[thelist] help! client bought Photoshop!!

[Shirley Kaiser, SKDesigns]

Rachell,

Now I'm laughing at myself sending in the rant I just did about this. You 
make some very good points here for Michael. I also went back and read 
Michael's original note. Sounds like it's an internal situation and not the 
client type of situation I was talking about in my note, too.

Getting back to Michael's note, the client says, "I have Photoshop... tell 
me what to do and I can add the images myself." It seems like a lot of 
people figure they can just click some buttons like any other program and 
it magically looks wonderful -- which makes me think of taking advantage of 
Photoshop actions.

What I wonder, Michael, is if it's even possible to set up an action in 
Photoshop for the client to just click the button and it will do what's 
necessary. Would an action work? Or is every image different and needs its 
own tweaks?

I ask this because I ended up doing this for a client who had hundreds of 
images for his shopping cart. He didn't want to have to pay me to optimize 
them all, so I figured out an action that he could use himself, and he was 
happy. In that situation, though, the images were all black and white, 
needed to be tweaked identically, and cropped in exactly the same way, and 
then we added a 1 pixel black border. So it made an action the perfect 
solution. He could literally just press a button then.

I wonder if it might be possible to make an action that automatically 
creates the .jpg with all the optimization needed, another action to create 
a .gif image, and then directions to know which to choose..... but it may 
not begin to work if each image needs its own tweaks.

So disregard what I mentioned about the contract thing. Doesn't sound like 
that's even a remote possibility in your situation.

Warmly,
Shirley
--
Shirley E. Kaiser, M.A.
SKDesigns  mailto:skaiser1 at skdesigns.com
Website Development  http://www.skdesigns.com/
Pianist, Composer  http://www.shirleykaiser.com/
Moderator, I-Design http://www.adventive.com/lists/idesign/summary.html

At 02:39 PM 08/24/2001, you wrote:
>Why are we all assuming that the client is going to totally muck things up
>and so should be scared away?   True, they will probably make some beginner
>errors, but we all had to learn sometime.  I'd like to know why they are
>wanting to do this themselves?  Do they want to do their own graphics
>because they love working with Photoshop?  Or are they thinking that by
>doing this they will somehow save themselves time and/or money?
>
>I can understand wanting to scare them off if they think that doing their
>own graphics would save them time and/or money.  But if they genuinely want
>to learn, (especially if I'm not even charging them for the service they
>want to take over), I would bend over backwards to teach them.  And if I'm
>the one teaching them, then how well they do would be a reflection of how
>good a teacher I am.
>
>If I'm off base here, or missed something than please let me know (but
>please, not with a flame ;).
>
>Thank you!
>
>Rachell Coe
>Bluhand Design LLC
>(541) 607-1886
>http://www.bluhanddesign.com
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
>[mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of
>Ron_Senykoff at BEAEROSPACE.COM
>Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 12:42 PM
>To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
>Subject: [thelist] help! client bought Photoshop!!
>
>
>
>A client is trying to say "I have Photoshop... tell me what to do and I can
>add the images myself."  While I would love for them to do it themselves
>(this is an internal client, it does not earn me any extra $$ to do it
>myself), I know they will muck it up.  Not to worry about the HTML part...
>they use an application we developed to update the site so they don't do
>HTML.  But, they can paste an image in if they want.
>So, now they've asked what are my requirements for images to go on the web.
>I laugh, as my requirements are pretty tight... and now I have to dumb them
>down.
>hmm...
>-cropped tightly
>-does not push the total page size over 50K
>-jpeg vs gif - has this been chosen correctly
>-color pallette - as small as possible
>
>Anybody care to add?  I will compile the list at the end and repost it.
>
>TIA!
>-Ron
>
>p.s. sorry about this darn disclaimer... can't do anything about it