Today I did some fun little Photoshop foolery — nothing worth publishing, but fun nevertheless. Ok, if you insist, here’s what I made: It’s a Pause button. I copied one I found, but all these pixels are mine. I may write a tutorial for the process. It was fun to do.
Then, this afternoon, I worked on getting my Archive tutorials set up and ready to be archived. I’m not really sure how exactly I’m going to DO that, or what it means, how accessible they will be, etc.. What I did do was to improve the navigability in those pages and got rid of some obsolete stuff. Like my Bloomington address, for example.
Because this part of my site is in HTML and not in WordPress, I have to do some coding to update and change stuff. So .. ewww. I never learned html very well, so it intimidates me.
Jack is working through my Elements class from way back when it was version 3. And this has me thinking about what I will need to do to get them into shape to have a new batch of students working on them. I’ll just say right now that I’m not ready to give myself a deadline.
First off, I wrote them all in WYSIWYG HTML, back when that was a thing. And I don’t know HTML much, except to copy/paste and just be a bit dangerous. I was a maniac with GoLive, which they discontinued back in the early aughts.
So I am thinking that, while my ideas are still very useful, relevant, novel, and fun, the screenshots need a bit of touch-up, which essentially means my redoing and reshooting all of the projects. And, since the formatting is html and not WordPress, … yeah. I’m going to be retyping everything.
Today I looked through my wealth of files, including my image files. I was looking for my raw work on my little Tip, Project, Question, and Digital Digression icons. I wanted to take the paths that I KNOW I made and recreate these images a bit bigger.
I couldn’t find them anywhere short of digging into my old hard drive and.. I don’t have that one anymore, since it was like 4 computers ago. I just made new ones, but I made the same as my original designs. I just love these:
Yeah! This is something I didn’t even know I had, let alone needed to upgrade! I got an email from Bluehost, telling me I needed to upgrade my php, which was seriously outdated. And it said I needed to backup my site first.
Well, I had thought all along that my site was somehow backing itself up, so, for the last 13 years, I was going without any backups!
On advice from my WPBeginners people, I uploaded Updraft, a free backup utility plugin for WordPress and it worked right away. Woo hoo! I feel like such an adult.
Then I followed Bluehost’s clear instructive tutorial and upgraded my php. I felt like I’d done enough for the day, so I’ve been just arguing in Facebook comments. LOL. I did a small amount of Photoshop play and came up with these red balls.
Today I worked hard, but I don’t have much to show for it. We started the day by having the AC service guy out to fix our broken capacitor. It was 86 when we got up this morning. Ugh. But it’s nice and cool now!
I spent much of the day working on a 5-part tutorial on removing backgrounds. It seems that that’s what 90% of the questions are about on the ps groups.
I know! You were wondering if you could use Photoshop (or Elements) to make a photo look like it was drawn with colored pencil, right? Well, have I got a tutorial for you!
It’s HERE and it’s for beginners and YOU, if you want to have some fun playing with photos.
Today is supposed to be the hottest day of the year. In PHX, they are expecting 117. Here in Sun Lakes, it’s usually substantially cooler, more like Tucson, or even a degree or two less. I don’t know what the official temp is now, but this morning at 5 am, when we left for our walk, it was already 89.
I came up with another idea for a shirt:
Better a quarantine coif than a Covid cough! Stay HOME!
Today I wrote out my story about how I got to be a Photoshop artist, educator, and author. Here’s the page! You can come back here with a click on the Blog in the top menu. Heyyy, I’m navigable and stuff! Working more on navigability every day!
I also made myself a redirect. I did an online search for myjanee.com and discovered that many sites (old ones, sure) are still linking to my site… but to a no-longer used link! So I reopened that page and put in a redirect. I learned this from my buddies at W3docs.
I used this for an article in Photoshop Fix.
Creative stuff? I’ve started a composition project using the pics of Jodie on the rock. And that’s about it.
Today was fun! I finished two tutorials and did some other art along the way. I know that it’s vain to think that this is cool, but.. Ok, I’ve never been accused of being not vain. This is my Porcelain Effect which I developed back in .. well, the beginning of this millennium, anyway.
Before
And I posted this tutorial I’m calling, optimistically, Photo Fixing 1.
After
This is a bit of Photos > Art I did today. I was sort of going to try the Porcelain Effect on these Coneflowers, but came across this instead. Do click the photo to see it bigger. I used Find Edges and Divide mode on the duplicated layer. I think it looks like a colored pencil drawing. I should now try doing this in actual colored pencil and see if I can make it look like Photoshop! LOL
I’m learning all manner of new things today! I wrote some custom CSS to enlarge the area of my page that’s being used. Thank you WordPress for Beginners! Seriously, if you’re struggling to learn WordPress, I urge you to go right there and search around. Their Facebook group is great, too. These guys have given me back my life, and I’m not exaggerating at all.
