I'm intermediate; well past noob level, but nowhere near pro. I don't do it regularly enough to feel like an advanced user, but 12 years of light use has taught me some valuable stuff. I just learned how to automate batch processing of image sequences, googling this: http://morris-photographics.com/photosh ... tions.html
My first album cover, from 2003:

This is something I put together using Adobe After Effects Kaleida effect on a photo of an aloe plant that I processed in Photoshop.
All the clips in this video were made from the same still photo, and I touched up single frames in Corel Photopaint with my Wacom Cintiq tablet.
Watch in HD for maximum detail:
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi1rBzAi48M[/video]
Old avatar:

From the classic HCFX TU-1000 thread -

For Spartacus fans:

Does anyone know how to automate the Digital Anarchy Toonit plugin without it making a diagonal grid across the picture? I'm doing some rotoscope-like processing on some live video, to make it look more like art and less like photography, and having to open it over and over again for each frame is really monotonous. Worth it if it's the only way though, because the effects it produces are really cool.