I Am Frustrated and I Am Going to Shriek. You May Listen If You'd Like.:)

[Charlene5]

My name is MJ and I would like to take a hammer to both the brand new Wacom tablet (that I am too uncoordinated to use properly) and Photoshop because it was so expensive and won't do miraculous things unless I tell it how to do it.  Actually my given name is Mary Jane but the only person in the world who calls me that is my mother, but only when she remembers who I am.  Sometimes I am "Margie" her best friend for yonks who has been dead for 20 years or I am Sandra, my sister. She no longer calls me by all three names when she is really cross with me and that's nice.  I wonder if that's a cultural thing?  Hannie, do Dutch mothers do that?  Call you by your given name and your middle name and your last name and you know for sure you're in BIG trouble?  My mother always gave The Look at the same time.  The Look was reserved for high crimes, like exploring the recesses of my nasal cavities in church or when I brought a note home from school to inform my parents that I beat up Digby because he broke my new crayons.  The Look always put the fear in me.

I've been working on three pictures for about 5 days.  Two bridal, one kids.  One bridal is nearly done.  Father's alb looks peculiar but I think it's the shading.  Bridal #2 has the amazing floating bridesmaid and the pipes and the candles and faceless people and my heart sinks every time I look at it.  The kids I thought would be easy.  Hah!!  I swear Chris has a way of displaying them in the gallery so that they look all innocent and easy, but when the high res download starts to open you see the full horror of running colors, white spots, and half faces.  I wonder how she does it :)?  Tonight I finally got the little girl's hair changed from a stunning forest green with indigo highlights to her natural reddish brown.  I've cleaned up the blue noise on her face - made her look quite seasick, that - and put her ear back.  The original ear was pleated like a fan and leaning at a strange angle.  The little boy now looks like an aged starlet that's had WAY too much plastic surgery.  He's pink and perfect and his hair looks as if he's sporting a really cheap toupee of precisely the wrong color.  How could I spend all those hours on the kids and end up with this??  I am going to eat a very large bowl of ice cream instead of pounding things and maybe it'll all look better in the morning.

Thank you for allowing me to unbosom myself.  It's theraputic ya know :)

MJ

[truckersau]

 :funny: :funny: :funny: :funny: :funny: :funny: :funny: :funny: :funny: :funny:
Look out Wacom :knuppel:
Sorry MJ, I was just having some lunch and came in for a sticky beak to see what was happening. I didn't mean to laugh but.
I feel for you, these are free  :hug: so I'll give you one in the hope that it makes you feel a bit better.
Ray..

[glennab]

MJ, you have the most wonderful sense of humor!  All I can say is "ditto, ditto and ditto."

Tapioca pudding is my therapy of choice right now.  I've gone through banana pudding ice cream treatment, wafer cookies comfort, and there's always the dark chocolate when things get really tough!

I have a scheme that helps with the "it didn't look that bad when I saw Chris' phony facsimiles" syndrome.  I choose the most difficult ones in the first place, then I do and redo and redo. But at least I have the excuse of not having the sense to pick an "easy" one.

You've perfectly expressed so much of the frustration I suspect we all encounter, and you've definitely given me my chuckles for the day!  Thanks for the much-appreciated rant.

Glenna

[cmpentecost]

You are all correct.  I intentionally make these photos all look really easy, and the instant you download them, they get covered in white spots and splotches on the head!

I love your sense of humor Mary Jane Margie Sandra Charlene!  If we can't humor ourselves over some of these impossible restorations, then life is too short!

Christine

[glennab]

There ya go, MJ

Chris finally admits what we suspected.  Sneaky tactic, Christine, but clever.  I notice the restorations are getting done, despite your deception!

Glenna

[Tess (Tassie D)]

 :funny: Oh MJ you put my feelings into words exactly. Though I don't eat stuff when I'm frustrated, I drink more coffee.  :wow:   
I have spent about 2 whole hours with my wacom and I hope it gets a whole lot better with practice or I'll have a shiny desk ornament to dust. :D

[Mhayes]

MJ,

I loved hearing your progress on the three pictures, especially the little boy!  :funny: Now I feel better about some of my restorations that appeared to have taken a turn for the worst.

Margie

[kiska]

I intentionally make these photos all look really easy, and the instant you download them, they get covered in white spots and splotches on the head!

THAT, Dearies, is the ole "BAIT AND SWITCH"   :mad:

[Hannie]

You guys make me laugh, this is great!
MJ, we only have one name in Holland so whenever I got into trouble a simple whack sufficed!  :knuppel:
About the Wacom tablet, be patient, in a couple of weeks it'll do for you all of those miraculous things you thought it would, honestly! (although I really do like Glenna's therapeutic schemes better)
Christine, you are so evil!

