#playing around with community and personal psds yet again

[lazyteapot]

postcard legacy: the braniac doctor (gen 1 - kinda) looks like a new family has arrived in copperdale prev/next

[canarysage]

Gradient Maps For Dummies <3

— as written by a dummy

it’s been a while! hello gracious reader and welcome back to the series where yours truly fails at explaining things: photopea for dummies. if you’re unfamiliar, this is a series where the admin of this blog tries to explain how photopea works. whether or not the series is successful is yet to be determined.

today, we’re attempting to tackle yet another one of photopea’s adjustment layers: gradient maps. gradient maps have become more popular in the editing community lately, so i’ve been meaning to make this one for a while. apologies for the delay!

what is a gradient map? a gradient map is a form of layer that adheres a gradient to a photo’s dark and light values. a gradient fill is something different altogether, wherein a gradient is made atop the image without regard for the image’s original form.

think of it as a bedsheet. when held upright, a shield is just a rectangle, but if you lay it on something three dimensional, you can see the object beneath, because gravity causes the sheet to adhere to whatever is beneath. in our case, your image is two dimensional, but a gradient map applies different colors to the dark, light, and middle values.

this is the gradient map used on all of the icons above. i made this one by experimenting with different colors. to add colors to a gradient map, double tap below the line, and you’ll see a small square appear. click the square to choose the colors you desire, and feel free to adjust it as you wish.

in photopea’s gradient maps, the colors closest to the left will adhere to the darkest parts of your image, while the colors closest to the right will adhere to the lighter parts of your image. the saturation and lightness values of your color itself don’t affect this at all—for example, here’s the same gradient map applied in reverse.

(to reverse a gradient map, toggle the reverse button as seen above. to undo it, just click the button again.)

pretty different, right? especially with no blending modes or adjustments in opacity, this gives your images a spooky negative look. if that’s what you’re going for, go crazy. if you want something a little more plain, set your darker colors on the left, and your lighter colors on the right.

exactly how the editor utilizes a gradient map is up to personal preference. some editors use gradient maps in lieu of complicated psds, while others like myself use gradient maps as one of the pieces of our complicated psds. gradient maps often go hand in hand with blending modes—for more on that, see here.

personally, i use a gradient map as a base for most of my psds.

the exact settings are up to you, but i typically use either blending mode soft light with 50-75% opacity, or blending mode overlay with 10-25% opacity. the gradient map i use is one of the default ones available in photopea, a simple black and white set to reverse.

i like to use this gradient map to soften the colors and as a simple, easy to do base for all of my psds. if you look in some of the psds i have posted, you usually see this at the bottom or close to it.

how else can i use a gradient map? anyway you want, really! as you can see in my example image, gradient maps can be used to completely change the colors of your project, or to add a little bit of spice. something else you can use is a noise gradient map for texture.

go to the gradient map itself as if you’re going to adjust your colors, and switch the type from normal to noise. then click randomize until you land on something you like!

it looks something like this. set to normal is pretty chaotic and janky looking, but set to soft light or to a lower opacity hue setting, this can be a great way to add some flare to your psds!

like with a lot of things in photopea, it’s best to experiment on your own and figure out what works best for you. i recommend playing around with opacity and blending modes, as well as what color combinations you personally like. every editor’s style is different, and the sky’s the limit with what you can do!

yours truly, canarysage

[help-on-four-paws]

How I Help My Girl as a Psychiatric Service Dog

[Told from Kelsie’s perspective.]

This is a picture of me doing a paw alert.  As you can see, I hit my girl with one paw while looking directly at her so that she knows I’m trying to communicate with her.

A Psychiatric Service Dog (PSD) helps a handler who is legally disabled by one or more mental health problems.  First, please note that my girl and I do not use the terms “mental illness” or “psychological disorder” because we personally do not believe in perpetuating these terms.  My girl and I have taken enough neuroscience, biology, and psychology classes to believe that disorders usually classified as psychological are actually biological or neurological in nature.  For example, most people would easily classify Parkinson’s as neurological, and yet many of the pathways and neurological underpinnings of Parkinson’s are also shared by disorders that most people automatically classify as “psychological.”  And if diabetes is an inability to produce insulin appropriately and depression is an inability to produce serotonin appropriately, shouldn’t we classify both of them as “chemical disorders,” rather than one as a physical illness and one as a mental illness?  (Of course, this is vastly simplified both disorders, but you can see my point.)  The more research reveals about so-called “psychological” disorders, the more we find biological underpinnings that explain these illnesses.  The so-called “mental” aspects of these illnesses are actually biologically derived, just like any other physical health problem.  My girl and I believe that part of the stigma of mental health problems comes from labels that imply that these illnesses are “all in your head,” and through avoiding potentially harmful labels, we hope to decrease that stigma as much as possible.

