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A Constant Reader, RNCMan, sends me a sunup photo he'd taken whilst wandering around naked in the woods. No, not really, really.

The photo was a mess: electric wires do never enhance a photo. I worked a few tricks with various layers, cropped to satisfaction, added his watermark, and present to you his 'repaired' photo.

RNCMan's Glorious Sunup

This next photo is a mashup of two completely different pics (from here): Teh Royal Highnesses receive a fright when their coach is assaulted by insufferable rioters rioting because Great Britain is tripling their tuitions. Egads! the utter affront to Our Royal Presence is most unsatisfactory. Home, James~!

Got Royal Diaper(s) ?

Original Captions:

Britain's Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, react as their car is attacked by angry protesters in London, Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010. An Associated Press photographer saw demonstrators kick the car in Regent Street, in the heart of London's shopping district. The car then sped off. Charles' office, Clarence House, confirmed that "their royal highnesses' car was attacked by protesters on the way to their engagement at the London Palladium this evening, but their royal highnesses are unharmed." (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

and

A bonfire burns in Parliament Square, as students demonstrate in Westminster, London, against planned tuition fee increases Thursday Dec. 9, 2010. (AP Photo/Paul Jeffers)

Have a good day.

UPDATE
Thanks! to Sean D. Sorrentino, blogging at An NC Gun Blog, for catching my pshoppery error and commenting. I (partially) fixed!

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Walgreens nixes new medicare prescriptions in Washington State, says "We are NOT all Socialists Now". h/t Drudge

Instead of "Tear down this Wall!" Obama and Blockhead Biden want to build a wall in Jerusalem. Got Goldstones?

Nice sign from Washington D.C. "Picture of the Day", yesterday, from The Daily Caller. Oh, if you couldn't tell, it met with the Serr8d - GIMP blender.

I'm very busy. Later.

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No kidding. This photo, from the White House Flickr stream (seen at Lefty Photoslant) didn't need much 'fixing'.

Even "The Bag" found this worrisome...

The visual allusion drawn by the White House, the President stumping the country for most of the week, is that Obama is having a glowing effect from the bully pulpit -- emphasis on "pulpit."

The shot currently leading off the WH slide show could easily be accused of playing the "Obamessiah" card. Black and white, young and old, these residents of St. Charles, Missouri are not only backlit by an almost heavenly light radiating toward the stage and adorning several of them with halos, but the good folk (except for the prayerful-looking woman, front left) gaze up in reverence, as if lined up in church pews, giving formal thanks, no less, to and for the President as he fights to bestow health (care reform) on them.

At least, I think he's found this over the top.

Unless that's him in the front row holding the sign...

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This is my first foray into GIMP tutorials, using a 'discovered' photo of lovely Stormy Daniels, posted here on her own Twitpic account.

As you can see from the link, the original photo is somewhat blurred; has far too much exposed surface area, and Stormy's eyes are redshot. Completely unacceptable to me; I had to 'fix' that horrible photo...

I suppose I'd better make this a step-by-step tutorial, just in case you think I'm not serious, and was (gasp!) only desirous of posting a photo of Stormy Daniels for reasons of pulchritude or something. Never once crossed my mind! So, here's the process...

1) First, grab the original photo here (be sure to get the LARGE version).

2) Make sure you have the latest version of the GIMP (currently ver. 2.6.8).

3) To sharpen the blurs, I used an add-on plugin, a high pass filter, available here. I'm liking the high pass sharpening method better than the onboard options that come with the GIMP as standard fare; the options found under Filters-Enhance. Next best option to high pass (if you're too freakin' lazy to download the plugin) is Unsharp Mask (never use the standard 'sharpen' option, that never works out well).

4) Select those lovely eyes with your Ellipse selection tool, and use the Red-Eye Removal tool (Filters-Enhance-Red Eye Removal). You'll have to go in with the Smudge tool (using a very small brush; I scaled down to .32) and touch up as needed.

5) Use the Crop tool to best frame the photo. Save as needed.

This has to be the easiest tut on the 'net! Come back for more!

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Thanks! for the linky love from Smitty posting at The Other McCain (they're working up a transition to Wordpress, rsmccain dot com, coming in the near future).

For now, visit 'em at the old home with the Rule 5 Sunday Linkfest!

This image, of Milwaukee citizens waiting in line for flu shots (h/t Insty), shows what's likely in our future, if Obamacare passes with the public option intact.

Original caption:

"Mike O'Keefe thinks a health care overhaul would lead to more long lines like the flu shot lines at Cedarburg High School."


(Yes, I 'fixed' that photo. The original was much darker. Shows the power of teh GIMP and various scripts, eh? )

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