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 I got an email from Bluehost, telling me I needed to upgrade my php, which was seriously outdated.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.
I just posted two all-new Photoshop Tutorials! I did another photo retouching tutorial, the one linked from the picture at the right. I’m calling it (oh-so-clever!) Photo Fixing 2.
Photo Fixing 2
In the other tutorial, I go through 5 ways to remove a subject from its background. It’s called Remove Any Background.
We go through removing all sorts of objects from all sorts of backgrounds. Below are some examples:
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.”
As soon as I figure out how to make it clickable, this will be my new website interface! All original pixels. I’m going to reorient it, though, so that it’s taller than wide. Or… I wonder if I can have a different one for people viewing on their mobiles. Hmmmm…
