Freelancing Tools and Tips

There are lot of factors that strengthen a brand and can contribute to increasing the perceived value of it. It can be visual as well as non visuals. Among the visual ones, probably, Logo is one of the strongest elements that contribute in increasing the brand value as well as brand recall.

If you have an idea and looking to design logo for your brand, try some of these online logo designing tools. These are really helpful. Listing here some of the useful online logo designing tools in no particular order:

Logo Maker

It is a custom-built design tool for entrepreneurs to design a creative log in just three simple steps. It lets you choose the image from icon gallery, color tools, add text and design in your own logo for free. They offer more than 10,000 images for you to use as a base in your logo.

CoolText

This is a free graphics generator for web pages and anywhere else you need an impressive logo without a lot of design work.  They offer over 300 million free images, logo style and button designs to choose for your logo.

Logoworks

Another logo designing tool which helps in producing original, custom logos you can afford for free.  It provides Professional logo designers in-house and freelancers to create a successful logo for you. It also lets you design brochures, websites, and more with your logo.

LogoYes

It is the leading tool for creating a logo and other premium design products for small businesses around the world. It lets you customize you own design by choosing your area of work, symbol of your choice, adding your name and creating a logo design complementing your field of business.

Logodesignengine

This logo design tool allows you to select  matching logo template, select fonts, colors  and create your company logo instantly. All you have to do is to select your preferred Logo Design from our logo template collection, submit your company details, select fonts and colors and save your company logo.

Businesslogos

It provides a comprehensive database of expert designers to create the best logo for your business.  Also  check out some additional logo design portals, including various informative articles, tips and other information.

thelogoloft

This tool will deliver anywhere from one to six design concepts, and you’re allowed an unlimited number of revisions. Concepts arrive within three to four business days, and final designs are handed over once you’re satisfied with the revisions.

thelogocreator

With more than 300 logo elements and 50 built-in fonts, you can create logos in just a few steps. The Logo Creator software also includes 75 logo templates and can import your personal fonts and images.

Logoease

This free logo design tool offers intuitive and simple design interface that lests you create your own free business logo designs easily. You will receive various electronic files for both web and print use including the vector source files. File formats include eps, png, jpg and tiff.  It enables you to save and download as many as 10 free logo designs at once.

logosmartz

It is a desktop logo creation software that can turn out high-quality corporate business logos and emblems instantly. It offers over 700 pre defined logo templates for your logo.  it aloows you to play with the color, fonts and symbols according to preference. Over 4000 high quality graphic symbols and over a 300 fonts. System fonts can also be imported.

Hope these tools will help you develop an effective logo for your business. Please share with us your comments and suggestions on the same.

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• Tips for a Winning Logo Design

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Profile rank is one of the most important aspects for acquiring more projects at LimeExchange. Profile Rank is given to all the service providers on the parameters of activity, commitment and quality of the work. The more actively a provider participates on LimeExchange, the higher will be the profile rank of that provider.

You need to develop some positive attributes such as having a complete Profile, higher Earnings on LimeExchange, ability to get continuous business from the Buyers, etc. as this ensures buyers that  you are a authenticity and confirms skills and expertise as a provider.

We provide two types of profile ranks:

• LimeExchange Rank, and
• Category Rank

You profile rank would be displayed:

In the Search Results pages

While searching for an efficient and genuine provider for a project a buyer always check provider’s profile rank.  When a Buyer searches for Service Providers in a multiple categories, we show LimeExchange Rank in the search results. If he is searching in a single category, we show Category Rank in the search results.

On the Profile Page

Ranking always attracts the buyer and help him in taking an intelligent hiring decision. Your LimeExchange Rank as well as the Category Rank would be displayed on your profile homepage. Category Rank can be viewed by selecting any category from the drop down.

On the Bid Summary Page

When providers bid on projects, their profile rank is shown to the buyers on the bid summary page. Better ranking increases the chances of winning a project. All bids by Vantage Providers are shown to the buyers in order of priority along with the profile rank and a Vantage icon.

Increase your profile rank by following these guidelines:

•  Complete your profile 100%
•  Execute more projects, earnings from projects will boost your profile rank
•  Get your education credentials verified by justifacts
•  Join Vantage Plan, higher the plan more the rank
•  Get Recommendations, increase connections to get more business
•  Actively participate on LimeExchange, take skill tests, and participate in Q&A.

Hope these features will help in making your project execution easier and maximize your profits on this platform. Please share with us your feedback and suggestions on the same.

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• How to Best use LimeExchange – For Individual Freelancers #1
• Update: 10 Things to remember to Improve your Online Visibility & Earnings
• Your New Profile Homepage
• Post a Featured Project and Hire a Premium Service Provider

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The online industry offers a lot of 3D tools and applications that can help you in creating an interesting 3D graphic for your freelance project. There are many 3D graphics applications available online that can be used depending on requirement and utility. These tools help you create a 3D content while working on modeling, light, texturing and rendering etc. Here we have put together some excellent tools for for both Mac and Windows operating systems.