I did an upgrade to my first tutorial — not its first upgrade, but the biggest! That tutorial is my Transparent Capsule. Friends, I’m back in it!
I’m starting to think about goals beyond just “get myself up-to-date with the software” and “upgrade my tutorials.” I’m starting to think again about my Community– getting it going, having Challenges, and upgrading my class materials. I’m not so hopelessly far off.
This is a little effect I was playing with yesterday. It’s done with iterative transformations, a topic that has enchanted me since long before it was cool. I wrote about this in a magazine in 2002 and I will teach it again in my Starting With a Blank Canvas class.
I’m wondering if this would be a good tutorial for the “go search youtube” people.
I am off to a roaring start today, having gotten one of my tutorials completely rewritten and published! It’s my Sticky Note tutorial. I also made a Shading Brush tut which is linked from there and from my ever-growing Tutorial Index.
It’s so hot today that it feels like you’re just going to catch on fire. It was 90 already when we left to go walking at 5:30. We are nearly always very gone at this time of year, though, and I pray that this is the last summer we don’t have any choice in the matter.
Ok off to lunch! Jodie’s getting restless. Here’s a pic of her just the other day, as she turned 8 months! She climbs this rock every morning. It used to be a big deal — like a real climb. But now it’s nothing for her.
I worked hard today for several hours and got exactly ONE tutorial rewritten. It’s far better than its predecessor and it’s here. In it, I create a butterfly shape from a photo, make it into a Vector Mask, and save it as a Custom Shape.
I am really enjoying exploring this stuff, learning more, and getting creative with my writing. I do hope that someone someday reads it.
I’ve been pondering the question of my own relevance. I’ve decided that I’m relevant as long as I’m still alive and creating. All I have to do is to pinpoint and reach my audience. I’ve done that before; I’ll do it again. But, this time, it must be different, because the communication media are so different.
In 2007, I didn’t even have a smartphone. I don’t think that e-books were even a thing. There was no such thing as “social media,” except for ICQ, IRC, and Usenet groups. I did most of my communication in those days through Usenet and my own bulletin board hosted on my site. I know that I will be handling my website communication through a Facebook group and email, of course. I hardly ever even look at email anymore, though, because it’s gotten so taken over by garbage.
I’m thinking about other concepts. I’m 63. The majority of my audience before was people at least as old as me, though I had some 30-somethings and even people in their 20’s. Would “Photoshop for Geezers” be a catchy thing? How about “Photoshop for Grown-ups?”
Or maybe age isn’t that big a deal. I just know that I’m not going to try to compete with the “look what I can do” YouTube videos. Ugh. I just can’t imagine anyone learns well from that kind of thing.
I guess I’m not feeling the urgency to write new posts, since literally NOBODY is reading these. What I’ve been working on the last few days is getting a new Tutorial Index built. I have been working on deciding which of my old tutorials aren’t worth keeping active, which ones are fine as they are, which ones are good but need a complete rewrite, and which ones are good but just need some tweaking.
I’ve decided to have an Archive Vault where I’ll store the ones which I’m retiring. Twenty-one of my originals are going straight into said Vault, once I get it set up.
Today I learned how to get files from my HTML side of things into my WP side. It involved getting a plugin to handle my media files (Filebird) and then downloading the files from my c-panel to my computer and then dragging them into my new media folders. It’s not hard; it just took me a long time to figure out how to do it.
I’m categorizing my tutorials a little differently, according to what the results are. I’m using my titles from my Photoshop classes for categories. Yanno, next, after I’m all done with this, and I have my following built up a bit, I’m going to rewrite (as necessary) my class materials and get going with that. I wish I were close enough to set myself a date. I do well with deadlines.
I have found that I love writing. Well, I knew that right along, but I really have missed it. And now I’m thinking about the magazine and book gigs that I used to have. Sigh. I wonder if there even ARE magazines and books now.
All of the Photoshop groups that I’ve found that have “tutorials” are just people showcasing their showoff Photoshop videos. So they’re about “look what I can do,” rather than my approach: Look what YOU can do. One thing that really surprises me is how little the effects have changed — the artwork that people are doing now is really not that different from 2000. And the special effects that people want to know how to do are things that I wrote about in 2002.
