Photoshop

In the hope of combating anorexia, 50 members of the French Assembly have proposed a bill that would require magazines to label any portraits that have been digitally altered. They claim that slimmed-down pics of celebs lead to anorexia in young women looking to attain unrealistic body sizes.

Most of the Photoshop tools familiar to artists import old school analog devices onto the computer. Before computers, artists would use actual razors to crop, and physical scissors and glue to cut and paste. But South Korean designer Jinsun Park has envisioned a pen that reverses the process, taking a tool developed for the computer and porting it to physical reality.

Sometimes you’re the last to try something. Adobe came out with its Lightroom digital darkroom and photo-organization software a few years ago, and followed up with Lightroom 2 last year. I played with both of them for about 10 minutes when they launched, and then ran back to Photoshop. I’m a digital tech freak, but I was set in my ways. Most of what Lightroom does can be done in Photoshop, after all.

But... I’ve just finished reading Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure, by Mikkel Aaland (O’Reilly Media; $44.99), and I’m a changed man. I’ve been locked away in my studio for weeks now playing with the software, the book and my digital images.

Youre on vacation. You have your digital camera and you plug it into your friends laptop to upload a few pics to your favorite photo sharing site. Youd love to make a few quick adjustments before you publish, but your friends computer has no good image editing software. Enter Adobe Photoshop Express online. Through their revamped Flash 9 player, Abobe has created a scaled-back and easy-to-use version of Photoshop which runs entirely in your Web browser. Best of all, its free.

Lance Corporal Ted "JOEY" Boudreaux Jr. was bored. It was the summer of 2003 in Iraq, the pause between the heavy lifting of the U.S. invasion and the turmoil of the insurgency, and you can joyride around the desert in a dusty Humvee only so often. Loitering at the back gate of his base, mingling with locals, Boudreaux says he scribbled "Welcome Marines" on a piece of cardboard and gave it to some kids, who then posed with him, smiling, for a snapshot. He e-mailed the picture to his mom, a cousin and a few friends, and he didn´t think about it again. Boredom moved on.