I have an area on a site currently where there's a series of portrait images that appear with a blend mode that was applied in Photoshop. As it stands, anyone adding a new portrait has to have Photoshop, download the source PSD, and export the new file.
I don't think we'll need to add new portraits so often that this needs to be automated, but of course, that doesn't stop me from wanting to think about how to do it. What I'd like to do, ideally, is have the server apply the blend mode to the image either when it's uploaded or when it's rendered. I'm guessing I'd have to use GD to do this, and hook into image->size(), but I don't know exactly where I'd start.