Lesson Quick Links

• Research graphic designer wages
• Video guide: resize and compress your images
• Activity: Resize, compress and share your images

Have you ever heard the expression, “Don’t muzzle the ox“? It’s another important standard in life and in the world of freelance design that I would like to address. What we’re talking about here is strengthening your morale, taking care of your needs, fueling your interest and even giving you energy as you work on professional projects over time. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, what it really covers is compensation, you being paid for your time, your skill level and the extra effort in what you produce.

While most believers are very charitable and giving they too have needs, they all need to eat, drink, have shelter over their heads and pay their bills. So at some point in time they have to be compensated for the work they provide. Even Paul addresses the human need for workers to be compensated, whether on the missionary field, at home with the kids, on the job miles away or even in the living room, on the computer doing cool digital art projects (wink). We all need some form of compensation.

Deuteronomy 25:4, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.

1 Corinthians 9:9 For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.” Is it oxen God is concerned about? Or does He say it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written, that he who plows should plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should be partaker of his hope.

Let’s keep in mind that this course is directed at the prospect of helping you design products for small business purposes, whether you want to learn how to create products to sell or how to provide graphic design services for hire on an hourly wage basis.

So what is a graphic designers typical hourly wage anyways? This is a very complex and flexible answer. While many professional graphic artists are hired for a minimum of $75 a hour there are many freelance designers that are commonly paid $120 an hour on up. Some professionals have successfully found a way to charge stiff rates of $300 an hour on up. At the same time there are highly qualified professionals that provide their services for $10 an hour or less for various reasons of their own. Reasons for lower rates can be charity purposes, investment opportunities into their future, or some simply cannot acquire enough projects with a more desirable hourly income. Many times a lower pay rate is due to an artist not knowing how to market their skills appropriately or know how to even be found in the search engines. Many of these hard working freelancers become discouraged and lose interest in even trying.

In the future I will be providing marketing courses to show you just how to let the world know about your talents and/or your custom designed products. I’ll show you how to reach a much broader audience of potential future clients and also help show you how to increase your earnings potential and hourly wages! I will include valuable resources on where you can advertise your products and services as well as how to get your designs on actual products for sale at no cost to you. So keep your eyes open for those helpful marketing classes yet to come!

My personal experience with digital art when it comes to charity and compensation…

I personally love doing charitable project designs and have done this on many occasions over the years, so I certainly encourage you to help freely whenever you can. However, it’s also important that you keep your priorities, your needs (or your family’s needs) and even your morale in mind. In some cases consider offering forms of trade or reduced rates when an opportunity arises. Trade is always encouraged as far as I’m concerned as it boosts morale and gives all people involved dignity and value including you, the artist.

When trade is not an option then help where you can but always consider your priorities and make sure you’re not spreading yourself out too thin in your efforts to help others. Again consider the ox grazing in the field as it works, the compensation gives the ox energy and inspiration to do more and to go further.

Walk-through: How to reduce your image size and compress it

Many photo editing software tools have similar functions to Photoshop. Give it a try and see if you can reduce the image size easily with the photo editing software you currently have on hand.

First click Image (because you’re going edit the whole image)
Then select Image Size

Now you can change the height and width at the same time. Notice I have 450 pixels. I’ll just type in 100 pixels and then click Okay and it will resize the picture for me, adjusting both height and width equally.

STRONGLY consider giving it another name when you save your work so that you do not lose the awesome freedom that having a large photo brings. Large un-cropped and unedited photos are the best to keep on file in case you have a future plan or use for them… whether in print or for online use.

So, let’s save the image, and reduce the file size so that it’s a smaller and compressed image.

• Under the File tab click “Save As”
• Give your newly sized image a new name. You can have the same name and just add the image size to the end of it if you like. For example here I might call my image: digital-art-crystal-calhoun-100.jpg (these strong key words will help me find my images later on when I need them)
• Next, reduce the image size as you see in the picture below. You have the option in Photoshop to change the quality by low, medium, high, maximum. Or you can move the bar below and get the desired file size there instead. I usually use the bar and look at the image size to the right (see the file size under the Preview check box? That’s what I keep my eye on. It’s good to have the image as low as possible without messing up the quality. Sometimes it doesn’t really matter how fuzzy an image is so a much lower quality is just fine. Other times like in a website homepage image you want to have a higher quality image AND have it somewhat compressed. What I do in that case is usually use about a high quality #8.

Play around with the file size and quality until you get the desired results. Once you become familiar with the process of editing image sizes you’ll find it a REALLY fast process.