3D Studio Max

It is a fully-featured 3D modeling, animation, and rendering solution, which helps in creating a top-selling games and award-winning film and video content. It offers excellent features to produce realistic characters, seamless CG effects, jaw-dropping games, and top-quality film and television content.

Blender

It is a free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems. It offers features for rigging, animation, modeling, rendering, shading, imaging and compositing etc.

Art of illusion

It is a free, open source 3D modelling and rendering studio. Some of its highlights include subdivision surface based modelling tools, skeleton based animation, and a graphical language for designing procedural textures and materials.

Form Z

This is an award winning general purpose solid and surface modeler with an extensive set of 2D/3D form manipulating and sculpting capabilities,. It is an effective design tool for architects, landscape architects, urban designers, engineers, animators and illustrators, industrial and interior designers, and all design fields that deal with the articulation of 3D spaces and forms.

Houdini

It is a powerful 3D modeling and animation application for graphic designers from across the globe. The major areas of 3D production, includes modeling, animation, dynamics, lighting, rendering, volumetrics, compositing, plugin development etc.

Zbrush

It is the world’s most advanced tool for today’s digital artists, which has revolutionized the 3D industry with its digital sculpting and painting program. It is used as a digital sculpting tool to create high-resolution models for use in movies, games, and animations.

Modo

It is an exquisite package for 3D modeling, painting and rendering in a single integrated and accelerated package for the Mac and PC users. It allows you to play around with the graphics while doing modeling, painting, animation, sculpting etc.

Google SketchUp

It is a tool for creating, editing and sharing 3D models for all the aspiring designers and artists. With Google SketchUp 7 you can perform operations like orbiting, zooming and drawing can be quicker and smoother.

Swift 3D’s

It is the only 3D software to directly integrate with Flash through the Swift 3D File Importer and SmartLayer Technology and exports to Microsoft XAML.  It allows anyone to quickly create 3D content, while providing a full set of advanced tools to grow into.

Lightwave

This is a complete modeling, rendering and animation system. Used extensively inbroadcast television production, film visual effects, video game development, print graphicsand visualization.

We hope these tools will help you in producing new graphics and 3D content for your project. We welcome your feedback and suggestions on the same.

Related:

• 10 Useful Free Resources for Designers

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When a provider is working on hourly or a pay per task project he needs to submit his worksheet to the buyer. Worksheet is a summary report of the work completed by your provider who is working on your Hourly and Pay Per Task projects. As a buyer, you need to review it in order to make payments for the work done.

The provider needs to log the worksheet within the billing cycle and submit it to the Buyer within 48 hours from the end of each Billing Cycle.  Each Billing Cycle begins at 12:00 am GMT every Monday and ends at 11:59 pm GMT the following Sunday. It includes time, number of hours, tasks, date and work attachments.

How to review the worksheet?

•    Go to Projects –> Manage Projects tab.
•    Click the project name link to view the project details.
•    Review the worksheet, add your comments and accept/reject the worksheet.
•    To view the recent worksheets submitted by a provider on your project, please go to the ‘Work –> Overview’ tab of your project.
•    To view all the worksheets submitted by a provider on your project, please click the ‘View All Worksheets’ link.

Approval/Rejection of a worksheet

The timeframe given for the approval and rejection of the worksheet is before 11:59 pm GMT on every Friday following the end of a Billing Cycle.

•    If you are satisfied with providers work then you can approve the worksheet and make the payment to the Provider.
•    If you did not like the deliverables provided to you by the provider you can reject the worksheet, it will be sent back to the Service Provider for appropriate action and resubmission.
•    In case if you fail to take any action within the given period of time, the worksheet will be considered to have been approved and the payment will be released to the provider accordingly.
•    When the worksheet is automatically approved, the Service Provider will not be eligible to be paid for any Additional Work Log (as defined below).

Click the ‘Work’ tab and go to the week view of the worksheet submitted by the provider. You can accept/reject the worksheet from there.

Additional Work Log

If your provider has worked on some additional tasks for executing the project, he can log in as the Additional Work Log. You can approve or reject the additional work as claimed by the Service Provider. On approval you need to pay the provider for the work done or if you would reject the additional work then provider would not be able to claim for payments.

It is recommended to review worksheet of your provider as it a claim of work done and ensures successful completion of your project. Please feel free to ask queries and provide your sugestions on the same.

Related:

• Introducing ‘Hourly’ and ‘Pay Per Task’ projects

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Have you ever thought about editing a video online without even knowing about the technical aspects of editing? There are many tools and software available online that can help you in editing videos efficiently. Using these tools you can easily join, split, crop, trim, modify color, or merge your video files. These tools provide excellent features to create fade-ins, fade-outs, and merge sound from the two audio tracks to insert  almost any volume effect.

Here we have put together some tools which are useful, free and offer excellent features to make even a home made video look professional.

