With a combined workforce of over 14 million freelancers, 11 million jobs and $1.8 billion in cumulative freelancer earnings – oDesk, Elance, Freelancer and 99 Designs are the 4 biggest outsourcing platforms today. This cool infographic by TimeDoctor compares these 4 major players on several different parameters, providing interesting information if you’re interested in the online outsourcing space.
Freelancers: 3 reasons why you are not getting any assignments.
1 Reply
So, you want to do freelancing? That’s great. You went out and tried to bid for freelance jobs in online portals, but jobs were hard to come by. It is not happening. So you are wondering, what happened? Here are some reasons why you are not getting jobs, and some tips to get more jobs.
1. You are offering the same service as everyone else
Everyone is claiming to be an expert in HTML, CSS, Javascript, Photoshop. Everyone is claiming to be hard working, committed and dedicated. Everyone has a degree and working experiences. When a client posts a job and receive bids, all the bids look the same. In order to get jobs, you need to think of how you are different from the others. What can you offer to the client that other freelancers are not able to offer? In business, this is called unique value proposition. Products that are the same with others are commodities, and can’t command a high price. Products that are different, unique and special will attract interest. Now, the product is you. Everyone is unique and different. You may possess the same skills with others, but you may have different experiences and greater passion for your area of specialty than others. If you are a translator and are knowledgeable about business, instead of offering a general translation service, you can position yourself as an expert translator for businesses. If you are a software developer who have worked in the retail field before & understand how retail businesses work, you can position yourself as a software developer with industry knowledge in retail. As long as you are different in a good way, your differentiation will attract prospective clients that need your specialized skill or knowledge.
2. You are not speaking your clients’ language
You need to speak in language that your prospective clients wants to hear. I am not talking about English, Spanish or Hindi. You need to speak in terms of benefits. Freelancers often make the mistake of emphasizing too much on their skills. You need to help your potential customers understand how your skills will benefit them. If you are a web designer, don’t just stop at telling your customers that you are good at HTML and CSS. You need to inform your customers, on how he will benefit if he uses your design. You can tell your customers how he will have lower bounce rate or more page views because of your design. Focus on the benefits. Your skills are means of obtaining the benefits.
3. You are a stranger
People like to work with people whom they know and can trust. Unfortunately, there are bad freelancers out there and our potential clients may have experienced previous disappointments. They will be very guarded and careful in hiring. It is not easy to earn trust. Referrals by word of mouth is the best way to grow your business. Let people around you know that you are doing freelancing. Share it in Facebook. News will get around and jobs will come knocking at your door. Easily Project is a new and innovative way to find customers through friends’ endorsements. Do check it out at http://ow.ly/mx0NZ
With these tips, I hope that you can find more freelancing jobs. Be different, speak benefit and spread the word around.
via Freelancers: 3 reasons why you are not getting any assignments. | Easily Project.
Make sure you have your image on its own layer with no background.
This is the #1 mistake people make, in older versions of Photoshop you would have saved it on a colored background
|
Now go File>Save for web
You should see this box open.
Make your setting gif and use the smallest amount of colors you can without affecting the appearance of the image.
The 2 things to remember here are:
1. Make sure Transparency is selected.
2. Set the Matte color to the closest match of the background color you will be placing the image on. If you are unsure then set the Matte to “None” (more about Matte in step 4)
Click ok and save your image.
 |
Some more information on Matte.
Matte puts a thin outline around the image to get rid of what we call halos.
On the right you can see an example of a halo. Look familiar? This is the sign of an amateurish webpage. Believe me there are already enough bad webpages out there without us adding to them. 🙂
 |
Here is the same image with Matte set to none. Notice the halo is gone, but it is still a bit jaggy around the edges.
Here is the same image, this time saved with a black Matte. Notice how nice and sharp it is?
 |
Always choose a matt color if you can. This way all your transparent gifs will look nice and clean.
This Matt trick will also work with transparent PNGs.
