I do have some very tame self portraits though (of course members of TheCrossdresser.com get access to these as well), and even some still life and landscape work that I do . . . which I don’t suspect my members care that I don’t post on the site (if you do, let me know – I’d be happy to share my photos of flowers and mountains with you! Anything to keep my members happy of course )

So in the interest of not boring you too much with my other not-even-erotic images (and perhaps to show off some of my tastefully erotic crossdressing images to a new audience), I thought I’d join DeviantArt. I just came across the site a week or so ago, and so far it seems like a pretty fun place. There are lots of people browsing and commenting on art, and there really are some pretty talented artists that post on the site (along with some very amateur ones as well )

Of course, I’ll save my kinkier photos for the blog (and the kinki-est photos for my members only area!), and I’ll inevitably post a selection of my other random images here as well. But if it seems like your sort of thing, check out my DeviantArt profile too. And leave comments, I love to hear what people think!

Well that’s all changed now . I just finished up processing ALL of the pics from that set, and it only took me . . . well, about 8 hours. Greenscreens still suck But at least they are done now, and I can post the set next week. All thanks to the fact that I finally learned how to use PS. Or at least enough of Photoshop to figure out how to mask out a greenscreen. In the meantime, here’s a before and after shot:

Much cleaner, eh? Well anyway, I was so excited about it that I decided to do a brand new zentai set to celebrate. With no greenscreen this time! I think trandroids and crossdressing cosplay might really catch on here . . . hehe, c’mon, all the cool kids are doing it! Well, the cool kids in Japan are at least . . .

My recent big purchase was Adobe Creative Suite 4 (that’s the new version of Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver). That counts as a nerdy purchase I guess, but it’s also website related which makes it sort of a crossdressing purchase. Sort of. And then I realized that I didn’t know how to use my new software very well, and considering what I paid for it I’m not about to let it go unused. So I had to buy some books to learn how to use all my new software.

Then I decided that it was about time to buy wig stands for a couple wigs I have that I’d been hanging over doorknobs and the like. Definitely a tgirl purchase. And while I was at it I bought some smaller breastforms to wear with strappy tops. You know, just so I could combine shipping.

And the other day I was at the hardware store (picking up some stuff I actually needed), and of course I wandered around a bit . . . and I found a set of worksite lights (you know, the big quartz lamps you can light up your entire yard with) on sale for 80% off. So of course I couldn’t pass those up. I’m going to use them as studio lighting, but really, did I need another 1200W of light?

I can justify most of this stuff as investments in the website, and to be honest they are all things that I will use regularly and probably make me more productive . . . but I also just really wanted them Oh well, guess I will find out in a few months (tax time) if I overspent or underspent this year! Wish me luck!

Anyway, I dug through my files and found some pics of my old site layouts so I thought I’d share them . . . maybe against my better judgement

All I could find of the very first design was this photo that happened to include it in the background. Photo is actually part of one of my sets, where I was pretending to be working on the site But anywho . . . this wasn’t actually the very first design since there’s graphical button links . . . but it’s as close as I can find. Notice that I couldn’t figure out how to make my border continue all the way around, so it just stops in the title. I did actually manage to erase some of the background from the photos in this version though so it almost looks like they’re part of the site layout instead of random photos . . .

I started to get fancy on this layout . . . I learned a little more about Dreamweaver and just updated everything, so now there’s a continuous border. And I played with Photoshop a bit more and managed to erase a good bit of the background from the layout photos . . . but notice all the photos have big black areas because that was the only way I could get them to blend into my black background!

Now this is not a version of the site I’m proud of . . . as evidenced by the fact that the only image found of it came from an outdated third party review’s screen capture of the members’ area that they still have posted . . . but that’s another subject. Anyway, the tour pages didn’t look quite this bad (I don’t think), but I really have no excuse for re-using the old title banner in a new color scheme. Believe it or not though, this design was a huge improvement in site navigation. Plus I figured out how to get images on the right side of a text block. I still couldn’t get all the background erased from the images in Photoshop though . . . oh well, one step at a time, right?

Which brings us to a familiar image, the current site design. I’m still fond of this one (introduced in 2007), and I put in a TON of work on it. Not the least of which was (finally) finding a reasonable color scheme. Which is easier said than done, considering that I’m colorblind. Though I don’t think even colorblindness is much of an excuse for some of the original designs. Of course, this layout’s already a bit outdated – I learned an amazing amount this year about how to use Photoshop (and Illustrator) the right way . . . when I did this layout I still couldn’t figure out how to get images in the background that looked natural, and I didn’t know the right compression settings to get the site exported with reasonable file sizes . . . and I didn’t know how to use slices, so I hand cut, saved, compressed, and re-aligned all the pieces. Eek! And of course by the time I did all that I decided I wasn’t going to go back and fix the small issues because it would mean hand re-building everything again!

Well I’m not ready to give up on the above design, but I did end up putting together a 2008 version which I’m currently using as an alternate tour. This one needs a little tweaking still, but at least the files are set up so that I can do it! Anyway, I like it, but it’s not as clean as the above design either. Maybe they’ll just attract different types of people though

The end result was a totally Dr. Who – looking android set. Or is that trandroid (tranny android?) . . . you know you’ve dreamed of it, c’mon! Below is a collage of original Dr Who androids and cybermen (thank you BBC) next to one of the pics I took. So who do you think would win, the cybermen or the trandroids?

 

Well, I recently discovered that Photoshop can actually build webpage galleries. And that it does a pretty good job with them. Oh, well that’s neat. And you can customize them a bit, unlike in my (very old Macromedia) version of Fireworks. So then I started really wondering what else Photoshop could do that I never knew about. I mean, I know people do some amazing things in Photoshop, but I always assumed that they could do amazing things because they were amazing graphic artists.

Turns out Photoshop is just a downright amazing program . . . it’s just impossible to find exactly what you want to do without having someone tell you a few tricks, or taking a class, or something like that.  In a matter of a couple days (mostly by coincidence, but partly because I was looking), I figured out how to use the airbrush correctly (duplicate the layer, blur it so it looks soft and airbrushy, add a “hide all” layer mask, and then paint on the mask to reveal the softened image where you want it), how to automatically align objects and layers (select all, then layer->align to selection), how to do batch processing by creating actions (window->actions, then just hit record while you process an image), and how to create really cool HDR images (file->automate->generate HDR in CS2 and later).

So between automating web galleries and file processing, I’ve now shaved over an hour off of my weekly update time AND know how to put my logo at the bottom of all my images without adding any time. Oh, and my galleries are now split across pages so the thumbs load faster, and have better navigation. And no more broken links from my less than perfect typing skills

What am I going to do with all that time I save? Dress up and take more photos of course!