Maybe my way is outmoded, but I just don’t think so. What I think is that these “tutorial” video people are just more adept at making videos than they are about writing or teaching, for that matter.
One thing I need to work on is my resumé for when I finally get ready to get out there for real. I feel a need to explain to this newer generation who I am and why I am relevant.
Action! I made a Photoshop Action to reproduce my own Watercolor Effect. Woot! Not only that, but it works. I’m working on the poodle portraiture for the poodle groups, and I’m having lots of fun, learning new things, and coming out with some artwork that people are enjoying.
These are the ones I’ve done so far, and I’m going to keep on doing them, as long as it’s fun. Click to enlarge them. It’s going to help me with the drudgery part to have this watercolor action at the ready!
I got the tutorial written up, too, but haven’t advertised it yet. It’s HERE.
We got the refrigerator fixed yesterday! It did turn out to be the compressor, and, while the part was covered under warranty, the labor for it was $700. Yeah. Now we get to buy all new stuff to fill it. I’m not a huge fan of a packed fridge, so maybe it won’t have to be quite so full this time.
So today I chose my 14 favorites. I asked these people then for permission to use their photo, and, from these, I’m going to choose a few to do this effect and write it up. I’m tickled by this result and I am thinking about how much this reminds me of my Art Challenge. Still thinking about how to do that this time around…
I got this idea for a tutorial, and so I wanted a dog in action. I went onto 2 of my poodle groups and told them what I was doing. And got over 160 pictures from people from all over the world!
On Saturday, Jack noticed a bit of water leaking from the ice/water dispenser on our fridge. He took the ice thing out of there and it seemed to stop. On Sunday, of course, we awoke to everything warm in the fridge. Ugh. Phone calls and appointments and food into the garbage.
Thankfully, we don’t travel heavy in the refrigerated food department. We probably had just a couple hundred bucks worth of food, once you add in the mayo and ketchup. But waah! Guy’s coming out tomorrow. There’s some kind of class action going against LG for their compressors.
It’s another hot day today. We’re talking about taking a trip into the mountains, but, evidently, everyone else is doing the same thing, because all the campgrounds are full for the foreseeable future.
I’m looking out at our lake though before the 9th green, just outside my window. Big news here is the heat. While we’re not breaking any records, we’re above average this week. Average for Phoenix right now is a staggering 106°! So I’m happy inside.
Here’s my capstone image for this tutorial. Love it! I still haven’t worked the code for getting new visitors – or old ones back – to my site. I suppose that, someday, I’ll look back on this post and laugh. I hope so anyway.
Jodie’s back to doing great. We went on our normal walk with her and she did fine. Then she had a little runabout in the backyard with both of us. She loves that so much! Now she’s being my faithful co-worker right by my side napping.
Some days you’ve got it and some days you don’t. I’m trying to come up with something — some cool effect in Photoshop. I want to do something that hasn’t been done before. Ok, that’s the hard part. In my Photoshop career, I’ve come up with a few things all on my own. Most of the things I have come up with, though, are the result of people asking me how to do something.
One technique that is entirely mine is the one that I used with my Poster Effect tutorial. The part where I used Dodge and Burn to bring parts of the image into the whiteness or blackness — that was original and I first published that in 2004. Now, it seems like everything has been done and redone. But I’m still finding people in the tutorial groups asking basic questions. That is making me think that there may yet be a market for my style of teaching.
“My style,” of course, is coming off as old-school. I personally hate video tutorials. I see them more of a “look what I can do” presentation, than as a real teaching tool. Not that there isn’t a place for showing off, but I don’t think that people learn well by watching others do stuff. Most of the “tutorials” out there today are youtube showoff videos. Yawn.
Jodie’s tummy is all better today. She does so well with Pepto Bismol. What’s vexing her today is her ear. The groomer plucked all her hair out of her ears. Sounds gruesome, but it doesn’t hurt the dog, if it’s done right. The problem is that I don’t think it was done right. The poor dog has raw places in her left ear which are oozing and sticky. :/ The current literature on poodles is saying DON’T pluck. So I won’t have that done anymore. But wahhh. I really wish that she had not done it at all.
Jodie is still sick. :/ She seems to respond very well to Pepto Bismol, so she’s stopped vomiting as of yesterday afternoon, and no diarrhea since this morning. I’m attributing it to stress from being groomed. Her life is pretty sedate here these days with all of this home-staying, so it seems reasonable that she’d get upset with hours of getting bathed, dried, combed, and clipped. I know I would!
