Seriously, today was way too much of an information overload, and I really have to just get this out. I’m afraid of what might happen if I don’t, and I don’t want to find out.

Sooo……

Woosaah. I needed to take a breather.

Now, the list of links, which I was more or less bombarded by Bombay bombers. All I wanted to do was a search for at the time was a simple, online color picking tool that I could just bookmark, and have quick access to at my fingertips when I need to make a different shade or tint of a color setting I’m using, or whatever other reason. Just a simple search for something I knew had to exist but never saw was a mistake. I had no idea how many of these tools there would be, and what a wide variety of different, cool, and worth sharing at least, bunch of color picking tools. The first is exactly what I was looking for.

This is a basic colorpicker that is similar but better than the one used in Photoshop. Both RGB and HEX codes are used by it and you can store a set of up to 10 different colors if you want. Plain and simple, just the essentials. Out of all the different ones I found below, I just wanted a simple HEX / RGB color picker, and will take the added bonus of saving the colors.

You need MORE!!

Color picking tools. Save time and if you just need to grab a couple colors really quick for something, and work in real-time.

Pick Color RGB and Hex Codes

There were many more, by the way just no time to re-gather them all or I’ll be here all night. The color pickers above half of what I managed to collect in about 3-4 minutes, no intention to do that (link junky?). I honestly didn’t know what the hell was going on, or why I all of a sudden felt like I went from living in a black and white world, to feeling as though colors were bleeding from my eyes. Maybe I became possessed and since don’t have any clue what went on during that time, I must have blacked or gone into epileptic shock or something. It was just so beautiful you wouldn’t be able to imagine.

That’s when I hit my breaking point and had to stop with the colors. Which brings me to what I found previously. A entirely different thing that I was again overloaded after finding it, some how or another most likely on Twitter, I came across a CSS and JavaScript tool that claimed you could drag and drop fonts into the page for testing in real-time, and this I had to see obviously since that’s cool shit if it were real. This is how I found theCSSninja.com and from there it happened, yet again. A handful of posts on that site, in combination with some 25 other random tabs I had opening and closing at any given time, it was just a matter of minutes before I had far more information than I needed, again. I tried to stay focused on the things from thecssninja site as could since it was new to me, but I’m unable to focus when there’s so much info swirling like a tornado around me. So that is why in the list below I focus more on cssninja posts. Yes, I am crazy. I know you’ve already concluded that by this point.

Font Dragr – Drag and Drop Font Tester

This is a page that you can just select, drag and drop a typeface, or font into the page, so could test how it would look in that page in the section which you can also edit in place if you wanted. Stuff like that is cool in itself.

CSS – JavaScript – Text

There were others but I can’t remember what they were. That’s ok though, they will be found again, and by larger numbers. That I have no doubt will be true. While I’m on this topic, I might as well rant on about it some more, because it was one of those days that you just say, damn there’s just too much.

There are so many new things in web technology. Things that have extremely cool, easy to use, and feature-filled, and these things include the W3 recently released and/or updated technologies HTML5, CSS3, Canvas, SVG, along with the less recent but still new and extremely powerful jQuery1.4.2, and the somewhat even less recently updated jQueryUI 1.8, which is the cherry on top this list of all that is possible from any one of them.

I would say it is easy to understand why someone who works with these things daily, as I do, becoming extremely overwhelmed by the rapidly increasing number of resources for any or a combination of these technologies. Which is noticeably advancing into the future at the speed of light. Every next thing I see, is yet even more amazing, and never could conceive as a possibility just a mere 3 months ago.

This is by no means a bad thing, and I am extremely happy to be able to be apart of the growing community of developers and designers, BUT, I mean come ON, take a chill pill. I know that asking an entire online community to chill out and take a rest is delusional, and I would never want it to stop, I love it to much! It would be nice to have that kind of power though, huh?

Anyways, I guess what I should do, but have a very hard time doing, is to take a step back with Jeff Star, since it would seem to be a good, no, Necessary* thing to do. Duh, obviously. I know but actually doing it and knowing it is good to do, are entirely different things. Just ask me, I am the king of knowing all the things I should or shouldn’t do or be doing. Do I do them though? I can do what you do? Voodoo, coming through your area, – Fugees. Despite having ability to do what you do, or doing what I should/shouldn’t do, I 90% of the time, do NOT DO them. I just do things the hard way, the way NOT TO DO them. Don’t do what I do, in case you were planning to, I know you were.