Although I am usually very open about my girl’s health problems and struggles, mental health problems can be incredibly personal in nature, especially since they are often associated with difficult moments in an individual’s life, so at this time, I’m not going to share her specific diagnoses.  However, I will at least say that she has depression and anxiety, but please remember that these are general terms for her problems, not the technical terms used by the medical community for her diagnoses.

As a psychiatric service dog, I primarily — or, at least, most overtly — help my girl with her anxiety disorders.  My girl gets panic attacks, but she experiences two “kinds” of panic attacks: “twitchy” panic attacks, which probably fit most people’s idea of what a panic attack looks like and are characterized by nervous ticks and other “stereotypical” anxious responses, and “paralyzed” panic attacks, which more resemble a catatonic state and are characterized by a “frozen” countenance and a kind of “dissociation” from the surroundings.

I can alert my girl to rising anxiety and impending panic attacks by making her aware of behaviours or chemical changes in her body that indicate increased anxiety or panic.  Most of the time, these anxiety indicators are associated with her “twitchy” panic attacks, so I am better able to alert her to that kind of panic attack compared to her “paralyzed” panic attacks.  During or immediately before a “twitchy” panic attack, my girl often does nervous scratching, where she will scratch at herself until she bleeds, usually without being conscious of what she’s doing.  I have been trained to paw at her, particularly at her scratching hand, in order to interrupt the behaviour (a task sometimes referred to as “interruption of self-mutilation”).  Pawing at my girl also serves to alert her to a panic attack that is occurring or about to occur so that the can take steps to avoid it or dissipate it through removing herself from a stressful situation, having me give her Deep Pressure Therapy (DPT), taking medication, or pursuing other strategies.  My girl also often does hand shaking or hand fidgeting during an anxious episode or when her anxiety is rising.  Some might classify this behaviour as a kind of stimming behaviour, but regardless of what you call it, I notice when my girl starts to do her anxious hand shaking, which she often doesn’t realize she’s doing due to her anxious mindset.  Like with the nervous scratching, I will paw at my girl in order to draw her attention to the anxious behaviour and to alert her to her rising anxiety so that she can respond to it to prevent it from coming a full panic attack, even though the hand fidgeting itself is not harmful by itself.  I have even started to pick up on foot bouncing, which my girl does not do as often but frequently does in conjunction with her scratching or hand flapping.

Because anxiety and panic attacks are associated with elevated cortisol levels and increased heart rate, I can also pick up on changes in cortisol and heart rate in my girl and will paw at her to indicate that she should respond to rising anxiety even if she isn’t exhibiting any of her stereotypical anxious behaviours.  As a disclaimer, not all my alerts are equally strong as one another, because some precursors and indicators happen more frequently, some associated scents are subtler, and some behaviours or scents are easier to replicate in a training session if a scent sample isn’t available.  Furthermore, you may have noticed that all of my alerts related to anxiety are performed by pawing at my girl: they all have the same alert behaviour so that my girl knows that I’m specifically alerting to her anxiety or panic and not to one of her other health problems.  Having one alert behaviour associated with anxiety helps my girl to understand what I’m communicating to her so that she can make an appropriate response as quickly as possible.

When I was describing how my girl can respond to my anxiety alerts, I  mentioned Deep Pressure Therapy (DPT) as an option.  DPT is a method of firm, tactile sensory input that has a calming effect on the whole body.  Swaddling, firm hugs, and weighted blankets can all provide DPT, but Service Dogs can also be trained to offer DPT.  You may remember from your high school biology class that activation of your sympathetic nervous system is your “fight or flight” response and the activation of your parasympathetic nervous system is your “rest and digest” response.  Increased anxiety is associated with activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is why you feel a rapid heartbeat when you’re anxious.  Deep Pressure Therapy stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which counteracts the effects of the sympathetic nervous system because it performs the “opposite” jobs of the sympathetic nervous system (e.g. the parasympathetic nervous system slows your heartbeat).  I give my girl DPT by applying as much of my bodyweight to my girl as possible.  Ideally, I lie on top on my girl and attempt to lean into her body while she lies on the ground, because pressure on her chest is the most effective at reducing her anxiety (essentially, I act as a weighted vest).  However, not all situations are conducive to having my girl lie on the floor, so we improvise when we need to.  Alternate versions of DPT for us can include having me lie on my girl’s legs while she sits on the ground or having me lean across my girl’s lap while she’s sitting in a chair.  Of course, that last option is least preferred because I can’t apply my full bodyweight, so I can’t give my girl the full benefits of DPT.  Also, please note that DPT is not just “cuddling.”  Rather, it’s specifically applied pressure and is a trained task, and during my training, I was rewarded the more pressure I applied to my girl.

