New York

Today I was hanging out at the lynda.com studios (working on my Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Mastery course, if you must know). When I ran into that one artist who isn't afraid to make his own reality, even if it requires hand-drawing individual drops of bird poop and sacrificing three years of his life. By which I mean, Bert Monroy. Colleen was there, too---these days, she works for lynda.com. And, before anyone knew it, Bert was showing us the most recent version of his gigatron-by-teratron piece of bazillion-pixel imagery, "Times Square."

It's radically dazzling. Not to mention, huge. In a way that few things beyond a stretch-Ford F750 hauling 100+ freight cars might be deemed huge. (Seriously, it contains more pixels than there are galaxies in your head.) And it made me realize how very ashamed I am for not having shared the following info until now: By some random quirk of fate---perhaps because Bert is out of his mind!---this excellent man decided to include Colleen and I in his masterwork. Here's a miniature (not to mention, old) version of Bert's composition. With Colleen and I rendered in bright green. We're on the left. You can't miss us, because there's a giant Zapf Dingbats finger pointing in our direction.

I know many of you live in awe-and-wonder over the likes of Bert. (As well you should, I say.) Which is why I thought I'd post these charming sketches: Read more » 

OK, dekeOlytes. I'm unlocking the Channels & Masks cage, and getting ready to escape to NYC to attend that photo-palooza known as PhotoPlus Expo at the Javitz Center. Just wanted you to know that I'll be suffering through handling all the new camera toys, talking to all the cool photographers, and drinking all the Officially-Made-in-Manhattan Manhattans, just for you—those dekeOpolitans who like to occaissionally take pictures as well as manipulate them into aliens, monsters, and other expressions of psychological disturbance. I'll report back on anything super-groovy.

If you're going to the show, please come by the O'Reilly booth (especially on Saturday when I am on official duty) and say hi. I'm hearing that there will be some new books making their debut there this week, including a special preview of the only-other-Photoshop-book-you-could-possibly-need-besides-Deke's, the Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers by our good friend Derrick Story, which covers both more (the photographer's workflow with Bridge/ACR) and less (just the Photoshop tools photographers need) than our beloved One-on-One. It fits in your camera bag too. Read more »