Stay tuned for more 🙂
Al Ward, Action Fx Photoshop Actions Resource
http://actionfx.com
Hello Colin and denizens of the PS Café! Sorry for the horrible delay in sending this column/article/tutorial. I could spout a dozen excuses for not posting in awhile, but they all sound weak as I recite them to myself. I do a lot of that. 😉
I’ve been playing with what I consider a pretty incredible feature in Photoshop 6, and thought this week I’d share it with you. This is sort of a companion piece to my article for Planet Photoshop, which should be online June 26.
Photoshop 6 has a very powerful addition to the Layer Styles that is grossly overlooked, but if you are into dynamic typography, interface design or realistic effects for your creations, mastering the Pattern Overlay feature is a must.
The process of creating patterns is fairly simple, and will be covered in depth in the Planet article. Basically you simply find an image you think would be a good texture, define it as a pattern, and then it is yours to apply as needed.
For example (don’t you just love examples?), I’m wading thru endless images on a clipart disk set, wondering what possible use I can get out of 500,000 images. Then I notice… drum roll please… an entire section devoted to industrial photos! Metal sheets, buckets of nails, rust, chrome, you name it. What if I took advantage of my pattern defining tool and applied these images to my designs? Actually I’ve already done this and, as the cool factor turned out to be pretty high, this article was (is being) born.
As stated before, the actual process of defining these textures will be covered in another article, but let’s take a look at some effects we can create using this process. I’m starting with simple white type on a black background.
This is just to give our image some contrast… use any background you see fit.
Ok, let’s apply some of my new textures to the type. NOTE: In order to get these patterns, you will have to download them from Action Fx. Here’s the link
Ok, once this is loaded into the textures drop down, all you no do is select Texture Overlay from the Layers Palette and select the pattern you would like to use to overlay your design.
Here’s the result just from applying this texture:
Photoshop 6 has made the process so incredibly easy, you will no doubt be creating your own textures in no time. Again, check out the Planet Photoshop article 
for more info.
Hmmm… there must be more we can do to this type though. What about applying more layer styles to the textured image?
First, a bevel:
Duplicate the type layer, and select the original (the one not on top).
Let’s apply a patterned stroke to this layer:
Create a new layer beneath this layer, select this layer again and Command/CTRL+E to merge down. Apply another bevel:
Now apply a contour to that bevel:
Here’s the result of my little experiment:
Just play around with it to get a feel for it. Here’s what I came up with in about a minute:
That’s it for this time around. Come see me at Action Fx!
Al Ward, Action Fx Photoshop Actions Resource
http://actionfx.com
Let’s talk some more about texturing, this time working with an interface style image over several layers. Photoshop 6 layer styles allow us to do some fantastic effects with patterns, and I want to address some of those effects here. What better way to do that than to show you first hand?
For this example I’ll be using a pattern group you may download free from Action Fx. Here’s the link:
http://actionfx.com/downloads/Textures/AFX-22.zip
Here’s the new image specs:
Width= 8 in
Height= 8 in
150 DPI
RGB
Background= White
This image is going to be large, so I’ll only be displaying the pertinent areas for the examples.
First, let’s fill the background with black. Create a new layer and, with the circular marquee tool, create a round selection that takes up most of the image. Fill this selection with 50% gray. Create another smaller selection (circular) inside of the larger circle. We want to make a large ‘O’ with a fairly thick border. Delete the contents of the smaller circle.
Ok, let’s bevel this puppy. Go to your layer styles, and use settings close to these:
We want a bit more ‘metal’, and rather than tweaking the layer style contours, we will use a good old fashioned curve. Create a new layer beneath this one, select the circle layer and Command/Control+E to merge the 2. Go to Image>Adjust>Curves, and enter something close to this:
Here is the result as seen on our beveled circle:
I’ll tell you a little secret. That same curve structure is what all these interface developers are using. What do I mean? Well, let’s see what happens when we apply this to a light gray to dark gray sphere:
That was pre-curve. Here’s post-curve:
You may need to tweak it a bit, but the effects are similar.
Ok, back to the circle. First, duplicate the circle layer, make the top layer invisible and select the lower layer. After you have downloaded the pattern set, load it into the layer styles and apply the pattern shown in the example to this layer. Here are my settings:
Here’s the effect:
Leave that layer alone for a minute. Select the top layer, and appy another pattern to it, lowering the opacity to about 40%.
