The majority of my clients in the past have been creative types. Artists, photographers, writers, designers, and boutique stores. It is common I work with such creative individuals who are so gifted in their field.
When it comes to the computer, I have found a few basic things that might help if they knew a few simple things.
Like how do I send an image? How do I get an image of my art on my computer? I do I photograph my work? How do I get a website? How do I size an image for print, or Internet? What is the difference? What free sources are available to me? How do I do a blog and why should ? How do I get my work seen?
I am starting this blog in hopes of helping answer some of these questions and share ideas of creative people.
I was on LinkedIn and on the Art of Licensing Group. This is a great group for any artists wanting to learn more about licensing their work. One post was about how to see if your images and copyright has been violated. Here is how you do that. Go to images.google.com Drag and drop an image into the space where a camera icon is. It will search for your image. It is great and disappointing at the same time. I found many images that had been used without my permission. How much time do I want to spend on chasing these down. One good thing if someone is using your image and it is on a Google ap. you can file a complaint.
I work with many artists in things like setting up websites, sending images to publishers and perhaps to enter a competition or show. Some things that come up quite often are some of the following questions.
“How do I send an image in an e-mail?”
“How do I send my image to enter in a competition?”
“How do I send a very large file to my publisher for printing?”
“How do I share an image with facebook, MySpace, online community, or Flickr?”
“How do I send my art to my webmaster for my web?’
“Someone is interested in seeing my work for licensing. How do I show my portfolio?”
Have you ever received an attachment in an email that took forever to open and when it did it was so big you could not see it without scrolling? The file was too big for the internet.
If you are using the image for print then they need to be large files. If you are using for the internet they need to be smaller. The two outputs are very different. Just ask yourself is this for web or printing?
The first thing to realize when you share images online they should be made smaller. There are several reasons for this.
Courtesy to the e-mail receiver.
It is very easy to copy your art and print it if it is a larger file.
Images that are too large take too much time to open and many people will not wait around for your masterpiece.
We now know images for the internet (including sending by email, website uploading etc.) must be a smaller size. The following is how to do this. Scan your image as a jpg.
1.First you must somehow get your image into your computer and saved in a folder where you can find it in the future. Let’s say that is a folder called “My Art” saved in a “My Documents”
There are many ways to get your art into your computer. I will discuss that in another blog. Let’s just say you got a cd from Costco and loaded it in your folder called “My Art”
Reducing the file size or resolution is called optimizing images for web. For P.C users here is a nifty program to do that and it is free! It is called PIXresizer CLICK HERE for download.
You can take all your images in one folder and make them web ready (optimize) or you can do one at a time.
With the photo storage system you’ll learn here, within seconds of starting to search you’ll easily be able to find photos by event and date of event.
Most (really, all) how-to articles don’t define the folder categories, so it’s left to the user to figure out (create) a system. Just look at similar articles online: they all tell you to “setup a system” but don’t help you with that step. I’m not doing that here – I’m giving you the system. All you have to do is follow it.
Connect the camera to your computer by using the camera’s USB cable.
Turn on the camera.
In the dialog box that appears, click Import using Windows to copy pictures to the folder you keep your photos in. Most computers have a folder called “my photos”. This is a good place to start.
Sometimes an artist may need to send a large file over the internet. Files that are too big to send as an attachment or in an email.
Some reasons we might need to send a large file:
Need to send to a printer.
Publisher
Posting in a magazine.
Anything that needs to be printed with a good resolution.
There are many services out there that offer this service. Two that come to mind for me are cutesendit.com and yousendit.com
You can use their free service if sending under 100 megs per file.
The one I use the most is http://cutesendit.com
Here is how it works. You upload an image. Type in an email address you want to send it to. Once the file is uploaded and e-mail is sent with a link for the recipient to download the file. You get an notice when they have downloaded your file.
Now that you have made your image file size smaller you can send it in e-mail as an attachment. Many e-mail systems will not accept an attachment over 1 meg so you want you file small. (see post on making file smaller) Many artists do not know how to send and attachment. Hey we are creative types!
Most email systems have a button that says “attachment” Many times it is an icon of a paper clip. Click on that and then select the image file you want to send. Many times you need to then click the open button to
get it uploading. Here is a photo of what that might look like. (click image to enlarge)
