Displacement Maps

I am sure you have see images where the texture of a brick wall is seemingly applied to a person. Or an image appears to be reflected or mirrored on water. This is usually done using a Displacement Map in Photoshop.

Here is a super fast summary of the process (I will add photos when I get a chance):
Select an image that you want to distort to make it appear as though it was printed on a piece of fabric. Open up the fabric image. Go go Image > Duplicate to make an exact copy of it. Convert it to grayscale by going to Image > Mode > Grayscale. Zoom into the image until you are are 100%. Then to go Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius until the texture of the image disappears. Apply a Curves or a Levels to greatly increase the contrast. You must have a high contrast image in order for this to work. Then save the image as a Photoshop document (it will then have the default .PSD extension). Close the file.
Place the image of the person (just an example) on the image of the fabric (the original color version). Then select the face layer. Go to Filter > Distort > Displace. Start with a value of 10 for both input fields. Click okay then select the grayscale version of the image. This will then load the image as a displacement map and distort the shirt image. Basically, the darker the part of the displacement map image, the more distorted the face image will be. Try playing with the blending modes. Multiply Mode generally makes them blend together pretty well. You will likely have to use Curves or Levels to lighten the image after you apply the Blending Mode change.
Here are some other tutorials, but I think they both miss a few steps.
http://www.layersmagazine.com/displacement-maps-for-graphics-in-photoshop-cs4.html
http://www.layersmagazine.com/photoshop-displacements-maps.html
Have fun.

Quick Draft Post about Photoshop Tutorials and Textures

Great list of tutorials about making fire in PS
http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/25-stunning-photoshop-fire-explosion-tutorials/

Computer Security

Okay, you probably know that you should have an anti-virus program running on your computer that you keep up to date and regularly use it to perform a scan of your system.
Unfortunately, that is the very least that you should be doing to insure you and your data is safe on your computer. PC World magazine recently published the best article on computer security I have ever read. You should definelty read it. I guarantee there are real threats out there that you never even thought of.
PC World article "11 Hidden Security Threats".

Back to this issue of anti-virus software, with numerous excellent, free options now available, there is no legitimate excuse not to use one. If you think that it isn't necessary, then just ask a room full of people how many of them have had a virus of other malicious software cause havoc on their system. I currently use Microsoft Security Essentials on my laptop. It is non instructive. I have used AVG Free for years and currently have it on my desktop computer, but it constantly tries to convince you to "upgrade" to a paid version. I have also used Avast Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware in the past, but was annoyed by the audio alerts to scan my system. That being said, if you like to be reminded to run the scans, you will really like Avast!
Of course, there are plenty of other commercial products on the market that may offer additional features and possibly better protection. That being said, I have been using free products for years and have been very happy with their performance which is to say, I haven't had any virus problems.

If you are having weird computer problem, I would suggest your using an online safety scanner. There are two that I am aware one. I have used Microsofts's Windows Live OneCare safety scanner a number of times. It will search for virus, all manner of malware, registry errors, and it will also defragment your hard drive and give you the option of deleting unnecessary temporary files.

Trend Micro, a legitimate provider of computer safety programs, has a similar online scanner service named  Housecall. I haven't used it, but it is highly regarded.

Yes, Lightroom is great

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a really great program for photographers. In essence, it is a streamlined image editing and data asset management (DAM) application. If you shoot RAW and work with lots of photos; i.e. weddings, special event photography, or just a passionate hobbyist, you should definitely check out Lightroom. There is a bit of a learning curve, but if you take the time to get through it, you will find editing multiple images to be a much more enjoyable process. Here are some good resources for working with Lightroom (I will update as I find more):

Official Adobe site for Lightroom. You can download the 30 day demo from here.
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/

Nice writeup on working with multiple Lightroom catalogs; one on a laptop and one master catalog at home
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/lightroom/lightroom-2/lightroom-workflow/lightroom-workflow.pdf

Tips and advice from the developers of Lightroom. 
http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/

Suggested Lightroom catalog settings
http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/02/lightroom-catalog-settings.html

Lightroom 3 is currently in beta. There are already a number of resources available for it.

