How do you make a career using photoshop?

[Aliester]

How do self taught designers try to make it in in the very competitve world of web/graphic design? Have seen ravenous online portfolio and he seems to get a number of people asking him to do work for them well on a regular basis. How do you find such people/clients to do work for in this industry? This part seems to confuse me. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[shannon25901]

Photographers offer the best work and pay. I worked for a local photographer for almost 3 years doing nothing but photoshop and now I have another photographer offering me more pay and benefits as well as a lot of freelance work. Acquire the skill and the jobs will follow.

[abto]

Is there any freelance work available?

[tricky500]

This is sort of off the beaten path of this exact topic and this thread is dead but I make a living in photoshop. Not necessarily as the graphic artist everyone expects but I do consider myself a graphic artist. I got lucky enough to land in a job where I work a full time job setting up and cleaning Photoshop files received from designers and photographers alike for print (many of said files are shit lol). Generally I just clean stuff up and profile images for a printer, do some basic color corrections and send off.

Primarily we do flexographic printing, offset, and roto/gravure for Nestle Purina dog food bags, Sara Lee bread bags and muffin/cinnamon roll/biscuit cans, and 12/12 20/12 etc. cartons for AB-InBev. Sometimes we get jobs where photo manipulation and changing perspective or taking things out or adding things/people into a photo are required and it has to be seamless and professional.

Anyways, there aren't a lot of people who do this and there are even fewer jobs available but just thought it might be interesting and let people know a possible option. The tough thing is is that even if you know photoshop you have to learn all sorts of stuff which means nothing to you right now, such as min dots, dot gain, scum dot, eliminating contaminating colors and at least basic color theory. This also increases the likelihood this may not be an available job option for you unfortunately (at least initially. I got hired into shipping and eventually ended up here a couple years later).

My business is considered a Pre-Press company which means we are the intermediary inbetween designers and the press intended for output. That's all I've got. Anyways, I think if you make a full time living in photoshop you should post up and say what it is you do and inform us of a possible opportunity to pursue.

[KRF]

The thing is that, if you wanna start off doing PS for a living, you'll need to start off smal, start by doing freelance work on forums, also doing free work as well, than make a website, iDad has, (you need to update it iDad) and this will bring in work as well, also remember to advetise your work, some web hosts have a good advertising tool as well, but you don't have to pay a lot for doing this.

Find a good web host, with a good WYSIWYG editor, and then make a good but basic web site with about 5 pages, and work from there, word and mouth is the best thing to start off with, so when you see somthing that you feel you could do better, copy it make it better and then send it to the owner, they may ask to see other work, but be sure you know what you are doing when trying this as you may end up in court.

All you have to do is think how big you want to be and then try for it, but also keep a normal job as the same time, as things may not work out, there is nothing wrong with going to a local fund raser and asking to do design a dlyer for them, and do it for free, if they like it all you want in return is a note at the bottom with you contact info.

I hope this helps

[tricky500]

Maybe I should have clarified better, but I already do work in photoshop for a living, a full time job. I don't know if you misunderstood my post since you're quoting me or if you are addressing the general public? I'm going to try and edit my post because I never come out and state that..

[KRF]

Maybe I should have clarified better, but I already do work in photoshop for a living, a full time job. I don't know if you misunderstood my post since you're quoting me or if you are addressing the general public? I'm going to try and edit my post because I never come out and state that..

Sorry I dont know why I quoted you, just a habbit I guess