Create a layer beneath this one, select the top layer and again merge down. Using either the magic wand or color selection option, we want to select only portions of this layer.
Once you have your selection, delete it.
Now apply a bevel to this layer. We want to draw out the contrast between the layers, so that it appears some corrosion has occurred on our metallic wheel.
Here’s the result:
That’s really all I have time for this week, but I promise we will continue with the same image next time. What is cool about this is that everything we have done can be incorporated in an action, as well as separate layer styles can be created for the layer effects. We will work on developing this project next time, however. Until then, come see me at Action Fx!
Al Ward, Action Fx Photoshop Actions Resource
http://actionfx.com
Hello again, and greeting from a frosty Montana! I just returned from the MacWorld Conference in San Francisco, and though I did meet some interesting people I was pointedly reminded why I live in Montana instead of a more populous area. In short, it is very gratifying to be home again.
That brief intro was sort of a disclaimer to explain my tardiness in posting this article, and I really appreciate Colin’s patience with me. This week I’m going to walk through the process I use when developing my text effects actions, step by step, with all the appropriate interjections, sub categories and bylines required to flawlessly create your own. In theory, anyway!
With Photoshop open, hit F9 to bring the Actions Palette to the front. For this tutorial I’m using Photoshop 5, but the process is the same for 6.0 also. After you hit F9, you should see this palette:
The default actions set is visible in the palette… we want to clear that set out of there. So we will open the Actions Menu and clear them out.
Ok. Now from the menu we can start recording, or we can also press the New Set Icon from the bottom of the palette. All actions must be in a set before you can record. You may then select ‘New Action’ from the menu, or just hit the New Action Icon from the bottom of the palette. Once you hit record you’re in business… every step you make in Photoshop will now become part of the Action provided it is a command that can be recorded. Stick with the commands you can control from the drop down menus and you are in good shape, as not all tools can be recorded. This will save you a few of those pesky error messages when you try rerunning the action later.
The first thing I do is set up a new image for my text actions. Generally I start with something 9 inches wide, 5 inches high, 72 dpi, RGB, white background.
Immediately after creating this new image I make a layer. This is where I’ll create my ‘foundation’ text. As I distribute these online through my website (http://actionfx.com), other websites and on CDs that I generate of my work, I insert a ‘Stop’ command at this point giving instructions to the user on how to proceed. Before you insert your Stop, you will want to cease recording. You insert a Stop from the Actions Menu:
Here is an example of a standard message I use in my actions. Note that I give the user instructions on how to set up their image for the best possible result, including which tool to use, how large a font to enter and so on. I rarely select the ‘Allow Continue’ checkbox to avoid mistakes, as the user will be able to press play to start the action once they have completed the required steps.
To save a whole lot of time and space, I’m not going to go through the entire process for this effect, as it is simply recording the steps I took to go from this:
to this:
Once you have completed your action, stop 
recording, select the Set that your action is in, name it and save it from the Actions Menu. You can now distribute your action for all the world to play with, as I’ve done here. If you would like this effect for your very own, I’m sending it with this article. Or if you cannot find the link, email me and I’ll be happy to send it off to you.
Until next time, be safe, take care, and do something cool for someone. Ciao!
Al Ward, Action Fx Photoshop Actions Resource
http://actionfx.com
Create a new layer, Make a shape, select it and fill with foreground color. Alt/Option delete.
|
Select>save selection name the new channel “shape”
Switch to channels Palette and click on the “shape” channel. Cmd/Crtl +D to deselect all
Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use a higher setting for a more pronounced effect or a smaller setting for a more subtle effect.
Open the levels box: Cmd/Ctrl +L
This is where the magic happens. Drag the left triangle to the middle, now drag the right one to the center until all 3 arrows are on top of each other. Click ok.
