Earning your chops as a painter is no easy task. But if you manage to do it, and further, do it while critics lambast your pieces for being mere copies of comic book panels, you must be something pretty special.

Roy Lichtenstein was something pretty special.

Some of his most famous pop-art renditions were derived (ripped) from comics or photography, and he was often threatened with lawsuits as a result. Think of him as the precursor to modern-day mashup artists.

Fortunately, turning your own photographs into Lichtenstein-inspired illustrations is unlikely to irk litigious record labels or the RIAA. And with Melissa Clifton’s step-by-step tutorial, it’s a breeze!

How to Turn Your Photos into Lichtenstein-inspired Pop-art
www.melissaclifton.com/tutorial-popart.html

p.s. If you like this, check out the bit we did on how to turn photos into Julian Opie-style portraits.

How can you not love a holiday that encourages you to dress up in costume, invites children to go from home to home demanding candy from strangers, and promises the annual rising of the toy-laden Great Pumpkin?

Yup, Halloween is pretty darn great.

And now that it’s just around the corner, we’ve put together a guide to help you get great photos on our favorite holiday.

Read on for creative ideas for Halloween shots, tips on how to carve your pumpkins to make them more photogenic, even instructions for making an anatomically-correct thoracic cavity cake!

Get out your glowsticks and get to work!

Dear gentle readers, we’re tired of the unrealistic ideal of youth and beauty stuffed down our collective throats by television, magazines, and movies.

We say nuts to wrinkle-reducing botox, gray-hiding hair color, and skin-stretching facelifts. Today’s link is about making anyone look old. That’s right, friends, old.

Our chums over at Photoshop Lab have a great step-by-step on how to add wrinkles, loosen skin, gray hair, sprinkle on liver spots, and generally pack on the years with just a few minutes in Photoshop.

Trust us, old is the new young.

Aging People — Use Photoshop to Age Anyone’s Face
www.photoshoplab.com/aging-people.html

p.s. Check out this Dove commercial — from ordinary woman to wildly unauthentic billboard glam in 60 seconds. Amazing. Frightening.

People will often say that their whole lives flashed before their eyes after they experienced a traumatic event. Perhaps it’s a bit morbid, but we think that sounds pretty incredible.

When Taylor McKnight started taking a photo a day on January 1st, 2004, he never imagined the project would not only serve as a way to remember a year, but also help him understand what was important to him in his life.

Whether it was his relationships, his career, or his fashion sense, recording a photo a day for a whole year left him with a rich visual history of his life. And it made him a better photographer to boot!

Now that he’s in the middle of doing it for a second time, we asked Taylor to write about it for us. Read on for our tutorial on how and why to create your own daily photographic history.

If you’re a digital camera convert (or thinking of becoming one) you’ve likely wondered how big you can print those digital files you’ve been capturing by the hundreds.

And knowing you, you’ve done the research, asked around, and probably discovered what we have: everyone’s got a different opinion. Your camera manufacturer is happy to tell you that 5 megapixels will get you pristine poster-sized prints (hogwash!), while purists proclaim that your digital is good for no more than 4x6s, no matter what the resolution. (Baloney!)

The truth, as is so often the case, lies somewhere in the middle.

The good folks over at Design215 have put together a super easy-to-digest resolution chart that gives you the straight dope. At a glance, it tells you how many megapixels you’ll need to print at true, photographic quality. (ie. It looks sharp, even when your nose is mashed up against the print.) Simple!

Chart: How Many Megapixels You Really Need
www.design215.com/toolbox/megapixels.php

p.s. Need to cheat and print bigger anyway? Read the fine print below the chart for more details.

This one isn’t so much about your photos as it is about keeping your digital camera in tip-top shape.

If you’ve ever had to buy a replacement or a backup battery for your digital camera, you know they aren’t cheap. And as rechargeable batteries have gotten increasingly powerful and more complex, the prevailing wisdom for extending their life actually does the very opposite!

All rechargeable batteries eventually die and go to battery heaven (where we hear you can lie around in your charging cradle all day if you wanna) but follow some simple advice and your little guy will be kicking around for a while to come. Better yet, it’s a lot easier than you think!

How to Take Care of Your Digital Camera Battery
www.kenrockwell.com/tech/battery-life.htm (via reader Liji Jinaraj)

p.s. Want a more technical explanation? Try this Battery University article on lithium-ion cells.

Got a great shot that’s just a bit too hazy to be usable? Is early morning mist (or pollution-induced smog) holding you back?

Don’t let haze phase. Here’s a quick trick to regain the details in your gloomy shots with a little Photoshop finesse. (Paint Shop Pro and The Gimp work, too.)

The effect is subtle, only takes a few minutes, and results in noticeably improved shots!

Eliminate Haze in your photos
jakeludington.com/photography/20060921_fixing_haze_in_digital_photos.html

Ever wanted to see yourself up on a giant screen in Times Square? On the cover of Rolling Stone? Ever wondered what you’d look like in a plane full of snakes, or as George Costanza in his infamous semi-nude portrait?

Zingfu, my friend, Zingfu.

A simple site, with a simple goal: to let you make campy compositions with your photos. There’s nearly 100 different templates (anti-motivational posters, celebrities, magazines, embarrassing situations of all kinds) and they don’t charge a nickel.

Yeah, it’s cheesy, but it’s tons of fun. And if you edit your photos a bit before you upload them, the results are surprisingly good.

Zingfu
www.zingfu.com

Beautiful! Simple! Cylindrical! All the qualities you look for in the finest photo frames, now available in the CanFrame — a simple DIY photo frame project from Photojojo.

Our tutorial will step you through an insanely simple way to show off your photos for the price of a 79 cent can of beans. All you need is the aforementioned can, some glue, a photo, and 15 minutes!

Stop right there. Before you start thinking we’ve lost our mind, consider this: William Wegman has been successfully photographing dogs for the past 30 years. And not for nothing: his photographs are comical, endearing, and artistically worthy. His adoration for his dogs is evident, just like your love for your pet.

Your little buddy gives you unconditional love, so why not make some time to photograph the furry/fishy/scaly little guy? To get you going, we’ve compiled a list of great sites: tips on taking perfect pet photos, as well as amazing examples of the form.

The best advice we can give you? Love your subject and you cannot go wrong.