The number one benefit of information technology

The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so, in a sense, it is all about potential.
— Steve Ballmer

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What is freelancing?

In this course, author and seasoned freelancer Tom Geller shows you how to prepare for a transition to freelancing. Begin by taking a look at your career goals, the systems that will support you, and proper ways to plan for success. Find out how to marshal your resources, refine your portfolio for presentation to clients, and estimate your costs to avoid any surprises on the financial front. Plus, discover how to create invoices, manage your books and taxes, expand your client base with marketing, and grow your business.

Topics include:

  • What is freelancing?
  • Defining your career goals
  • Funding your startup
  • Getting licenses, permits, and insurance
  • Setting prices
  • Finding work through agencies
  • Getting referrals
  • Working with time and project management tools
  • Increasing your rates

Welcome
Freelancing Fundamentals | by Tom Geller
View this entire Freelancing Fundamentals course and more in the lynda.com Online Training Library®.

The whole course can be found here

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Movement

Architectural Illustrators can use the shape, along with the other element form, to generate visual forces that direct our eyes as we view the rendering. 

Many shapes, such as the triangle, have a general body movement that points in one specific direction. Obviously, not all shapes are equally important in contributing to movement, for some provide more of a directional force than others. Compare, for example, the 'forceful" rectangle to the "stable"  but less directional square.

As a general rule, the longer the shape, the greater the directional force.

The "forceful" triangle

The "forceful" triangle

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Our Emotional Sensitivity To Shape

Our Emotional Sensitivity To Shape

Our emotional sensitivity to shape is demonstrated by the familiar Rorschach (inkblot) test, which was designed to aid psychologists in evaluating  emotional stability.

By using the knowledge that some shapes are inevitably associated with certain objects and situations, the architectural illustrator can set the stage for a pictorial drama.

Whether viewing inkblots or artwork, our response to shape is often primitive and subconscious. Some shapes convey fairly common meanings. Square, for instance, frequently utter perfection, stability, solidity, symmetry, self-reliance, and monotony. Similarly, circle may suggest confidence, independence, and/or confinement; oval may suggest fruitfulness and creation; stars could suggest reaching out.

So, you can use shapes to express a emotion or mood, in your architectural renderings. Afterall, isn't that what we are trying to do?

inkblot.png

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Resizing An Image in Photoshop

let me give you a little advice. 

If you're going to scale up an image, and if you are going to give it a higher resolution, do it this way, Go to Image > Image Size, set that resolution to an even multiple of the original.

2013-02-12_1418_001.png

So here I have started with 72. So I am going to set it to 288, four times the 72, and I am going to choose a special method, Nearest Neighbor. Notice that it says preserve hard edges.

2013-02-12_1419.png
2013-02-12_1419_001.png

Remember Nearest Neighbor when you have screenshots because that's the way to go. When I click OK, look, it's nice and sharp, it has a nicer resolution. 

What I do sometimes if I want to make sure that my editor isn't going to freak out, I'll go back to Image Size-- sometimes people freak out when they just see the 288-- I uncheck Resample Image, I change that Resolution to 300.

2013-02-12_1420.png

What that means is that it's not making new pixels, it's just making the existing pixels a little bit smaller. When I click OK, nice and sharp, and I haven't lost anything. That's your overall goal, you don't want to lose any information; you want to maintain detail.


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A Look at the Meaning in Colors

A Look at the Meaning in Colors

Today’s infographic comes to us from The Logo Company and gives us a look into the choice of colors worn by the logos that we see every day. Do you want your company to give off a sense of excitement or boldness? Red might be the color for you then. How about if you want your customers to feel like your company is trustworthy and dependable? You might want a nice, light shade of blue in that case.

Color Emotion Guide
Color Emotion Guide

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Color Managed Workflow

Color Managed Workflow

If you've ever had printed out a page on your desktop Inkjet printer and held it up to the monitor, chances are you've been a little disappointed at how far off the printed output is from your monitor. Well, it's a common heartbreak, and that's because your monitor and ink on paper are two very different realities. And if you compare your screen and your Inkjet print to the final printed piece, you may very well be looking at three rather different versions of your job.It's really maddening. So what you do you hang your hat on?  Well, the solution to this problem is to have a fully color managed workflow. But that can be expensive, kind of confusing, and a bit complicated to implement. If you want to fully pursue the color managed workflow, you have to invest in expensive equipment to profile your monitor and all your printers. But if you don't want to go that far, you can still improve your monitor substantially by using the colorimeter,  Now, you can expect to pay from $200 and up for a colorimeter. The way it works is the colorimeter and its software combine to send color signals to the monitor.The colorimeter reads the values and then compares them to an internal ideal value.  And then it sets up a Reference File that's called a Profile, that's used to control the output of your monitor. Now, if you're part of a work group that produces a lot of work for print, it actually might be worth hiring a color management consultant to come in, profile all of your equipment for you. They'll use their own sophisticated equipment to set up your monitors and printers without you having to make the investment in that equipment. Now, they'll probably recommend that calibrations and profiles be updated periodically, especially if you add new equipment. Now, in color-critical environments, for example in printing plants fresh profiles are often generated just after new ink is installed in a printer, if that printer is being used for generating proofs.

You should also consider the lighting conditions in your work area. If you have ever gone to a printing company to view proofs, you've probably stood in a viewing booth that's specially constructed for optimal viewing conditions. It may even be a stand-alone room. It's usually painted a neutral gray, and special lights are installed. You may have heard them referred to as D50 or 5000 K lights, and that refers to their color temperature, the K if you care, stands for Kelvin, and that's the temperature measurement system. So why is 5000 K chosen? Well, it's supposed to mimic the temperature of sunlight at high noon. The higher the color temperature, the bluer the light source, and as you go below 5000 K, lights get warmer. For example, the household incandescent bulbs around 2800K. Now, those official viewing sources can be really expensive, but I am going to let you in on a little secret. You can come very close by using fluorescent bulbs from the hardware or home improvement store. Just make sure it says 5000 K or D50 on the bulb. Now, I realize that it's true that your final printed piece is going to be viewed under a wide variety of lighting conditions, from kitchen fluorescents to candlelight, to incandescent living room lamps. So why pick a particular color temperature for viewing? Well, it's for consistency. There has to be some constant to ensure color accuracy, especially when you're judging color corrections from one proof to the next or you are looking at a press proof. You might even avoided wearing clothing that could reflect on the monitor or on a proof that you're viewing with the customer. Now, maybe that's why we all wear black and gray, it's not because we're stylish, we're just being color correct.

If you want to delve deeper into color management, I'd recommend Chris Murphy's course for lynda.com that's called Color Management Essential Training, and Chris is also one of the authors of Real-World Color Management, which is sort of an instant classic on the subject. Don't be intimidated by the heft of the book. It's very readable, very understandable, and it's actually funny in spots--which is pretty amazing given that that's a technical and arcane topic. Now, while calibrating, profiling, and special lighting might seem like an awful lot of extra work, all those things together can go a long way toward giving you more realistic expectations of your final printed result.

Color Wheel

Color Wheel

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