Jack made me a riser for my monitors! It’s perfect and beautiful and I’m going to love it. He even built in two drawers for me, and there’s a cubbyhole underneath. He made it in white melamine so that it matches the wall unit that we put in this room last year.
And I finished my digital painting! As with so many of my photorealism projects, this one went on so long that I got sort of tired of looking at it. I know that I got tired of painting moss! At least I made this one big enough that I can print it, if I ever decide I want to do that.
And Michele and Jack have actually mentioned that they might be able to go on an RV trip with us this summer! Of course this is contingent upon lots of pieces falling into place, including the kids’ school calendars which are different from each other.
It seems as if we’ve escaped being infected with Covid for another day. So yay!
I’ve been a tutorial-writing fool! I’ve added 4 new ones since my last blog entry: Making a Spiral, Custom Border, Basic Shapes, and Poster Effect. I’ve also joined some Photoshop Groups in Facebook, to get a sense of the climate out there, what’s needed, what’s already there, etc..
Collin in a Warhol poster effect
What I’m learning is that there are many people doing what they call “tutorials,” but which are what I call “show-off videos.” Yawn. And the overwhelming lot of these are doing effects that I was teaching 15 years ago. I wonder if what’s old is new again, or if these people were just not born yet.
Janee’s Bubble Border
There’s still much new that I need to learn and, while I’m at it, write tutorials about! 3D stuff looks intriguing and there are lots of new-to-me things to explore in the menus.
I got to the frustration point with that digital painting I was doing, and have not picked it up in a few days. Maybe today would be a good day to do have a go again.
We took Jodie to be groomed again yesterday and, once again, she was sick today. After we took her to be groomed 6 weeks ago, she got so terribly sick, so I am wondering if it’s something that they did to her, some kind of cleaner that they use on their cages, a treat that they give, or if Jodie is just so used to her serene and placid life here that the stress of the grooming salon is too much for her. Whatever it is, it’s terrible. Jack and I gave her a dose of Pepto Bismol this noon, and she is feeling much better now, at least.
Yeah, I know everyone is. I’m tired of staying home all the time, with no hopes of ever getting away. I’m tired of eating at home all the time. I’m tired of not being able to see our friends. I’m tired of not being able to travel to see our family. And I’m tired of moaning about simple things like this, when there are so many people actually suffering with this virus.
My Before photo
So today, I’m actually working on some art in Photoshop! Woo hoo! I don’t know yet if I’ll stick with it; sometimes I get into one of these photorealism challenges and just quit before it gets to be anything good.
I’m tickled that my site interface works. And I’m excited about the prospect of inviting people to come and see it and my site. Before that happens, I’d like to have some real progress on my tutorials and my Tutorial Index page. And before that, I need to peruse the FB PS groups and see what sort of things people even need help with these days!
We walked almost 3 miles with Jodie today! We went over to the Palo Verde Clubhouse and then down Michigan to Basha’s, where Jack went in and got us apple fritters. 🙂
Jodie has gotten much better with walking with us. When we first started with her, right after we got back from Death Valley, near the first of February, she was just 4 months old, and she really hated walking. She’d go fine for about 5 minutes, and then stop and sit in the road. Treats wouldn’t keep her motivated. Ugh. So we just decided to let her alone for a time.
A month later we took her out again and, this time, she started to limp, as if her right shoulder were sore. So, after some days of just letting her rest, I started taking her out, with her Gentle Leader, for very short walks – 5-7 minutes. Afterwards, I’d bring her home, crate her, and Jack and I would go do our 30-minute walk. Eventually, we worked her up to a full 30 minutes, and we’ve been doing that for about a month. And now she loves it! Her tail is up and wagging, and she alerts on every rabbit, bird, and dog!
So, yeah! Go to myJanee.com and ta-da! It not only shows up, but it shows up without gaps and the links work! I figured all of this out with some discouragement from my WP FB group, and a great site that helped me with the Image Mapping – Free Online Image Map Generator.
My FB group members told me that this sort of interface is just not done anymore, nobody does it, the coding is stupid, and anyone who uses this kind of code doesn’t deserve the air they breathe. Well, ok, they didn’t exactly say it like that.
My thinking, in going ahead with creating this interface, is that this is my site, dammit, and I’ll do what I want. I also am doing this site for MY people, MY students, and I hope you all like what I’ve done. And I love the art that I did. So there!
So that was my whole day yesterday, and about an hour of this morning. But it works and I’m happy!
Next thing .. well, I’ll tell you when I get it underway. For one thing, I’m getting itchy feet and want to travel! So I want to plan a little trip. With temps around here in the 100’s, I am thinking “mountains.”