Sources related to the effectiveness of DPT: 1, 2, 3, 4

I also mentioned that my girl has “dissociative” or “paralyzed” panic attacks that don’t appear to have any physical cues that she can replicate in training (unlike before with her scratching).  Automatic DPT doesn’t seem to be able to remove her from her trance-like state, so instead, I offer tactile stimulation, where I lick her, and persistently insist that she play with me.  I just naturally started offering my girl a toy when she was in a “paralyzed” panic attack.  When I’m bored and feeling particularly playful, I can be very insistent that somebody acknowledge me!  I will continually bring over toys and even paw at the person until they give me attention and play with me.  I’m a princess, so the world has to revolve around me, right?!  Eventually, my persistence would pay off, and my girl would come back to reality.  I’m still working on learning when my girl is in a “paralyzed” panic attack, and since my girl has no memory of the time when she’s experiencing one, we aren’t able to replicate it easily.  But I’m getting better and faster at responding with each one!

Remember, in the United States, the ADA requires that a task be “individually trained,” meaning that a Service Dog can’t just naturally offer the behaviour on their own but rather that the Service Dog must be trained to do that behaviour.  If a dog exhibits a natural tendency to do something that is beneficial to their handler, that natural behaviour can be intentionally shaped into a task, and this intentional shaping would count as training.  Although I naturally started licking at my girl and interrupting her panic attacks through play, my girl is transforming this into a trained task by rewarding me heavily when she wakes up from her trance-like state.  This reward reinforces the behaviour that I’m offer so that I’m more likely to do it again during a similar situation in the future.  This conditioning over time is what will make it a trained task.

“Watch My Back” is another one of the many tasks that I do for my girl, along with the “sister” command “Cover”. I stand behind her for “Watch My Back” and in front of her for “Cover,” and the barrier created by my body helps to put her more at ease in a public situation, often for a long enough period of time for her to focus on her shopping, pay for an item at the register, or even just stand in line.  “Watch My Back” and “Cover” are useful for when my girl is feeling particularly anxious or hypervigilant.  These feelings can arise when my girl’s anxiety disorders are acting up and occur especially when she’s feeling tired.  When your body gets tired, your your prefrontal cortex (PFC) also gets tired!  Your PFC controls logical thought and works to inhibit your amygdala, which controls your emotions.  In people with anxiety disorders (like my girl), the amygdala tends to be overactive, which results in a lot of the fear and stress that characterize anxiety disorders. A “tired” PFC can’t inhibit very well, so the amygdala gets “loud,” especially in people with anxiety disorders. If you don’t have an anxiety disorder, your PFC gets “tired” throughout the day, so you still may experience this as having racing thoughts or becoming particularly emotional late at night. For my girl, being tired often means increased hypervigilance in public, so it’s super helpful if I watch her back to let her know she’s okay so that she can run errands and go about her life as normally as possible.

Sources related to the connection between the PFC, amygdala, and hypervigilance: 1, 2, 3, 4

One of my girl’s emergency medications can make her incredibly drowsy and “out of it,” and even her cocktail of medications can cause these side effects, which can be disabling and disorienting.  When my girl experiences these side effects, I can help her through light guide work.  I’m not a guide dog and I have no plans of changing careers anytime soon (I’m far too opinionated to be trusted with such power!), but I can do basic guiding in as-needed and emergency situations, especially since it’s very similar to my forward momentum pulling task.  My main objective is to make sure that my girl does not run into anyone or anything: when my girl is feeling “out of it” from her medications, her processing time is often decreased, which means that she may not be able to interpret that an object or person is in her way before it’s too late!  I am not currently trained to watch for “safe” traffic or to indicate the presence of curbs, but my basic training is functional enough for us at the moment.  I know a few places, with my strongest command being “go home” (although I’ve also been to the Life Sciences Center so frequently that I also know what “go Bio” means and can even lead my girl there from her apartment, which is about a mile away!).  My girl is still wary to trust me though, because I’ve been known to “accidentally” run her into bushes!  I can tell the difference between an emergency and a training session, so luckily, she’ can always rely on me when she really needs to.

