Thanks to a lousy webhost, i was forced to move my site after their whole server got hacked!

Well let’s just look at this as lemonade and an opportunity to do a much needed site redesign.

oy.

Obviously, as I have written ad nauseum on the topic, the main effect these sites have on our business is that in the minds of some clients, it makes design into being just another commodity, like tube socks.

Crowd-sourcing, outsourcing, Spec contests and the like aren’t just hitting graphic designers adversely. It’s also effecting web designers (and coders), typographers, and digital imaging artists as well.

Nearly all of my friends who are strictly Retouchers (Photoshop imaging experts) are complaining how clients try to lowball costs at every turn. The clients say things like “Why should I pay you XXX/hour when I can ship these images overseas where I can silo the files for ¢50 an image?”

Some desperate artists concede to these kind of clients, which leads them to fall into that nasty trap of the downward spiral to reducing their rates…and reducing their rates… and reducing their rates.

A trap that no one should fall into.

This commoditizing of our industry is a symptom of a greater problem that has hit our country overall: we haven’t made the transition from selling hands to selling brains.

Think about it. Our country once had a great manufacturing base but the moment we allowed it to be shipped overseas via NAFTA, GATT, etc., our leaders failed to recognize that we must gear education and retraining to be more “thought” centric.
…Or worse politicians cut education budgets making for a dull-witted populace.

Whatever the case, our economy is paying the price for this failure in seeing what every other country sees: work for hands pays, but work for brains pays well.

The same can be said for the design industry. Designers, Retouchers, Web Designers etc. need to overcome the perception of being perceived  as just a pair of “hands” acting on client’s whims. Instead, they need to focus on showing clients that they’re strategic partners in any communication project with the brains and insight a client dearly needs to succeed.

A great book on learning strategy

I tell my Designer/Retoucher friends that they better get on the ball and expand the toolset that they offer clients. They need to up the ante on the “value-proposition” that they offer. It takes a lot of brains to be a great designer/retoucher/web designer.

Now prove it to the client.

A client called me up needing a simple color conversion app, so I created this handy Droplet app for CS5 Photoshop and now I’m giving it away FREE to you.

Directions: Decompress this folder and place it on your desktop. Then drop the files you need converted onto the droplet app inside the folder. NOTE: Don’t move the droplet app outside of the folder otherwise it won’t work.

What it does: The droplet launches CS5 Photoshop and runs a conversion action which converts any file from a Flattened RGB to to a SWOPV2 CMYK Flattened PSD. (Why a psd file you ask? If you are working in InDesign, a CMYK PSD file is a bit less problematic than  printing a 4C jpeg. Trust me. )

Requirements: Photoshop CS5 (mac) Caveat: You can try it with the windows version of Photoshop CS5. It should work.  If you need a CS4 version of this app, or customized for another printing spec, write me and I’m sure I can bang one out for you (for a small fee).

Download the file here:  RGBtoCMYK

For this one I had to make her an enthusiastic Redskins fan instead of a Patriots fan. Psst: Don’t tell any Patriots Fans about this!

To see other challenging projects that i’ve worked on, pop on over to my digital imaging  gallery.

It was a bit tricky but thanks to the warp tool and my own techincal wizardy, she no longer has a whale’s belly hanging off that thigh.

This blog format is also readable by folks who may have ipads and iphones. Hopefully now my friends will stop complaining that they can’t see my artwork on their fancy smart phones!