Who hasn't drawn a moustache, beard or pair of glasses on a photo in a paper or a magazine?

With a computer, and a program like PaintShop Pro, you can doodle on-screen. Look what 6 year old Chrissy did to me! You don't need a scanner. There are lots of ready made graphics files. Photos of people are an obvious place to start... but my son has turned some cars into utilities.

You can cut and paste. We copied a 5 year old's face to a 20 year old's head. 5 year old twins or 20 year old twins?

The photo editing programs we've tried all require that the colour 'photo' is in more than 256 colours if you want to do more than just draw on the picture. 8-bit indexed colour images can't have the 'deformations' applied. Don't worry if your image is in 256 colours. The programs allow you to convert (8-bit) 256 colour images to (24-bit) RGB True-colour. In PaintShop Pro, go to the Color menu and select increase color depth. In other programs the command might be under Image. (B&W images should be at least 8-bit.)

If you have a scanner, you'll probably want to play with photos of 'real' people. No-one in my family would let me put his/her 'deformed' pictures on my pages. I asked 12 year old Kate to 'edit' my photo - Thanks Kate!!... not...!!

Some people can make it look realistic...

You'll be able to do lots more than just doodling (and cut and paste). Look under Image for Deformation or Effect. Some programs have more Effects than others. You can apply a Pinch or a Punch to the whole picture, or you can select part of the picture first. This way you can pretend to be a plastic surgeon. Experiment!!

Chrissy also likes to make the Simpsons more interesting...

See my notebook to read about keeping your graphic files small.