Do you sub out any of your basic art like jpg to Vector?

[Dottonedan]

Much of the freelance for me has always been focused on the high end. Back in the day, it was lucrative to be in that business. That business has changed over the years and number of colors has decreased and the number of jobs that need sent out has decreased. Those types of jobs are done only every so often per shop rather than an every day thing so a separator needs (more customers) etc.

With all of that, I'm looking at options. Separating full time recently has been good, but I know, I can only do so much in a day and get capped at what I can bring in. So like any "business" rather than just a job, I want to see whats more efficient, more profitable per hr for me, what makes sense.

This Vector art conversion has decreased greatly in price also,especially with the outside competition, still, there are a good number of US based businesses doing this...and I could possibly make more in a day, by doing these jobs that seem faster or at the least, I can add this to my current sim process offerings and work load. More of them at a lower cost, but more of them.  Possibly many more.

So I'm asking, Do you, or how often, do you sub out any of your basic art like jpg to Vector?

I think this group of members here that participate often, are more of a different bunch and have more (in house) artist that handle this so the results may skewed a tad. IF it were Tee Shirt Forums or some other place where new people frequented often, you may get a drastically different number.

Thanks
Dan

[Frog]

Those that I cannot handle myself within CorelDRAW and its trace options, I do send out. And even though the company I use for this is US-based, I'm sure they keep their prices down by doing the actual labor overseas. I doubt that you are going to want to work for the 15 bucks or so we pay a company like this.
I was also surprised to find out that they re-draw many of these rather than just vectorize them with a program.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Colin]

Like Frog,  We send out anything that cannot be auto traced into something workable.

Pricing for re-draws from overseas never exceed (for us) $25.  If we paid an artist $12 an hour to redraw it, it would probably be a wash with time spent and labor + wage taxes etc.  If we paid that artist more, we would loose money compared to sending it overseas.

We also use the 2-4 day option.

The only place that it makes sense for us monetarily to re-draw in house is if there is a big rush.

[jvieira]

We very rarely send out any art. We've done it 3 times so far, all of them this year and mostly because we either didn't know how to do it or because those separations were time consuming at a moment when our artist didn't have the time to do them.

[Frog]

Dan, when I first saw this on my phone while walking the dog, I didn't see the poll. Now I do and realize there's no category for me.
"Every now and then when it's more than I can easily handle"

[Doug S]

If it's something simple, we do it in house but for the most part we don't have that kind of time and would rather pay mostly $10 and rarely $25 then to take that time away from something more productive.

[AntonySharples]

We do it all the time.  $15 from artwork source and we charge $35 for it.  So it is a money maker and we have it back within 24 hours at the absolute most.

[3Deep]

 I come from somewhat of an art background so I can manually trace or redraw just about anything I need, but time plays a big issue for me and auto trace has been a good friend.  I would love to sub out my art or have a really good artist knock it out, but I have to many customers that just don't have the art budget for it so I'm stuck dealing with it.  Someone was telling me the other day that through the grapevine that an artist they knew was getting 1K for each of his pieces, if that is true he is one of a kind, my short answer is no I don't sub it out, but would really like to.

[1964GN]

I would love to sub out my art or have a really good artist knock it out, but I have to many customers that just don't have the art budget for it so I'm stuck dealing with it.

We find many of the alleged art that comes in a form that is unusable, and needs to be redrawn, is also coming from those that have no idea what usable art is and have little to no budget for art. Hell, they can barely afford the final printed order. If we can't get a good live trace in house we quote a higher price to cover sending it out. Very few opt for a better quality redraw.

[Maff]

My background is in graphic design and most of the artwork requests we receive is done from scratch, recreated or retraced by me. I'll gage the customer to see how precise it needs to be. Sometimes a quick auto trace is fine. Other times I need to spend extra time fine tuning. If it needs a lot more I will sub it out overseas just so I don't eat up a lot of time doing it myself. We will factor those costs into the price of the shirt.

But lately as things have just been way too busy... if someone gives us a sketch as an idea and needs it to be created into a totally new design, than we've been subbing it out to a local free lancer. This way I can easily communicate back and forth on changes.  We let the customer know and add in the cost of this to shirt cost, or apply a separate art charge. This has been really helpful in freeing up my time for other tasks I need to do.  Eventually I hope we can hire a full time designer for stuff like this.

[Prosperi-Tees]

I would love to sub out my art or have a really good artist knock it out, but I have to many customers that just don't have the art budget for it so I'm stuck dealing with it.

We find many of the alleged art that comes in a form that is unusable, and needs to be redrawn, is also coming from those that have no idea what usable art is and have little to no budget for art. Hell, they can barely afford the final printed order. If we can't get a good live trace in house we quote a higher price to cover sending it out. Very few opt for a better quality redraw.

We are in the same boat, we usually roll the price of redraws into the price of the shirts so it's not a separate line item. We send out most of them but only a few a month.

[Northland]

I have a monthly subscription to Vector Magic ($7.95/month)
It works really well for most jpegs.... but, for some reason doesn't do so well with Fonts.
http://vectormagic.com/online/my_images

It's available as a desktop download for a one time charge of $295

[Frog]

I have a monthly subscription to Vector Magic ($7.95/month)
It works really well for most jpegs.... but, for some reason doesn't do so well with Fonts.
http://vectormagic.com/online/my_images

It's available as a desktop download for a one time charge of $295

Damn I miss the good old days during Vector Magic's development when hundreds (or more) of us were able use it for nuttin'!
Back then, when Illy and CorelDRAW's trace features were not nearly as robust as today, it was a Godsend. However, for whatever reason, sometimes even one of the weaker options worked better on a particular piece of art.

[TH Apparel]

depends on how much time we have...If it's something that is going to take me hours to do, and I have a lot of other projects going on...i'll send it out.  I use one company over seas, and 2 companies in the states. 
Art for sim. process jobs I always send out. 

[3Deep]

Getting a little off subject here, but it seems a lot of you are sending over sea's for quick cheap art not that the art looks cheap just the price for budget, I might have to look into this, but I still rather feed the artist here in state if all possible,  Rolling art into the price also could be a good fit if the order is large enough under 72 shirt though kind of makes that impossible.