Freelance rates and websites

[kissymac7]

^ I have a "real" job in design. gives me a 9-5 peace-of-mind, some stability, terrible insurance, discounts on company products, a new Mac every few years...

I don't like being a salesman (for my services) or the accountant side (billing). The idea of freelancing with two younger kids seemed a hassle. at least getting out is nice.

Hi, that sounfds cool and perfect.
Do you mind me asking what was required for that job? Was a degree necessary?
Im curious what kind of mac do they five you? Is it free? Can you keep it?

 

[macuser453787]

This has been a fun read...back through time.

Just to think back. My first job I was on a Mac with Photoshop 5 (think, unless it was actually 4). I don't think it had the Effects option so any shadows had to be done by hand. and I had no History Palette, so if I made a mistake once, i could undo. if I went a couple steps in I could not reverse that sequence. others had 5.5, 6, and a contract employee had a nice new Mac and 7. I had to plead to even upgrade to a history palette version. We used Quark there.

I started using Photoshop w/ v2.5. No effects, no history palette, no layers. Wow it sure has come a long way. These 3 features alone are among the best improvements Adobe ever did to PS.

Going to a check printer. We were running Quark and had the Creative Suite. I asked when we'd switch to InDesign and so I was the Guinea Pig for InDesign (Mainly because QXP would sometimes crash on our designs meaning I had to start over anyway). we made the switch...InDesign was speedy and had lots of options.

Today, when i have to design in InDesign (instead of Illustrator for one-piece designs) I found that InDesign seems to run painfully slow. That's on a new Mac, and CC2017, and running from the desktop not the server.

Not surprising. I've noticed in recent years (I think starting after CS4) that Adobe started getting sloppy with their programming -- started noticing weird behavior that wasn't there before, just wasn't as "tight" as previously if that makes sense.

My first design experience "on the job" was being the art director for our High School Newspaper, where we'd run wax-ups and blue lines, and when a photo needed enlarging, it was done on a machine that looked like a camera suspended over a plate. this took place at the newspaper where i landed my first paying design job. it was funny to see the changes in 4-5 years time.

That machine sounds like it may have been what was called a stat camera. I used something like that in an internship I had through high school, at an ad agency in the early 90's. They were still doing paste-up mechanicals with acetate overlays etc, outputting vector art to one of two Lino machines (IIRC they had a 300 and a 330) and sending the paste-ups with FPO pictures to a lithographer for final imaging. At this time Quark was at v3 and hard drive space was still quite expensive, hence the agency's decision to use the lithographer instead of going fully digital with their ad creation.
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We had Photoshop 5 at the Desert Sun.

One of the old cranky men who worked there taught me a few things that still stick and are pretty much the rules in newspaper ad design.

Old school rules rule! PSDs are always layered, TIFFs should be flat, EPS if you have a Photoshop clipping path. Raster work is done in Photoshop, vector work in Illustrator, layout work in InDesign (or Quark if one prefers). Ideally raster image res is twice the output lpi (though we can get away with much less than that these days).

When I'm working in Photoshop and have a layer I absolutely do not wish destroyed I will duplicate it and work off the copy. Despite the fact that non-destructive layers were the norm a long time ago.

I like working off of duplicated layers too (or layer groups) when trying variations on a design, or when for whatever reason I don't want my original layer(s) to be altered. It just makes sense.

 

[eyoungren]

Old school rules rule! PSDs are always layered, TIFFs should be flat, EPS if you have a Photoshop clipping path. Raster work is done in Photoshop, vector work in Illustrator, layout work in InDesign (or Quark if one prefers). Ideally raster image res is twice the output lpi (though we can get away with much less than that these days).




I like working off of duplicated layers too (or layer groups) when trying variations on a design, or when for whatever reason I don't want my original layer(s) to be altered. It just makes sense.

Yep. And if you are embedding fonts from Photoshop, don't be using Faux Bold or Italic. Save as EPS with vector data. Has served me well for a long time.

 

[macuser453787]

Yep. And if you are embedding fonts from Photoshop, don't be using Faux Bold or Italic. Save as EPS with vector data. Has served me well for a long time.

I hear ya about the faux bold / italic. Don't like using those if I can avoid it, because it always looks weird.

However I don't use EPS out of Photoshop very often at all (or out of Illustrator for that matter). At 250 lpi, high res raster text isn't much different to look at than vector text because the anti-aliasing is very fine, making it virtually indistinguishable from vector to the untrained eye of non-industry people.

So I'll revise one of mine actually: EPS out of PS is just about always unnecessary for me. Actually if I need a clipped image I prefer to create a layer mask instead and save as Photoshop and allow the transparent bounding area to do it's job. I can only think of one exception to that: when transparency and spot color are used together. That's generally a big no no.

Besides that, I don't like the extra file bloat that comes with the EPS format. When I save out of Illustrator, I'll use the .ai format and that generally results in a smaller file, which InDesign can use to pick up the various clipping regions.

 

[eyoungren]

I hear ya about the faux bold / italic. Don't like using those if I can avoid it, because it always looks weird.

However I don't use EPS out of Photoshop very often at all (or out of Illustrator for that matter). At 250 lpi, high res raster text isn't much different to look at than vector text because the anti-aliasing is very fine, making it virtually indistinguishable from vector to the untrained eye of non-industry people.

So I'll revise one of mine actually: EPS out of PS is just about always unnecessary for me. Actually if I need a clipped image I prefer to create a layer mask instead and save as Photoshop and allow the transparent bounding area to do it's job. I can only think of one exception to that: when transparency and spot color are used together. That's generally a big no no.

Besides that, I don't like the extra file bloat that comes with the EPS format. When I save out of Illustrator, I'll use the .ai format and that generally results in a smaller file, which InDesign can use to pick up the various clipping regions.

I've generally stuck with EPS because it's what I learned. QuarkXPres 4.04 was the first layout app I was paid to use at Gannet. QXP has always handled EPS better and PDF not at all until much later.

Once I converted to InDesign I started saving out PDFs from Acrobat though as ID handles PDF better than EPS. Our own press, when we were printing, had a 75line screen (150dpi). Usually we couldn't hold that quality. Major reason we finally started sending out.

Our printer can do that just fine and if there is no other alternative I will take the TIFs and JPGs customers send that has type in them and run with it. But if I have a PDF my preference is to save out so the type is embedded or vectored.

We have one customer that sends a PSD layered file as a PDF. I have to open it up, correct all the faux bold/italic and save out a new PDF. My alternative is using his sent PDF that has the fonts rasterized. It would turn out ok I think, but I like to make sure things are as sharp as possible.

Also, I'd us AI more from Illy but we generally import stuff in to our ID documents using trim box and I haven't wanted so desperately to figure out how to make or adjust that on AI files. So, usually they come in with the entire pasteboard around them. Easier just to save as EPS and drop those in. Most of the stuff we use Illy for is editing downloaded vector art from a stock site.