Hello all, can anyone give me a clue as to why my info palate shows no info no matter what tool is selected in PhotoshopCS? I reloaded the app twice now and still no info. I guess there must be some pref somewhere that I am overlooking?
I’ve just been told (as I’m walking out the door to go home) that effective immediately, I’m expected to work a 2-12am shift, 7 days a week, with no pay increase.
Yeah right, like that’s going to happen.
MO – you still know of retouching opportunity in SF?
Hey Mike, why is retouch work in such demand in SF? I mean, moreso than elsewhere you think? And why is it especially ball-busting out there? Tougher projects? More demanding clients? Poor pay? Bad hours?
San Francisco, LA, New York and a few other places are the ad agencies "hub" of operations. Within that community, production houses, service houses, and some printers, who’s left from the dot com melt down, all reside within these areas because of many large companies that have big budjects.
Apple computer is in Cupertino which is about, um, 40 miles south of SF. (as one example) There’s HP, SUN, GAP, Old Navy, People Soft, Oracle, Levi’s, um, you name it.
South San Francisco is home to the up and coming bio-tech revolution and is replacing a small portion of what was lost in the melt down of 2001. It’s generating some work, but I think there is bigger things to come in this sector.
Another example of a boom in retouchers, is that so many of us were laid off in the past 2 years, that those people have moved onto other jobs or out of the area. When the demand rises, as it has now, theirs is a vacuum for that kind of work.
Furthermore, the work pretty much cycles around 7 major print production players. XYZ corp. has just built an new Apple wing for its work. Pass cards, private retouching studios, and lock downs for production areas and proofing rooms is the norm.
You also have to understand that this kind of insanity in the industry breeds insane work requirements and dead lines along with insane people…….hmm.
It’s not uncommon for one image for "the Steve" to go 30 rounds of retouching and color before it’s shipped off to Modesto Ca. or China for printing.
I never understood the logic where as one would bust your nuts for a 1/2% color move, burn a CD, supply a proof from the US, and expect to match it when we spent countless hours polishing turds to be printed in China …….stupid.
I remember working on the Airport and i sight campagins. Because almost everything is a "finished model" and not an actual product, the retouching can be, at times grueling due to casting imperfections and the like. It gets really ugly when they change the design in mid stream and don’t have the time to re-tool for a new model and photo shoot. Then, we just literally draw the changes, like in fine art mixed in with image sampeling when one can along with all kinds of twisted fixes.
It’s high profile work, neat work at times, but I’m glad I don’t do Apple work anymore. It’s all over engineered job justification, but the checks are pfat, so the managers crack the whip to drive the slaves on the boat.
Oh, and sign the NDA on each project and keep your mouth shut or Steve goes crazy!
The norm in this industry is that the work comes in at 4 pm and needs to show by 9 AM usually. Is this insane as well?
do the math….
Some jobs go 3 rounds over night with proofs before the sun comes up.
And yes, bad hours is the norm. I yous’t to work a 4PM to 8 AM shift, six days a week and then some. After a while, the money isn’t worth it.
I was always a bit curious about how those pre-consumer-rollout adverts were handled. Pass cards, lockdowns, etc. sounds about right.
And the whole business about producing something to exacting color specs to be sent to China for printinng must be insane. No wonder you am how you is!
Cupertino, ehhh? Maybe I’d come out, start working, enroll in Cogswell Polytechnic, take recording and sound engineering courses and look for a career change.
Well…I’d wanted to go to Cogswell for recording and sound engineering way back in about ’87, but couldn’t afford to, plus I wanted to get some cheaper credits under my belt here in PA first to help defray some of the cost. Took several semesters of electronic engineering courses at a great school here, and then found out the credits I accumulated weren’t transferrable to Cogswell. Man, was I bummed out! So wrote the beginning of the end of THAT dream!
Shortly after that, I got a job in a newly-formed startup beta-site that put a room full of SparcStation-run Kodak LionHearts (Kinda like Docutechs) inside an IBM parts and documentation warehouse. Thus wrote the beginning of my love for digital imaging.
"You not only retouch, you reconstruct images and create things out of thin air when necessary."
See, that’s what I love and is my main specialty. For the past few years, that type of work is far and few inbetween here. Most of the retouchers here (that I know of at least) are more car salesmen than retouchers, they give a great line of BS yet are stuck with techniques that are 10 years old, never want to embrace any type of ‘new’ way of doing things – which could cut their time by 1/5.
I bet 90% of the retouchers in this area havent even heard of the healing brush, or adjustment layers….or friggin masks for that matter.
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