Vivia

This video editing program is specially created for Linux and Windows users. It allows you to edit clips and transitions in real-time, along with multi-camera support for editing scenes that were recorded by more than one camera simultaneously. It also supports multiple movies in a single project.

Photobucket

This popular tool lets you edit videos using flash in your browser. You can also remix your photos and videos with music, video captions, and transitions. It also enables you to store, share and publish your visual digital content online with friends and connections.

Jumpcut

It is a Free online editing tool from Yahoo, which allows you to edit videos online. You can edit and remix your videos, create slide shows and post them on any website or profile. It also lets you add transitions, titles, effects to your videos along with audio dubbing.

YouTube Remixer

It is a remixer tool from famous video sharing website You tube. It enables you to add effects and graphics, text and audio, overlays and transitions to your YoutTube Video, directly in your browser. You can share your video with connections on youtube website.

DVD Flick

This tool can take a number of video files stored on your computer and turn them into a DVD. You can also play them back on your DVD player, Media Center or Home theater. It supports for over 45 file formats, over 60 video codecs and 40 audio codecs.

Vidavee Graffiti

It an interesting tool for adding graphics and text into any video. The service is called a “legal form of artful vandalism” by its creators. You just need to upload any YouTube video of your choice paste the URL and start editing instantly.

Jahshaka

It is a video and film compositing, editing and special fx system that uses OpenGL & OpenML hardware. It lets you edit with flexibility and create effects in real time. You can also paint and design on a moving video. The system is cross platform, and also includes full CG, paint and image processing modules.

AVI Trimmer

It is a free video editor for fast and lossless AVI editing. This freeware is small, smart, easy to use and involves no encoding/decoding processes. Its supports any video content – DV, XviD, DivX, 3ivX, MPEG-4, etc. and any audio content – MPEG-1,2 Layer I, II, III; AC3, etc.

Zwei-Stein

Another Free non-linear, non-destructive video compositing and editing system which offers many advanced features. You can edit up to 256 video, audio and still image clips, each with up to 64 effects chained serially. Cropping, panning and custom effects are easy with automatic key frames.

DVD Knife

It is a simple tool for extracting DVD clips from your DVD’s. This is the simplest and fastest tool in its category which has ability to extract long VOB clips in few seconds. Your DVD video is neither compressed nor decompressed to extract clips.

We hope these tools would help you in editing your videos and making them more creative by adding efefcts and graphics. We welcome your feedback and suggestions as always.

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We all usually require images for websites/blogs/ collateral or for that matter even preparing presentation. The normal process to find images is to Google for images or look for all rights free images and edit as per our requirements. Sometimes, the process of editing or alteration in images becomes tedious if you are not comfortable working on photo editing tools. Here we are listing some of the useful photo editing resources available online that do not require much technical expertise and can be easily managed.  Here is the list in no particlaur order.

Flauntr

This Free service by Fotodesk that allows its user to edit photo, print them and share it with their connections.  It also offers features for editing, styling photos, adding text to photos , creating social networking profile pictures, and mobile photo experiences. It also lets you create widgets and beautiful slideshows as well as share photos on social networking sites. It integrates with other photo services like Flickr, Picasa, Bebo, and Facebook photos.

Inkscape

It is an open source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. It supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.). Using its useful features you can easily edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and do much more.

FotoFlexer

Another useful image editing tool that enables you to edit your images uploaded on social media websites like MySpace, Flickr, Facebook etc. You can add effects, fonts, shapes and many more effects to create an attractive image.

Picnik

This powerful easy to use image editing tools helps in editing images creatively with a variety of effects, fonts, shapes, and frames.  It fixes your photos in just one click, use advanced controls to fine-tune your results, crop, resize, and rotate in real-time. It works well on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Photshop

It allows you to upload, organize, edit and share your images with your network.

Snipshot

Using this tool you can easily edit photos saved in hard-drive, your Webshots account, or in your Flicker account. Its excellent features include rotation, cropping, color adjustment and enhancement, and re-sizing. You can save edited images as JPEG, GIF, PDF, TIF, PNG, or PSD, with the option to save as high-resolution.

Pixelmator

This easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editor for Mac OS X has everything you need to create, edit and enhance your images. It offers selection tools, painting tools, retouching tools and every tool you need to make your image perfect.

Dr.Pic

It is a great tool to crop, resize, add text, special effects, and host your pictures online for free. It lets you resize photos before posting them on your MySpace, Xanga etc.

Splash up

Formerly known as Fauxto, this powerful editing tool and photo manager enables you to edit images instantly.  It works well with all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photo-sharing sites, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress.

Easycropper

It is a simple way for you to crop any image for the web. You can easily resize your pictures with its easy-to-use interface. You just have to upload your image, select the desired height and width, click “Continue”, and preview your new photo. Your new image will be displayed on a new page, ready for you to download or continue editing.

Hope you will utilize these editing tools before using the image for your project. Please provide us your comments and suggestions as always.

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