Download the Beta version
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/

Info about Lightroom 3

http://www.photoshopuser.com/lightroom3

Photoshop Tutorials by Mark Galer
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/mark-galer.html

Julieanne Kost is an Adobe Image Evangelist. She has nice videos and write-ups here.

Blog about LR and related matters
http://insidelightroom.com

When things go bad in LR...what to do...how to avoid....

Basically Lightroom is an image database program with image editing capabilities. By default, LR stores all the changes that you make to your images in a database name LRCAT which you can find if you navigate to the folder named Lightroom within your Pictures folder (assuming you are using the default directory for your photos). So, the actual photos are not being changed at all, rather the database makes a record of what changes are to be made. Here is the problem with that: if you lose your database, then all the changes you made to your images have been lost. This includes the keywords, metadata, and all the development settings.
Fortunately, a corrupt LR catalog is uncommon. Additionally, you should regularly be making a backup of the catalog. Each time you launch LR, it prompts you to create a backup of your catalog. I suggest you start doing it. That way if you somehow lose your catalog, you can go back to the most recent version. Also, LR has the ability to "repair" a corrupt catalog. It will prompt you should it find that your catalog is corrupt and ask if you want it to attempt a repair. I have not experienced this myself, so I don't know how effective it is. From reading forums and the like, it doesn't always work.
 Click here to an alternative method of repairing the LR catalog. Again, I haven't tried this as I haven't had the problem. Knock on wood.
Two other things to consider are pushing the edits and metadata to xmp sidecar files. This is to say that little companion files with the edits will be saved alongside the edited RAW files. The advantage of this is that even if you lose your LR catalog altogether, the develop and keyword data will still be available (the collections data won't be though). The disadvantage of this? When you open your images in PS, it will look at the sidecar edits rather than the LR edits from the catalog. This isn't an issue if you occasionally "push" the LR edits to the sidecar files. This happens by itself over time, but you can make it happen immediately.
Lastly, if you convert your RAW files to DNG files upon import, the metadata is saved in the RAW file itself as well as in the catalog. I am pretty sure you would still lose your collection information, but everything else would still be there. This is the route that I have been taking as of late. The only foreseeable problem with that is that you will not be able to edit that file with an RAW file that doesn't support DNG format. For example, you would not be able to edit a DNG file with Nikon Capture even though it was taken with a Nikon camera because it only support NEF files.
Something to chew on. The biggest take away is that you need to regularly backup your LR catalog.

Maggie Taylor

Maggie Taylor is a contemporary artist who creates photo based digital collages. Here work is whimsical and occasionally bizarre. When I show my students here work when presenting a digital collage project, many students are intrigued by her work and her working methodology. So, I have compiled a list of relevant links and resources.
First, you can visit her website at  MaggieTaylor.com to see a large selection of her work.  You can download a really great PDF detailing her thought process and technique in creating an image from Creative Pro. That article is based on an excerpt from her book Maggie Taylor's Landscape of Dreams. Here is a link to little story about her for an art show.

Editing Raw Files

Like any advice, it is good to hear it from muliple people. Here are some tutorials on the use of Adobe Camera Raw that I highly recommend. If you are a Lightroom user, no worries as nearly everything he says applies to LR as well.

Start with this one:
Adobe TV video featuring Julieanne Kost introduction to ACR. Great step by step tutorial in which she explains the choices she makes. If you like it, and I think you will, it is part of a longer video series featuring her. Click here to see all the episodes of The Complete Picture with Julianne Kost.

Russel Brown a long time Adobe evangelist and pretty funny guy, has been posting some really great tutorials and scripts to his website for a number of years. I mention it now because he has some nice tutorials on working with Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS4. He takes a novel approach in some of the tutorials in which he edits others' files.
The Russel Brown Show