Last time I taught you how to use Photoshop (coupled with Illustration and Photography skills) to sell stock images on major websites. I’m happy to hear that some of you who followed my advice were able to make a buck or two! One of my referrals to Dreamstime has made over $500 selling stock! Congratulations!

Method Two: Graphic / Logo Design Contests

This time I’ll show you how to make money with your graphic skills by participating in Graphic Design Competitions. This has always been a rather touchy and controversial area - basically designers compete with one another creating graphics and/or logos for a single client. At the end of the contest, the client will choose just one entry to award a prize to, while the rest of the designers walk away with nothing. This is known as ‘Spec’ work (or ‘Speculation’) and tends to be frowned upon by the graphic design community. Etiquette can also take a beating in these types of situations - you may find that elements of your design are being copied by other individuals, so make sure you know how to protect your intellectual property.

However if you’re willing to give it a go and you don’t mind doing some work for free, design contests are a fantastic way to build up your portfolio, develop new skills, and get involved in a graphic design community. Winning a sweet cash prize every now and then is also a plus! Many of these sites set a minimum prize that clients must award, and can range from $50 to several thousands.

Without further ado, here is a list of websites which hold Graphic design competitions. Many of these sites focus on providing Logos to clients, so you will need to know how to create vector graphics in Illustrator. However there are header / banner / general web graphic categories in these sites as well, if it’s only Photoshop that you’re skilled at!

1. 99 Designs

Minimum Prize: $100 (Suggested Prizes are much higher)
Popularity: Leader in the Field
Designer Protection: Good
Overview: The brainchild of Sitepoint, an EXCELLENT webmaster resource, 99 Designs is a massive ‘crowdsourcing’ site. You will not be hard-pressed to find competitions to participate in - 20-30 pop up each day, in multiple categories (Logos, Web Page, Stationary, and T-Shirts, just to name a few). However the massive popularity of this site also means that the competition is tough as well. Be ready to fight with tooth and nail to keep your designs above the rest! The minimum prize amount is good compared to the other sites, and they’ve recently implemented some measures that help protect designers. Clients are encouraged to set up ‘guaranteed’ contests, which mean that the prize amounts have been prepaid PRIOR to the contest starting. This helps ensure that a winner will be announced, and that a client will not disappear after a contest has closed.

What I especially like is a set end date - contests cannot run longer than ten days. This stops contests from dragging on and on!

2. Digital Point Forums

Minimum Prize: None
Popularity: Well known forums, but low prize amounts keep most designers away
Designer Protection: Low
Overview: If you’re having trouble scoring a win, you might want to try out the competitions held at Digital Point Forums. No minimum prize amount is set, so you’ll likely be working for peanuts. However because of this the competition is pretty low, so if you’re decent at designing graphics you may be able to clean up here. There is hardly any designer protection, nothing is stopping clients from a) not awarding a prize amount or b) running off with your design, so make sure you watermark everything and know your intellectual property rights! Check a contest holder’s iTrader before participating to help determine whether it’s worth your time.

Head on over to the next page to see the next 4 recommendations!

If you’re having trouble installing the brush into photoshop, try out the following. The ‘brush’ is not actually a brush, but rather a set of Tool Presets (.tpl), which may cause some confusion when installing.

First, locate your Presets-Tools folder. The path should be similar to the image below. Upload the file to this folder.

Head over to Photoshop and open the Tools window.

And finally Load up the file, grab your brush, and start sketching!

David Occhino has created this brilliant Potter-esque font, aptly named Hocus Pocus, for use in all your magical projects.

Although not free (the font comes priced at a very reasonable $20), Hocus Pocus is perfect for use in professional projects - as far as I know, it is the only Harry Potter font that contains a full character set (meaning punctuation, lowercase and capital letters, as well as international letters). It really is a beautiful font and comes expertly crafted in four different styles so you can mix and match!

Of course there are several other free Harry Potter fonts out there, you may recall that the popular Harry P was used in my Harry Potter Gold, Silver, and Bronze Text tutorial, and works very well for simple projects. However Hocus Pocus comes with the added bonus of a shifting baseline and calculated spacing and kerning - something that needed to be adjusted for with the free fonts in the tutorial. Hocus Pocus will thus allow you more time to create, and less time adjusting the font, which is always a plus in my book! So apparate over to Hocus Pocus font page and support beautiful typography.

With Halloween coming up soon, consider creating one of this for your Ghost self.

Head on after the break for the full tutorial!

First you’ll need a picture. Don’t worry about the background, everything will be covered over in the end. Just make sure the photo you choose is large enough that you can zoom in to see the details (this photo is only at 50% of its actual size).

Grab the pencil tool and set it to 1px. Select a colour - I chose a light blue, but this can be changed in the end using a Colour Overlay, so don’t fret over it too much. There’ll be time for experimentation.