Ctrl/Cmd click on the channels thumbnail (1) to turn on the selection. Click on the RGB thumbnail to select all channels (2)
Go back to the layers palette. Create new layer (layer 2)
A couple of years ago, some Action enthusiast friends of mine expressed their concern that I was pursuing a vapor, a ghost, an insubstantial illusion in my quest to promote Actions in Photoshop on a global scale. In short, they told me I was nuts with a capitol CRAZY. We had met through the Action Xchange (http://www.actionxchange.com), an excellent and still hopping online resource for 3rd party freeware actions. I have learned more about Photoshop studying those little .atn files than any other resource available, whether online or print.
Somewhere along the line it came to me that, though a few thousand people were getting into the script exchange, there remained a huge majority of designers that had yet to crack the Actions Code. I set out to change that, and am still working. I developed Action Fx as a place to share what I had learned and created and, thanks to Scott Kelby who has given me a forum in Photoshop User Magazine and the Planet Photoshop website to discuss Actions, a few more find these incredible scripts everyday. It has been a slow, steady process, but finally Actions are starting to receive the recognition they deserve.
Have you tried actions yet? Perhaps you still have some questions as to what the hype is about, or have no idea what I mean by ‘action’. Truth to tell, Adobe has not devoted much documentation to the subject.
Actions are simply a means to record all the commands used to generate an effect in Photoshop for re-application later.
I can hear the ‘Huh?’ already, so I’ll put it like this. Want your text to look like Melted Gold with a wood grain running along the border of the letter? Something like this might take awhile to work out in Photoshop, but if someone has already turned the process into an action, you can apply this effect to your text with ONE CLICK on the Actions Play Button. Photoshop then creates the effect automatically. Now imagine you have to create the headers for 30 different web pages using this same effect. Without actions you would have to walk through the process 30 times, taking hours or days to complete the task. If you had an Action script, you could be done in as little as 30 minutes, maybe sooner! Simply starting the action, typing your text, and hitting play again will create your effect.
Imagine pages of Flaming Fonts jumping off monitors all over the world… that is what actions can do, but this is only a small example. Photo editing, multiple file processing, hot key assignment for assorted Photoshop commands and a veritable potpourri of other tasks are ‘actionable’.
If you are still scratching your head, don’t fret. I’m going to walk through the process of loading and playing actions, and perhaps offer up a tutorial on creating actions on a later date.
To begin with, you will need an Action. You may download several on my website (http://actionfx.com) or on the Action Xchange. You may also do a search of Photoshop Actions, which will offer up many sites with available downloads.
Don’t worry about hard drive space, as these action files, with the extension .atn, aren’t very large. Usually they range from 7 to 20 k. You may save them anywhere on your computer and load them from there, but it is best for organization purposes to create a sub directory within the Photoshop file tree. Again, this is not vitally important, but it will help you to keep your files in an easy-to-find area. When you have several thousand of these little scripts on your system as I have, it will be a lifesaver!
Once you have downloaded the actions, you will need to open the Actions Palette inside Photoshop. Hit the F9 key or go to Window>Show Actions to bring the palette forward.
In the upper right hand corner of the palette is a small arrow. Click this to open the Actions Menu. Scroll down until you see ‘Load Actions’, find your newly saved actions on your system and select them. Unfortunately you can only install one at a time, but you can load up the palette with numerous actions.
NOTE: Actions, or .atn files ARE CROSS PLATFORM COMPATIBLE. So both PC and Mac users can play together!
There are 2 modes of the Actions Palette: Button Mode and Edit Mode. We toggle between these two states of the palette from the afore mentioned Actions Menu. Button mode will place a button with the action name inside the palette… simply click on this to play the action, and follow any directions as they appear. Edit Mode displays a collapsible tree of all the commands within the action. Select this mode if you want to see what is happening, what filters and settings are being applied, etc. while the action is running. This is a great learning tool! You play the action in this mode by pressing the ‘play’ button along the bottom of the palette.
Here’s a look at the Actions Palette in the 2 modes:
EDIT MODE
Button Mode
To close, I’ll give you a quick example of what actions can do, using an action I created. With a click of the play button,
I can go from this:
to this:
I hope you have enjoyed this little intro to actions! Take care, and come see me at Action Fx soon.
Bye for now!
