How do you make a career using photoshop?
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.
-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.
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..
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 **** 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.