinary people, he admitted that he was complicit in perpetuating unrealistic images of the human body, but said, “I’m just giving the supply to the demand.” (Fashion advertisements are not public-service announcements.)