One last thing, all of that stuff above, also makes it very difficult to get anything at all done, and I have: a plugin update to release, a theme to finalize, as well as 2 half completed posts over at New2WP.com, one which is a continuance of the W3C HTML5/CSS3 meetup post which is the post-meetup review and overview of what was covered at it. Coming soon!

Anyways, ok I feel much better now that I got some of this stress of the web today out. Thanks for listening, if anyone does actually read this.

Okay go play with those links I posted, no more blabla mouth from me. Good day to you all.

I have done photo manips in the past, but nothing I would consider a real photo manipulation, including some of the images below, at least not by what I define as a “photo manipulation”.

A Little Ramble

The way I think of it is more exact than what you and probably most people understand it. I have my own opinion based on what my eyes have seen. Some of the art I’ve seen created by real and extremely amazing graphic artists has contributed to my understanding of what a photo manipulation is.

My understanding, or personal view of what a photo manipulation is a work of art that one has created, using pieces from a completely different work of art, such as photographs or other graphics, combined with different techniques and methods with the use of design tools, that produces a newresult using elements from the original piece.

This is my own opinion, and in no way do you have to agree, or understand it the same as i do. I am not saying that other what others consider to be photo manipulations are not works of art. I just think they should be called something different.

You may notice many of these have girls as the focus of attention (to attract people to look). I mean I am a guy after all, and naturally attracted to girls. Therefore, it would make sense that girls are what inspire me and motivated me to create art, duh. When I see a great photo I am compelled to manipulate it, aren’t you?

Some images below do contain partial nudity and may not be safe for work

Click each image to view them full size.

Battle for New2WP.com – A Design Contest

I made this for a little competition between me and my friend and co-author at New2WP.com, Antonio. We decided to have a little contest to see who could make a better poster design in an hours time for an imaginary event called Wordcamp on the Moon. He won, though I have my qualms about why but I’m not going to get int that. I’ll just be the bigger man and give it to him. Given more time it would be the other way around. My master-pieces, of crap, take much longer than an hour to be completed.

Friend Of A Friend

This is made with two different photos of the same person. She a friend of a friend, and I decided to make her this when I saw her amazing photos.

My Strange Friends

I had to do some weird stuff with this once I saw this picture I just couldn’t resist. My weird friends deserve even weirder photos, so that’s what I have done.

Even Stranger Friends

Version two of My Strange Friends. This is just a variation of the photo above, with another friend of mine, and even MORE weirdness to go along with it.

Delicious Dreams And Wishes

This is an enhanced photo of one of my bestest friends ever. I love her, and so I turn her into a beautiful work of art.

Eye Manipulate Eye

This is just a rather simple eye manipulation I made. Simple is a relative term here since it did take a couple hours to do, much like almost all of these did.

Naughty By Nature

This was created from 2 stock photos. A photo of Faye, a female model, and a naturalistic looking photo of a forest. I found both photos on DeviantArt, though I do not remember who’s gallery(s) they are from since I made this a while ago.

Face OFF

The photo used is another female model on DeviantArt who I thought was very beautiful looking, so I had to use the photo.

Colleseum Cake

I used a stock image of the Eiffel Tower and created the trees, grass, and towers using different parts of the image. The clouds, sky and river I just made from scratch. Not the best, but still kind of cool.

Weaving My Face

A self-portrait photograph I took and made my face look like it is weaving together. I used a tutorial for this that you may have seen before.

Ninja Star

**Contains some nudity**

This is just a basic head swap that I find funny, just for the fact that I did it using these 2 pictures. The sexually explicit photo is censored for your virgin eyes. I don’t know what made me choose the images I did, I guess cause it was somewhat comical to me perhaps..

You like?

Ok so this last one maybe pushing the envelope of what is considered decent for all audiences. If you don’t like it, then don’t look, or just post a comment and ask to remove it. I won’t have a problem doing that if anyone asks me to. It is somewhat risqué, I suppose.

It’s quite clear, to me anyways, that I am much better at making web graphics because these could use some work. I have a long way to go before I am able to create manipulations like the ones showcased here, for example. It is a far more difficult skill to master than creating web graphics. I give a lot of credit to those that have, and hope that someday I will too. Let me know what YOU think of these in the comments below!

