Is there such a thing as the ideal beauty? This is a project that I did years ago, before I discovered Renderosity - in fact it was started on an Amiga, it was that long ago! Originally just for my own amusement, I recently put together this montage which I thought would be interesting to share. Let me explain it a bit! I got to wondering if there was such a thing as an "ideal" beautiful woman - what would she look like? I set about exploring this by chosing 16 women who I would class as being very beautiful/attractive. I chose 4 from each of 4 decades (60s, 70s, 80s, 90s - the 0s hadn't really started!). From each set of 4, I used morphing software to produce a blended face to represent each decade, and then blended these 4 into the ultimate "ideal beauty". The montage portrays the process - the original 16 are round the outside (can you name them all?!). The "decade" pictures are larger with the final image in the middle. I apologise about the quality in places - this is partly due to the older technology used at the time and partly due to the blending process which sometimes inevitably leads to a slight blurring of the resulting image (or maybe it's just my incompetence!). Anyway, I thought the results were interesting and worth sharing. Obviously the resulting image is dependent on the initial pictures and I freely admit this is a personal selection, and in retrospect does not include as wide a range as it could - all are white European or American for example. But back to the original question - is there such a thing as an ideal beauty? I find the resulting image attractive, but is she more attractive than each of the "component faces"? I was struck by the fact that each of the "decade" faces were actually quite similar to each other, suggesting an underlying "ideal". But in a way, the resulting "ideal" face is perhaps a little bland and to my mind no more attractive than many of the individual faces. My conclusion? While there is perhaps an "ideal template" (which might be different for each of us), it is the individual variances from this ideal that adds character and results in just as attractive a face, if not more so. Which I think is probably good news for those of us who look rather less than ideal!! Sorry to ramble on so much. Happy New Year!! Phil