some thoughts on It's hard to grasp that digital images are related more to conceptual art than to painting or photography. You never have direct contact with them. They merely consist of digits until you command your browser to translate them. A mere push of a button can make them dissappear forever. Unless you print them out, you can't touch them nor sell them nor take them home. Web art is merely a collection of electrons, without electricity and a phoneline, they do not exist. Consider your images as sketches, or little poems. If you spend 6 hours manipulating an 200 square pixel image, you not only have too much spare time, but you're missing the whole point. Excuse the mysticism, but if the image isn't "working" for you, move on. Try another image or quit hoggin' the online tools, dammit! No, there will never be a digital image masterpiece, even making a birdhouse requires far greater skills. No talent is needed to click buttons or type in parameters. To use your talent and creativity, instead of merely applying effects to an image, try creating a composition. if you feel an emotional attachment to your cyberart or have control issues, don't show your work, keep them hidden in storage. When you publish your images, you are offering them to the world. Chances are, you've taken images from someone else, so don't be feel violated when someone 'steals' your image, it's actually the greatest compliment you can ever receive. Know and grow. Have you mastered all the imaging tools? NO! Webtv Plus users have ignored one of the most valuable tools imaginable: the vidcam! Yep, this tool is a gold mine for imagers. You can take snapshots from books and mags, add textures to your images by taking close-ups of fabric, torn paper, a pile of strings, metal foil, wood, the inside of your underwear, whatever. No need to conduct endless searches the images are uniquely yours! Truly art from scratch. SIZE MATTERS Most of your viewers will be Msntv users, so you should take the screen dimensions in consideration. Do not make your images more than 380 pixels high. To have to scroll up or down to see your work in it's entirety totally nullifies any impact of your art. If you like 'em big, try 540x380 this will almost fill the entire screen without any of it out of sight. Please don't whine about online tools not working. These toys are blessings, and are free to use. Someone has graciously decided to make them available for us. Don't email the webmasters with greed. When your favorite tool is offline, use your pent-up creativity to work on your webpage(s), it's more or less the same concept. Well, actually more. FRAMES 'n BORDERS 'Frames' and 'borders' were made available in the mid 80s, when the web was evolving from a information vehicle, to a visual one. Framing was developed for making colorful clickable banners and buttons to appear 3-dimensional. These became ubiqitous, and soon dropped out of favor.. For some reason, the MsnTv crowd still clings to these effects. Some Webtv artists do incredible work with frames, but in general, a cartoonish 3-D frame makes 2-D images appear more contrived and downright silly. PCers haven't used frames in years, PC artists never have. Want your work to look like fine art? Omit the frames. If frames are your pacifiers, wean yourself slowly. SIGNING YOUR STUFF You should be proud of your work. Real life artists sign paintings and drawings to identify their work, but signing a 5 inch piece of cyber-art with 1 inch text borders on the ridiculous. If you think your e-sketch is a work of art, imagine the "Mona Lisa" with "PAINTING BY LEONARDO DAVINCI" in big yellow letters scrawled across it. Pudry, huh? What's more important to you? Your art, or your ego? If you can't fight being selfish, tiny initials or a discreet icon in a corner should tag your work without much damage. A signature that doesn't distract from an image remains to be seen. Ask yourself why you want sign your work. Hoping to be 'discovered'? Fear someone will make a fortune form it? Are viewers too stupid to know it's yours, though it's displayed on a page titled "My Images"? ...NEXT! Has imaging lost it's appeal to you? Have you bled every online effect to death, and now it bores you? Then you are ready for the next level: web design! Forget about confining area sizes, use your knowledge of online tools, and let the whole screen be your canvas! Hurry up, i need some competition...