Begin with a new document. You can either use a photo, or create one yourself. In this case it’s just a blue gradient.
|
|
Choose the polygon lasso tool. Hold down your mouse on the lasso tool to reveal the polygon one.
This tool doesn’t work with dragging. To work the Polygon Lasso, you click at the origin. As you move your cursor, a line will follow it (Kind of like gum on the sole of your shoe.). Click again to create a line.
Tip: To quit dragging gum press the esc key.
Keep clicking in the shape of a triangle (sort of). To complete the selection, hover your mouse over the origin (The first place you clicked). You will see little circle. This circle means that you will complete the selection if you click on the start point. Do it!
As soon as you click on the start point, you will notice the marching ants selection (and the gum isn’t stuck to your shoe anymore).
Now, we are ready to fill with color. Press the D key to reset the Foreground/Background colors.
Press the x key to swap the color. White is now the foreground color.
(You could just choose white as the foreground color and avoid all the shortcuts, but it’s good to learn them right?)
Choose the Gradient tool. Go to the options bar at the top and choose 2 things.
1. Click the gradient to open the options, select the foreground to transparent option as shown.
2. Make sure that you choose the linear gradient option.
Finally, make sure that the transparent option is turned on in the options bar at the top and reverse is off.
Wait! One more thing. Create a new layer and select it, so we don’t add pixels to the background.
Click at the bottom of the selection. Drag the gradient along the selection, but not past the selection.
Release the mouse and you now have a gradient. Turn off the selection by pressing ctrl/cmd+D or clicking away with the selection tool.
To change the shape, press Ctrl/Cmd+T for the free transform tool. Right click for additional options such as perspective. Change the shape to suit your needs by dragging any of the little squares (adjustment handles).
We now have a spotlight, but it lacks realism because the beams have hard edges. To soften the beams, choose Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Enter a setting o suit your needs and click OK.
To add more beams, Duplicate the layers and use free transform to change the angles.
Here I added the word Hollywood, so that you can see the transparency effects.
Try adding the effect to different backgrounds. In this picture I made some stars and added the spotlight. This shows the gradients off really well. You can drop the opacity if you want to lesson the effect.
Don’t forget, you don’t have to use this effect for vertical spotlights. Here is a futuristic cityscape I have been working on. Notice the effect in the sky.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. See you at the CAFE
This is the technique that will wrap your art around objects and (seemingly) magically make it hug every contour
|
|
Begin with a texture, you must be in RGB mode. I have another tutorial under textures that shows you how to create this rock surface. You can also just download it if you wish.
Click on the Channels palette and click on each channel until you find the one with the most contrast (dark to light). In this case it is the Red channel.
We need to make a new document out of the channel.
Either right click/Control+click on the channel area of the channels palette, or click on the top right arrow to open the drop down menu. Choose “duplicate channel.”
Under destination>document, choose new.
Click ok
You will now have a new document. This will become our displacement map. Apply a 0.7 Gaussian blur (Filter>blur>Gaussian blur) to lower the sharp detail a bit. This will make for a smoother image in the end.
Save the document as a .psd, Any name will work, just remember it and the location. I put mine on the desktop.
We have now created our displacement map for use later on.
On our original document, click on the “RGB” to restore the default channel display.
Open the layers palette and add your artwork or text on a new layer. This is the content that you want to warp. Make sure you have everything you want to warp on one layer. If you have text, rasterize it now. (Right click on the layer palette next to the name and choose “rasterize layer” from the pop up menu.
Now lets apply the displacement map…
Filter>Distort>Displace
Use the settings shown here when the Displace palette opens.
Click ok
You will now see a browser asking you to choose a displacement map.
Navigate to the desktop and load the image we created at the beginning of this tutorial.
Click open
You will now see your artwork distort to hug the texture of the rock.
Lets jazz it up a bit.
Choose Overlay mode to add some realistic blending.
Duplicate the distorted layer to add a bit more strength to the effect.
Here is the result on the blending mode.
See how the color blends in with the texture.
Here is exactly the same image but with a variation.
I added an inner shadow layer style to the top layer and dropped the opacity of the second layer to 30%
I hope you had fun with this tutorial and learned a lot.
See you at the cafe
