Hi ladies! I hope that this sort of thing okay to post here! I'm not soliciting...yet.

I finally start hormones in 12 days, and I'm realizing that I'm going to need to find a way to fund my own FFS. I'm disabled and can't do a normal job, but luckily I have some skills!

What I want to do is take something similar to a pre-op photo set and photoshop/paint it using the constraints of what's actually possible to give us an idea of what we can look like. It could be a really valuable thing to have- Not only would it help us have a goal to shoot for, but it can help our surgeon have something to aim for, so if we end up going with a less artistic doc there's some security there. Plus you might have a bit more control over how you want to look.

I so can't think of anything scarier than having ffs botched, myself. *shudders*

I've been practicing on myself and I think I've gotten fairly good at it, but there's a problem: I have no way to know how accurate or possible what I'm coming up with actually is. All I know is that it's like looking in the mirror and actually seeing myself for the first time, and it's freaking surreal and wonderful.

What I'd like to do is make contact with a few people who have already been through their full set of procedures. I'd take your pre-op photos and work them up, then compare what I've done to photos of the results without seeing them first. In this way I should be able to build up my sense of how actual surgeons think in this process and also a gallery of images I can use to show people what kind of thing they can expect. Also, it will help me learn how quickly I can do a photoset and thus help me figure out how much is fair to charge for it.

I haven't posted here enough to PM just yet, but I think I can receive them. If you are interested, let me know!

I'll go ahead and attach an example here of one I did of myself- I'm sorry if my face makes your eyes bleed. I'm only posting one comparison here- http://imgur.com/9l8Jqmd (I sorta got carried away on the others with hairstyles and whatnot. lol.)

On the other hand, if you don't think this would be helpful, why? Am I posting in the wrong place or breaking any rules? Let me know! I very much appreciate it.

And thanks in advance. I'll be doing these on a first-come, first serve basis until I feel qualified. If there's interest and anyone involved is okay with it, I'm happy to post the results here so everyone can check it out and see how bad I fail. Heading to bed now, and will be checking first thing when I wake up. So if you are brave enough to help me out here you'll likely see results tomorrow.

I use Portrait Pro 15 and it does brilliant.  Sometimes you can get a little heavy handed and it does not look better the next time you see it.

You might be able to generate more income another way. Many people have old photographs that have been damaged over the years. If you have a flat bed scanner, you can scan them, rebalance the color if needed and retouch the color. I have done some of that personally but not professionally. It's time consuming work and requires a good eye for color but it's not overly difficult.

In my case, I have a couple of good sized boxes of photos that date back to the civil war that have been scanned into digital format. Fortunately most are in relatively good shape but they are now preserved for anybody who wants them in the future. I did this as the collection could be broken up at some point and this would allow multiple people to have archival quality copies for their own use.

Fair points.

What about taking old photos and fixing gender?

That is a possibility but remember that the transgender population is mostly scraping for money to pay for their procedures. Most likely they would hide any pictures they have and if they had them retouched, it would only be a few display photos. Besides that, that degree of retouching takes a real artist as you not only have to properly retouch the image but it has to be blended into the picture so it doesn't look like it has been retouched.

You could publish an add in Craigs list for nothing and see what the market is for regular retouching. It used to be something that professional photographers did all the time but I am not sure they do much retouching work any more with the switch to digital.

I do get being poor, lol.

In any case it seems like this site is a dead end. Thanks for the replies!