Where are they!?

I threw them in with everything else...

I'm sure by now most of you that read these posts know my path to making a cap or an obscura.  Search either Fuskator or google images to find an image, get inspired, write it up, do any graphic work I want, save it, and finally post it here.  For the past few years I haven't done much on the graphic side, following the same formula as it just seems to work.  Occasionally I'll dip my toes into some older trope whether it be a story idea I've used before or some past graphic style.  

Well this time I started a little different.  I've been on an organizing spree as of late and that is now extending into my cap folders.  Most caps will have four files associated with them.  One for the final jpg, one for the photoshop file, and then one of each of those for the header graphic.  Obviously, multipaneled caps have more and obscuras, as they're just single images, have less.  Some will have word files when I feel it's important to save the text separately, and some of my older works would include a notepad file with the web address of the original graphics.  That's all fine and good, but my "Caps" folder has 6009 files in 113 folders and takes up 14.6 GB.  

So, with a recent reformat and reinstall of Windows 10, I decided to start going through my files and eliminating ones that I no longer need.  Most of my 'Downloads' folder got deleted as with modern speeds there's no reason to save these larger files.  I can just download it again later and in all honesty they'll likely have a newer version anyway.  My 'Fonts' folder got trimmed to have JUST the font files and not all the readmes and other information.  But Caps... how exactly do I trim that down.  It's not like I want to lose the photoshop files.  

The first place I looked was "Cap Projects".  This was the folder where I kept larger projects while I was working on them.  Think of "Self Portrait - Behind the Layers" and you'll get the right idea.  Anyway, inside that folder I have a "Caps In Progress" folder that I used to use for the very beginning of caps.  I'd have an image, write down a quick idea of a story, then store the files in there.  I believe I stopped using that around 2014 (that's the date of the last edited file) as it rarely led me back to making the caps.  My idea here was to just trash these half ideas.  But lo and behold... I came across an image:

I'd seen this image dozens, maybe hundreds, of times.  I always knew the basic push of the cap would be "Where the fuck is it!?", but I never felt inspired to write out a story.  Today though a more thorough story came to mind.  It probably helps that I'm following a more trimmed trend of not worrying about details that aren't important.  Our hero/oine got a pair of transforming panties and has had fun being a curvy blonde bomshell, but has cornered himself into a date with a guy.  His new body is betraying him and he knows if he goes on that date he'll end up having sex, so he needs to conclude his fun and transform back.  BUT, he can't find his tranforming panties.  

Boom.  Full cap.  And as long as I was on the trim, short, and sweet train, I'd make it a kinetic text cap similar to "Where the hell is..." and make the fun in what's going on in his/her head.  So I started by putting the text in place, not giving a lot of though as to the actual articles of clothing and just letting my kink inspired mind go its own way.  Here's what it initially looked like:

While I loved the top and bottom text, especially their color mirroring her top, I had two problems here.  First, you can't really read the searching text.  I don't mind them being a little nebulous, but I don't want to make the readers squint.  And... unless I want this to be completely meta, there isn't anything in here about what she was originally.  Maybe this woman just wants her transforming panties to become a slim fit brunette and this has nothing to do with gender.  So, I'd need a little paragraph.  I tackled that next as I was hoping it would solve my graphic problem.  Here's the text just dropped into the space it fit into:

The dual color (brown on one side, tan on the other) was nice as they were both in the same color wheelhouse as the orange... but it didn't solve my problem and in fact now created another.  Blurring the background?

Better, but it's still hard to read.  My last fix for all the free standing text was to add the glow effect around the dark text and a stroke effect around the orange text.  That's one of those tricks that stay in my bag as it makes text stand out on multiple colored backgrounds.  Glow for dark text makes it stand out on dark backgrounds, while a shadow will make light text stand out against a light background.  The stroke, which I normally don't like, just serves as a good emphasis making some text more important.  

The final step was making the mini-paragraph stand out a bit more.  My normal setting is to draw a rectangle (now a days with curved edges) fill it in with a dark or light matching color, then reduce its opacity until you can see the background behind it, but still read the text over it.  This time, however, I pathed out the rectangle, made a copy of the background layer (the washing machines), then manipulated the levels to darken it up and help the light text stand out more.  

Initially I was more than happy with the result and happy with the cap as a whole... but then one of those needling details got in my eye and started irritating me like a grain of sand.  The text background rectangle was awfully close to the line between the two washing machines.  I could just push it over a bit or shrink it down... but I didn't have a layer that I could transform like that as a text block.  If I moved or shrunk it, it would no longer line up with the background behind it.  

Yeah, that's why I stopped using that technique years and years ago.  

Anyway, it wasn't a big enough deal to warrant making a new text box, so I just left it.  

And my whole idea of cleaning up my cap folder?  Well, I have a new cap with its 4 associated files and now four new working files.  I'm just going to stop now.  

Last thing... I have no idea where I got the image.  The blank one I have up near the top is the original file I had saved, so if you recognize it or know where I can credit/link it, I'll gladly do it.  

Hope you enjoy!