Of course, I also help my girl’s mental health problems by offering emotional support and by giving her a routine.  Neither of these are tasks, as defined by the ADA, but nonetheless they are still incredibly important ways that I help my girl in her day-to-day life.  My companionship means that my girl is never alone, even on her hardest and darkest days, and when she’s feeling like a puddle, I’m a good excuse for her to get out of bed, go outside for fetch or walks, and follow at least a very basic routine so that her depression does not completely consume her.  At the end of the day, we are best friends and partners in crime, and sometimes that’s the most important part of my job!

And just a final note: PSDs can do many more tasks than what I do for my girl because different handlers will need different tasks depending on how their mental health problems individually affect them.  My tasks are tailored to what my girl needs, but another Psychiatric Service Dog may have a completely separate set of tasks that still helps their handler.  No matter the tasks, though, every Service Dog has such an essential job to do, and no Service Dog is more important than another!

(I posted this as a link to the article on my wordpress blog, but I figured it might be helpful to have this as a text post on tumblr, too.)

[val-lanto]

Lanto Talks: #2 Frustrations, Minimalism and Backlogs (And another PSD)

A mixed bag of thoughts to shift through this time around. Won a challenge, didn’t place in the other for two pieces that I consider on the other sides of the spectrum of each other. We’ll cover that and my thoughts technically between two pieces themed around the same thing. And my eternal frustration when dealing with minimalism.  

I’m not really good at being a humble winner nor a humble loser, so when I say I’m both bitter and surprised at the contest results, I do mean it. The two pieces in question are two Cioccolata pieces: MON WED FRI that documents just after his death and The Pinnacle Of Curiosity that focuses on Cioccolata’s background and story. Both based on panels, both expanding out, both relatively the same. Both filled with little details: Cioccolata’s earring appears in both; The flip phone to Secco appears in both; and both pieces have a hidden message in you’ll only see if you really zoom in or watch the speed art. Little details are my favourite thing to put in, all the little hidden things and Easter eggs. So, you’ll forgive me when the results of the competition had flipped the opposite way I had expected. The earlier piece, I believe is the best I’ve one in my newer art, and probably one of my favourites of all time. Enflamed by malice about something, I struck my heart and passion into painting every little detail. The level of touching up and painting to do within the piece was rather extreme. Blending the trash textures, making sure to take small bits of paper fold over each other. There was delicate attention to the detail like the licks of flames and under blurring for the layers of rubbish. The details and time it takes to layer flat textures with depth is something I never want do ever again. In turn, the other piece the number of corners I cut in the piece I won with was immense. A rushed piece sketched out just before the deadline to a friend over discord. The arm in the background is incorrect, the shadowing is wrong on the coat and the perspective on the able is laughable. The reflection on table is actually wrong too, the arm on both the tablet and the background mirror were done at different parts therefore inconsistent. upon retrospect, even the depth is lazy.  It doesn’t have the finishing touches, those extra brushes that separate the former piece out. Then that moves me to a different angle, the difference between concept and technical ability.

There is always the “defence of concept”. It’s something I am always in two minds about. Every contest has a theme and thematic the judges are looking for. To do something as precise as that, even with the speed art makes it harder to notice or see.  Further on, while I miss disagree with the winner of both contests, More so the former, there is always the different n concept. For a theme like “The More You See” there’s going to be a much more heavier weight on the concept. When I first stated signature making about 6 to 7 odd years ago now at Platinum Graphics, I used to be much more vehemently involved on this discussion and all in for concept over tech. Going against the nature of fifty same looking c4d and render sigs in favour of creative ones. The admin himself who I won in a battle to prove my voice about creativity over technical ability would always disagree with me.  Coming full circle now, I seem too much to be on the other hand, vying for my technical ability and a balance rather than two pieces of stock blended with an essay. If we go way back there was a time where I thought many of my pieces that were boring, same and unmoving from the crowd, they are all technically competent at the least. Several dozen girls in long dresses doing things with nature, blah blah. Everywhere all I saw the same angels, vampires and fairies, I made explicit pieces in a fairy competition of a piece “killing” theories.  There is a balance though between concept and technical ability. I made a series of manips taking a stab at the constant same 3 or 4 things I saw maniped. The “Jimmie series” of these four pieces, where taking the “boring” concepts like mermaids and that fisherman statue, but done under the story of a long hair wearing tentacle monster. They are technically, visually good with and interesting concept to marry with a story. I think this is where I peaked between balancing concept vs the technical side.  I think where that balance lines comes back to where you personally sit on the sliding scale of personal taste.

