Today in “Scalzi Going Overboard With His New Photoshop Filter Plugin”
Posted on July 5, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 16 Comments

The application in question is called Filter Forge, which features thousands of filters, mostly created by the community which uses the program. Many of these filters are… well, not great, but some of them are pretty cool, especially when you layer them on top of each other. Thus, a selfie of me just sitting in my office has become The Most Pretentious Horror Author Photo of 1998. All it took was about five minutes of fiddling about. This is what I did with my day. I’m not proud. But I am having mostly harmless fun. So that’s okay.
Also, here’s this one of my cat. Which is also overdone, and also kinda fun:
In other news, I feel completely fine now. I suppose I should get back to writing again.
(Reluctantly puts away Photoshop)
— JS
The picture of your cat reminds me of a Cartoon Network short where a “When Animals Attack!”-style reality show are trying to get footage of rampaging bears…but the only bears they can find are a hibernating Yogi and Boo-Boo! So they use all sort of camera trickery to make two cute, half-asleep bears look menacing….
As the kids might say: Follow-up to The God Engines confirmed.
Suddenly, I was transported back to the 80’s and hearing “Sussudio”
Glad you’re feeling better. I have plaxovid bounceback – I tested negative, then positive again, and still have a mild cough and nasal congestion, so I’m still isolating. Our son tested positive too, last week, and just became negative today. My wife feels the Sword of COVID dangling over her head.
We need that photo with the caption: “I feel completely fine now.”
Completely off-topic, this makes me feel old: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/andre-norton/storm-over-warlock
Books by Andre Norton are starting to enter the public domain.
Reminds me of High School photography class, where some of us futzed with putting extra stuff in the printer solution to distort the prints. This was four decades ago; back when photoshop was Sci Fi!!
I’m always surprised when people refer to being “easily amused” as if it were a bad thing. I choose (based on non-trivial amounts of evidence) that John Scalzi is on my side of this, um, point.
You are shoe in to play Londo Malari in the reboot of Babylon 5
why did I think up this as-yet-unwritten short story title upon seeing that photo?
title “HPLovecraft Gets Hired By PhotoShop To Write Marketing Blurbs”
Hyman Rosen and Norton public domain, I’m with you on feeling old. I own paperback copies of every Norton book out there so far.
These, especially the cat, remind me of the artwork in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark only in color. Now I’m thinking about the obvious doorway to another dimension down the cat’s throat. So thanks for sending me on that little journey.
That is a very fine looking cat “painting”, but about the horror author we shall not speak.
Also, Andre Norton in public domain? How is that even a thing! My childhood was just YESTERDAY.
Pretty cool. As a 90s kid my own impulse is something like “Dad Andross.”
My first thought was that you’ve made an album cover for the first known FurryMetal album, but then I googled. Hmm.
Also, Hymen Rosen: to feel really old, bring this up at work, and then try not to cry when someone says “Who’s Andre Norton?” (sob)
Cool. The cat looks like it came from Pet Sematary. And you look like Pinhead from HellRasier. Love that movie.