Self Bullying

Bullying is always wrong.

Oh, this cap almost made me lose it.  I was just perusing some images on Discord and came across this beautiful photo.  It immediately struck me as a transformed man having to look at a photo of another man just so he could communicate with his wife.  I don't know how much it's there and how much is in my mind but her expression in the photo just seems like it's not quite true.  She's trying to look happy/satisfied while not really being so.  

I finished my daily perusal... I actually have another image pulled and will try to make another cap with it later... and went to make this a cap.  The beauty of the photo is what made me want to make it a cap.  The focus, the lighting, the warmth on her face with the coldness everywhere else, her natural beauty paired with her 'normal' clothing (not the overtly over sexualized lingerie I normally go after), all said that it should be beautiful.  Not just words and the photo.  My current method of making caps is to pull up the image in Photoshop then open up Word to the left of the image and start writing.  That way I have my 'inspiration' for the story while I write.  

Now, in this instance, I had a bit of a time crunch.  I was going to play D&D with my nephews, brother, and a friend in about two hours.   With a shower and a quick trip to buy a Chromebook I basically had an hour to work with.  Thankfully, the story flowed naturally and easily.  The whole idea of bullying came while writing but really fit the mood.  Once I was happy I poured the text into Photoshop, knowing that I wanted to keep it neutral in color.  The only colors should be on her face and nothing extra from the text or text box.  I played a bit with the colors of the text box, the line around the text box, and the text itself until settling on the black/grey/dark-grey combination.  Then I went into lining the text up.  I know it's my standard and I wish I could accept changing, but I just really like the look of the justified text without hyphens.  Unfortunately that text layout looks bad when the last line only has a few words.  So I have to either fill out the paragraph so that the last line extends further, or delete some from the paragraph so that the last line goes away.  It's boring tedious work as much of it is finding out how much to add/delete without changing the tone of the story.  

When I finally had it done I went to nudge the text and text box a bit and then save it.  Up until this point, I hadn't saved the file as I hadn't decided on a title.  Occasionally when I do something simple in Photoshop, the system pauses.  I wouldn't say it freezes, as everything else works fine, but Photoshop stops responding.  It's strange as this has only happened since I moved on to the newest AMD Ryzen series (Ryzen 7 7700X).  So I waited for it to finish pondering whatever it was pondering so that I could save it (I knew I could save it something like "selfbullying.psd").  

And then Photoshop crashed.  

It didn't just pause or hiccup... it fully closed out with an error report going out to Adobe (I often wonder, does Adobe get to see the project I was working on?  That would be strange!).  It took me about 20 minutes to write the story, but another 30 to edit it in photoshop and add the text box.  

FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!   

Disgusted with myself for not saving something that had even five minutes of work into it, I just turned off the computer and went about my day.  I knew I'd more than likely return to the cap and make it again, but it wasn't certain.  Editing, for me at least, is tough.  Doing it twice is more than twice as tough because I have a vague memory of the choices I made and constantly wonder if this new choice is better or worse than my previous choice.  

Well, fast forward to this morning and I was in a fairly good mood and decided to give it a go.  I was honestly surprised when I opened up Photoshop and the image came back up.  It wasn't exactly as I'd left it (say it had about 75% of my previous work), but it was close enough.  The text box was there, the text was laid out and justified.  The story just wasn't edited.  Yeah, that's the bulk of the work, but it still let me just slide in and not start completely over.  

Finishing up at that point was easy enough (still tedious, and I still get the feeling that my previous edits were better... but whatever).  I think the cap is nice.  Not one of my best by a long shot, but one of my better recent efforts.  

Hope you enjoy it!