That brings us to my two recent minimalism pieces for the Stewed Tomatoes contests I tried to test this a little but making two pieces I think were on the other side of the scale. One more technically profound, clean and playing with depth to create a jarring minimal piece but has no meaning and was strictly made with anything that could lead to a concept. It’s nonsense. The second piece, not so technically profound and filled with broken clip, incorrect perspective. Yet it’s endeared with a concept at every point. The blue and red. The black and white. The cross and the purposeful little description added onto it. All this is filled together to make a piece with a story deep with hidden meaning, symbolism but not as technically profound.  I purposely crafted it alongside how I felt more what looked the best and placed a story alongside it. Of course, it means very little when it’s so personal, but having this outlook created two different pieces, with different flavours. One very cold, even down to the no humans or anything that’s “live in it” vs the very organic piece with the hands.  It’s interesting making both with a set theme and a goal how I felt making them. I often found myself very stuck making the the rock one and you call tell in its speed art the indesciveness that lingers all around it. While conversely the more emotions ne gave a different type of frustrating about it not being fully what I had wanted. Originally I wanted a straight cross with hands crumbling into blackness with light at the top. Very late piece. But my heart was swayed by a different stock and such is the mess I went with. Perhaps it would have been more fitting and simpler, but not my style. Maybe I am just wholly incompatible with the concept of less is more. Perhaps I will see after the detail which one got more attention and get back to you. Personally, I prefer neither of them and wish the contest theme was something else. But if you never test your curiosity, how can you evolve, hm?

Taking a break from the challenges and endless backlog of things, for jjbararepairweek was also a mistake. I’m really far behind and my work has gained no other attention, nor care for it. This brings me to my feeling about continuing to make Jojo or fanart manips in general. It’s a struggle balance because none of the people who fanart is made for actually like and vice versa the photmanipers don’t seem to “Get” them unless I write down long explanations of what are they relate too. I suppose that is a balance most people face, but it’s annoying. Returning to just random photosmanips would be a good idea, but I fall utterly uninspired without the framework of a challenge or a goal. Nor the image and base to work off with trying to make things real like with my Jojo manips. When the odd thing comes up like Mad-Max-Kun from Jojolion appear then sure I might indulge into it but staying follow on it I a mistake. It’s tough to do both sides and the frustrations from rarepairweek unable to do the draw or edit the things I want.to is painful. Alongside the tutorials and PSDs seem to have fallen flat. Not to say my confidence has been knocked or I’m moaning that much, it just seems like misplaced effort if nobody cares or wants to indulge with it. I would rather the Tutorials on DA but because of dumb roundabout rules, I can’t. So the audience that would appreciate them simply can’t get to them, and vice versa. This is all very frustrating, no?  But to sit on monthly challenges to carry my workflow seems useless. Anyway, to celebrate Mad Max Kun, here’s the PSD of the piece I made of him.

There’s some interesting contests coming up, I’ve sketched for an idea for the Dandelion Wishes contest that I am super hyped about….even if I doubt my skills to go through with it. The Doppleganger contest I’ve managed to push in a Cioccolata reference with. Although it will be one of those simple manips which requires to me to actually pay attention. I don’t have a lot of faith in myself but with both my Dolomite and Mad Max piece I pushed through it and got to the other end. So maybe I might surprise myself. Again, I just hope it doesn’t fall apart qt the concept.  I suppose it’s worth it just to get more into and t least exist within the “Community”. No the irony is not lost on me the fact that I may complain about not much feedback when I spent almost a month forgetting to add my things to the proper groups outside of the Jojo one. Burned the bridge so hard with the only person who would care about Cioccolata I set pluto on fire.  Advertising is always a pain and all my years of photomaniping I don’t know what my audience is.

I suppose, we can only march forward.