Ah, the holiday season, a time of expansion. Great physical expansion. Fatty, high-calories food is everywhere you turn. And so we grow. But not this year. In some distant future, when you review Thanksgiving 2008 in your photo album, you’ll look back on it as the first of many years that you actually lost weight. "Thank you dekePod," you'll say. Because in this episode, Deke teaches you how to transform fat into fit using the Liquify command—and with smooth, stretch mark-free results.

While at PhotoPlus Expo in NY, Derrick Story sat down with Rob Trueman and Cathy Chung to talk about their experiences with the Fall 2008 Aperture Nature Photography Workshop in the Grand Teton National Park. Rob and Cathy were two of the four contest winners who earned a trip to the Grand Tetons where they received one-on-one instruction. During this discussion they talk about what they learned and how they are applying that knowledge now.

Not only is Adobe Camera Raw terrific for processing individual files, you can batch process with it too. In this screencast, based on Chapter 4 of The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers, Derrick shows you how ACR makes easy work of multiple images.

If you’ve seen an episode of the original Star Trek, you’re no doubt familiar with the show’s main character, Captain Kirk, and his eternal blurry-eyed fascination with women. Every time he came in sight of a love interest, she appeared to him in diffused focus. In this episode of dekePod, Deke shows how you can achieve a nearly identical effect in Photoshop with such flattering results that you yourself could win the captain’s affections.

There are a whole lot of things that sound good the second you start making noise on them: Door springs. PVC pipes. Waterlogged Gertie balls. The Fat Man demonstrates how a DIY, Maker approach can help you find your signature sound.

Collections are one of my favorite new features in Adobe Bridge CS4, which comes bundled with Photoshop. In this screencast, based on Chapter 3 of The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers, Derrick shows you how Collections add the flexibility to Bridge that we've been waiting for. Plus you'll learn how to build Smart Collections based on a variety of search criteria. This is truly fun stuff.

Photo Downloader is one of the unheralded stars included in Photoshop CS4. In this screencast, based on Chapter 2 of The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers, Derrick shows you how Photo Downloader can help you keep your images organized. Plus he demonstrates how to add your copyright and how to simultaneously back up your photos to another drive — all automatically during the downloading process.

Photoshop CS4 has been out one week. Hardly enough time for any of us to embrace it, let alone place our faith in it. And yet faith is precisely what one of the program's most highly touted features, The Masks palette, requires of you. Everything about it is promising; little about it makes sense. The palette that makes masks also wears one. In this special Halloween episode, we unmask the Masks palette. Will it be a bag of treats? Or a bundle of tricks? You'll find out, in dekePod.

Photoshop CS4 contains all the tools you need for a complete photography workflow. In this series of screencasts based on the book, The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers, Derrick shows you techniques from a chapter of the book. This week he starts with Chapter 1: The Quick-Start Roadmap. Here, you'll see the basic overview of this workflow and how the pieces fit together.

Think nothing can scare you? Enter dekePod, that thing that is not even slightly scary and yet, be honest, gives you the heebie jeebies. In this episode, Deke investigates how to simulate an extreme-detail HDR portrait -- which would otherwise require you to shoot multiple exposures of a person locked down in a body brace -- using flimflam and forgery. And a shrunken skull. These are the depths of scariness we go to. Here at dekePod.

Ben McMillan has been a working photographer in Beijing for more than four years. During that time, he's seen the city go through dramatic changes, leading up to the Olympics. In this conversation, Ben talks about his Beijing experience, and how he also went through a personal change when he discovered Aperture during the games.

What makes Smart Objects in Photoshop CS3 so compelling to power users? Derrick Story wanted to get the inside scoop on non-destructive tools, so he sat down with Photoshop expert Deke McClelland to find out how Smart Objects can improve his photography workflow. This interview was recorded at Photoshop World in Orlando during the Spring of 2008.

September 23 marks the announcement of Adobe's Creative Suite 4. And that means a new version of the company's flagship image editor, Photoshop. Coming just 18 months after its predecessor, is Photoshop CS4 any good? Enter dekePod, Deke McClelland's irreverent and uncensored video series. Day and date with Adobe's announcement, Deke provides a third-party, impartial, and highly opinionated review of the new software. Titled "Photoshop CS4: Buy or Die," this episode promises to show you all facets of the program—complete with commentary—without interrupting your busy day. In just five minutes, you'll know whether you want to upgrade or not. Either you buy or it dies, it's as simple as that.

Mine Kasapoglu photographed her first Olympics in 2002 at Salt Lake City. She's been shooting them ever since, including this year in Beijing where I caught up with her for this interview. Mine was first introduced to Aperture at the 2006 Torino Olympics. Nobody really knew about Aperture then, including Mine. But she was in great photographic pain and gave it a try. Here's her story two years later.

Sean Duggan is an art photographer, educator, and Photoshop expert. He's recently teamed up with Katrin Eismann to publish The Creative Digital Darkroom. In this interview Sean talks about his approach to processing images and how to get the most out of digital capture.