Hannie

[schen]

Christine, if you would publish your procedure of removing the white dots before posting them, we will forgive your deceptive practice.   :mad:

[rockthumper]

Nice rant MJ.  :funny: It will all look better in the morning...                                    ...I'm just not sure which morning.  >:D
At least now I know there's no point in getting out the magnifier to look at Christine's thumbnails - 'cause they're all done with special effects!  ;D

[Ausimax]

Hi MJ,


Welcome to the club, you are now officially suffering from OPR syndrome ( Oppressive Photometric Recidivism)
it attacks with out warning, mainly affecting the optic nerve making all your restoration work look crappy and hopeless, the favoured cures are bed rest and alcohol, several days of intense treatment usually result in a complete recovery. :funny:

Don't give up on the Wacom, I don't think I could work without a tablet now, even though I haven't learned how to make use of most of the features, I think try the basics first, look on it as a controllable mouse and sneak up on it from there.

I knew I was in trouble with my mother when she used my first name to call me, I had a nickname that I was commonly called and the only time my real name was used was when I was in deep smelly stuff. I was well into my middle years before I became comfortable with my name, oh! the legacies our parents leave us.

A tip for Christine's sneaky deceptions, do a screen dump of the PhotoShelter page with the photo on it, crop out the photo in PS and resize it to double its size, then the situation becomes clearer and you have some idea what you may be taking on, taking into account the complimentary spots and scratches Chris adds during the download. :D

Max

[Charlene5]

Good morning!  The offending picture doesn't look as gruesome this morning, although I just discovered that the ear I lovingly returned to the little girl's head isn't an ear at all in the original - it's yet more running color.  I'll remove the ear today and redo the right side of her hair and paint in more missing pixels (the white spots) on the little boy's clothes.  He is wearing plaid.  Plaid!!  There is nothing to worse to restore than plaid and I think it should be illegal to wear plaid in a picture that may someday have to be restored.  People should be wearing solid colors only and spare the poor restorer the future hysterics.

I got so cross with the Wacom last night that I yanked it out by it's USB roots and moved it across the room (on top of a pile of magazines) so that I couldn't see it mocking me.  Technology often finds my ignorance quite hilarious.  In my house all the electrical gadgets get together and talk among themselves to decide which one will be the next to misbehave.  Sometimes they plan a double-header just to watch me get hysterical.  A few months ago the dishwasher caught fire (really!) at the same time the computer in the washing machine went whacko and refused to go into the spin cycle.  I got to play "Little House on the Prairie" for two weeks while parts were ordered and blame assigned.   I was washing dishes by hand (ugh!!)  and lugging mountains of dirty clothes and linens to the laundromat. I will allow the Wacom back on my desk if it promises to stop sneering at my efforts and laughing every time I lay the pen on the tablet and Photoshop goes berserk.  Last time I did that Photoshop had the magnifying glass selected and the picture was morphing at high speed from huge to almost invisible.  Scared the life out of me - thought my computer had become possessed.

I should explain how I became Charlene.  She is an alter ego.  I was in the US Army for nine years - yes really, although it was a very long time ago.  I was a sergeant.  (I can see you laughing!) I spent my years working for Catholic priests because they're so easy to bully.  Most of them were educated by nuns and respond well to overbearing women :)  A couple of times a month I was snatched away by the general to letter placecards for a formal dinner (I did calligraphy back then) or to deal with a backlog of correspondence.  I digress.  (I'm good at that.)  My favorite priest was a lieutenant colonel from the Diocese of St. Louis, Missouri.  He was easy going and told real groaner jokes and liked to sit in his office reading the sports pages of the newspaper while simultaneously dripping coffee down the front of his uniform and decorating the stains with dribbled ash.  He was terrible with names.  They just didn't take hold in his brain.  He'd look at me and "Charlene" would come out of his mouth.  After two years of being called "Charlene" she became a part of me.  She was the one who spelled things wrong in the letters she typed or scheduled two infant baptisms at the same time.  Charlene was utterly incompetent :)  Actually I fared pretty well.  The other young woman in the office was called Carlena and she was dubbed "Concertina." 

Father K also unwittingly provided me with my all time favorite excuse.  Along with being bad at names, he was terrible with paperwork.  As part of the federal government we had mountains of it, and the Military Ordinariate (the military diocese) really loved the reports as well.  When a report came due I'd nag and nag with no result.  Two days before whatever it was came due Father K would adopt a very sorrowful expression and announce that he "didn't have the grace of the vocation" for producing reports.  I'd always end up doing it and he signed whatever nonsense I produced without reading it.   The next time you're expected to do something that you don't want to do sigh heavily, look heartbroken, and announce that you don't have the grace of the vocation to do whatever it is.  Works every time :)

MJ, who is trying to picture Hannie sleeping in a closet

[Hannie]

[Ausimax]

MJ,

With the Wacom, you don't have the mouse on the tablet at the same time do you? I use the mouse with the tablet, a lot of things I still do with the mouse, and if I forget to move it off the tablet before I try to use the pen everything goes berserk.


Max