Happy 20th Birthday, Photoshop

Unfortunately, you're still one year away from taking a legal drink, which you'll probably need after seeing my first attempt at photo painting. But this is what you've unleashed on the world...

My Debut Album Drops Today

Ha. Not really. I just made a dummy album cover, courtesy of Wikipedia and Flickr, just for fun, and thanks to this blog posting, "wikipedia names your band." My randomly-generated band name is Pajama Party--it rather fits, actually. Ditto the album's title. Almost makes me want to start a band.

You'll learn the easy 3-step how-to as well as view the posted album covers of others in the blogosphere who played along. As time wasters go, I'd give it big ups: http://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/wikipedia-names-your-band

Can this Outfit be turned into a Color Scheme?

It's a common designer's trick for generating color palettes and schemes: springboard off the color combinations from a favorite photo, swatch of fabric, bubblegum wrapper, your old prom corsage--whatever you find pleasing to your eye's sense of color. I do it all the time.

And with this rather fun and easy-breezy online tool I found today, you can too. I tried it myself, and here's what I got:

It didn't quite capture the colors in the striped socks (or the brilliance of Marc Jacobs), so there's a dearth of accent colors to choose from. But a better quality photo or digital file might be the fix. I think I'll use this mainly to get those Web-safe color codes you need when generating content for the Internet--just roll over a color-chip with your mouse and voila, the code is revealed. But I'm already imagining all kinds of alternative uses for this tool... Come to think of it, it might come in handy while yarn shopping for that self-portrait in latch-hook I've been meaning to try...
Give it a whirl: http://www.cssdrive.com/imagepalette/index.php

Fashion for the Recession

Cutouts and peek-a-boo holes. An artful slash here and a provocative slice there... Now there's a Fashion Week trend I can get behind, even in these recessionary times. Especially in these recessionary times. Not for the actual fashion aesthetic, mind you, but simply as a matter of practicality. That threadbare T-shirt with the gaping hole in one shoulder, all those sartorial makeovers I've attempted on a garment armed with nothing more than a pair of scissors... Suddenly I've found a way to "spin" a woebegone wardrobe that screams "poverty" into one that purrs "fashion." This is one trend that I hope goes viral.

But I know how those fashionistas roll: troll the streets for inspiration, preempt the trends of the poor-and-not-so-famous, then dump said trend once it catches on. Or pair it with fur (another catwalk trend) to separate yourself from the (shudder) poor-hungry-tired masses for whom "the look" is not a conscious fashion choice but rather an economic necessity.

Oh Fashion... you heartless, spendthrift bitch...

Why Still Photography Will Never Go Out of Style...

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

I'm always amazed by how talented some stills photographers are... and let's face it, Obama is a good subject. The one above was taken as Obama arrived for Tim Russert's funeral (sigh).

Here's another of Obama at a rally in Virginia, September 27, 2008.

Emmanuel Dunand, AFP/Getty Images

You can see more campaign stills here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-09/an-intimate-portrait/#gallery=61;page=1