I’ve tried to learn how to create photo manipulations which you may have seen in previous posts. There is one on these two resource lists, photo manipulation tutorials, 3,000 Photoshop resources, and another one on the last masters of design post I did, which in my opinion cannot compare to the works of others I listed there.

The first few of these I found a while back with the intentions of posting them, but never got around to it until now. They are truly breathtaking, and I can only dream to someday be able to create such unbelievable work such as this.

Have you ever done any photo manipulating?

Let’s see your work! I’d love to see anything you’ve created.

This is one that I made recently. I wanted to try a couple of different things out but in the end it wasn’t even close to what I was going for. Click on the image to view the full version.

This list of photo manipulations is so breathtaking, I don’t know how else I can better describe them besides simply astonishing. I collected this list a while back in just one visit to Behance, and it didn’t take long to find all of these either. I know you will enjoy these amazing works of art, and creative design masterpieces.

Have a Favorite?

Which of these are you favorites? I’m sure you can’t pick just one.

Paddy Donnelly posted this truly inspiring, and creatively insightful article, which you can tell just by how many people are talking about it. It was posted not even 6 hours ago, and it already has nearly 300 comments at the time of writing this, and it has been re-tweeted by so many people. When there’s that much buzz about something going on you know it has to be something good. It is one of the coolest, and most inspiring articles on design and blogging that I’ve ever read. It will make your mouth water with the delicious visually graphical goodness, or something like that.

I felt as though it was telling a story by using different scenes with images and typography design elements in order to help convey the message. Like most things in life though, not everyone likes the same stories. Go check it out, it is not to be missed.

The Death Of A Boring Blog Post

I am sure you will enjoy reading that.

Do you think Tweeaks should use the blogozine style? Post a comment below.

Another feature shown is the Puppet Tool. If you ever had to make a paper puppet with pins to attach all the body parts together back in your childhood days, this is the same thing only much better. You can place pins into areas locking it down, and warp your image by moving it around. I can see this feature being very useful, especially for me.

Stay up-to-date on all the CS5 news here.

Enjoy!

So when will Photoshop Cs5 and the rest of the Suite be released? Not until April 2010 according CS5.org. The next question would be what will it cost to buy, or upgrade from earlier versions. I’m sure it will be a pretty penny, more than I would be able to afford at least.

What features would you want them to add to CS5?

They have made a 2 part series of practice questions. They cover a lot of different features in Photoshop and challenge you to learn a variety of things about Creative Suite 4, and the new features it has. Even if you’re not planning on taking the certification test, do it just for fun. Who knows, you may know a lot more, or less, than you thought you did about Photoshop CS4.

Let me know how well you did or didn’t do too, I’m interested how much you all know about Photoshop CS4, and how far behind I am with it by not having it yet myself.

When I was just about finished I felt like something was missing from it, since at that point the screen of the monitor was just a blank gray square. I figured since I was making the thing I was looking at, my computer monitor, it should show what was on the screen which was the image I just made in Photoshop, in Photoshop…

Now stay with me here.
Once I put a screen shot of my screen, on the screen I just created, it needed to continue into itself over and over. Otherwise there would be a blank gray screen that wouldn’t fit because it wasn’t what I was looking at, and it turned out to look better when making it continue further into the image. As I did this I realized that it was making it look like several pictures I have seen before and have always liked the illusion of such images. In the end what I created is far more impressive than what I expected, when I started to make something I was only doing to ease my boredom.

Here is the image I created, entirely in Photoshop:

Now I made this last year and I just now found out that this kind of recursive picture is called The Droste Effect. I have Paulo Canabarro to thank for posting a list of 50 examples of the Droste Effect on Webdesigner Depot. I never knew how to describe this type of image, or that it had a particular name for which to call it even. His examples are really amazing, as well as the videos, and they can be overwhelming after looking at a few of them. It’s hard to get past the illusion to understand how some of them were created, but once you do, you see that it isn’t really that difficult to produce this effect.

Have you ever created an image that used the Droste Effect?
If yes, please share

Note: I did not make these. All credit goes to greentunic of PlanetRenders

1. Metroid Tut

2. Metroid Prime Tut

3. Jin is Lost Tutorial

4. Clown Tutorial

5. Jester Tutorial