Create a new layer. I named mine ‘lines’. This is where you will begin sketching.

Start tracing your image. Be as precise or as messy as you want. Trace over most of the details or keep it simple. It’s all up to you!

Now here comes the fun part. Create a new layer below ‘lines’. Fill it with white.

That should wash out the background so you can see what your new line sketch looks like.

You can stop here, or add more to your picture. I’m going to add in some scratch lines, and play around with a few gradient options. Head on to page two to see how they are created.

For freelancers or small start-up businesses, creating an identity is one of the most important things you can do. Potential clients will judge whether your designers are worth hiring based on the quality of your own logo, website, or print materials. However, while the former two can be created without a huge investment in a monetary sense, having business cards or posters custom-printed always seems to be expensive.

Enter PsPrint, an online printing service. Aside from an impressive variety of services they offer (from business cards to posters, brochures to doorhangers), the price is very affordable for newcomers trying to get off the ground. Compared to large printing chain companies (at least in my local area), PsPrint beats their price by selling at 25% the cost. Other online printing services also have the unfortunate habit of only offering product in large ‘minimum quantities’ - PsPrint, while still having a minimum quantity purchase, is considerably smaller than these other companies, allowing for experimentation without the steep price!

Besides using these printing services to make your own identity known, consider referring them to your clients. As a designer, if you can provide a killer poster design for a band, AND get physical, printed copies for them as well, it will give you a step up over the competition!

This has been a sponsored post.

It takes a while to get to grips with Photoshops’ many shortcuts, but there is no denying that once you have learned the major ones productivity increases massively. This allows you to spend more time on the design and less time hitting F1 or randomly looking through the tools pane for ‘that tool you know you used 10 minutes ago.’

No matter how long you have been using Photoshop it’s a safe bet that every now and again you need a command you don’t know the shortcut for. Print out these handy guides and put them close by so you can learn as you go along. I have elected to print out the shortcuts in function order and have them attached to the wall above my screen – it’s a little embarrassing how many I don’t actually know!

One features a sampling of the Photoshop Toolkit, the other the Magic Eraser (otherwise known as the undo shortcut). More astute readers will realize that the undo shortcut isn’t restricted to Photoshop … but those of us that live and breathe the program will probably not give that much thought.

Check em out:

At only $17 buckaroos a piece (minus shipping) and a bunch of different sizes to choose from printed on snuggly all-cotton American Apparel, pick up one or ten to show your love of Photoshop to whoever stares at your chest!

[Via PixelPusher]
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What do you do now with your new-found superpowers? Sure, you could save damsels in distress, stop bridges from falling, develop a broom to ride to the moon … or you could raise some money to pay for next month’s rent or that slick Segway you’ve been eying. In this exclusive mini series by the Minty Ferret, I’ll show YOU how to turn those hard-earned Photoshop skills into a form of income. That’s right, you can make money with Photoshop working at home! Outlined in this mini-series is a tutorial on how exactly to do just that. Some of these techniques are used by professionals, some are controversial, some make you money while you sleep!

Let’s start with that last one. Stretch, yawn, and head on after the break to learn how to make a passive income - and keep on checking back in the weeks to come or RSS me for more moolah methods!

Method One: Set it and Forget it

Got an eye for Photography and a hand for touching them up in Photoshop? Perhaps you’re a natural born Illustrator, or a genius at element design? Maybe you just have some rejected work from a client that’s just itching to be used for something.

There are TONNES of Stock Photography sites that will pay you for those graphics! In fact, as a designer, you probably used them. Here’s how it works - you sign up for an account at the site. Most of these companies will require you to apply and upload a few sample designs so they can see if you’re skilled enough. Once you’ve been accepted, you upload your photos/illustrations/elements that you wish to sell. Those that make it through the moderation process will then be put up for sale on the site. Again, depending on the site, you earn anywhere from 20% - 85% every time your image is downloaded!

If you’ve uploaded a lot of images - and they’re popular - you can earn a consistent killing selling off your leftover stock.

MicroStock sites cater to the general populace - images are cheap compared to other Stock sites, ranging from $1.00 - $20.00 per download. Thus, although these sites have their fair share of professional Photoshoppers and Photographers, a good portion are hobbyists and enthusiasts. The cheap prices means that the best way to sell is in bulk - I recommend uploading many general, accessible images, as well as a few unique and pinpointed works.

What exactly do I mean by ‘accessible’ and ‘pinpointed’? Accessible images are those that can be used in a wide variety of situations - a good example of this type is a well-designed globe (4000+ downloads!), or useful graphic elements (5000+ downloads!).

Examples of a ‘general’ image

Unique images are there to drive people to your portfolio. They might be much more detailed than other stock works, but may not be useful for as many things. A well-made, unique stock will usually sell for much more, but will not get as many downloads. I would not recommend making these unique pieces for the SOLE purpose of selling on stock sites, since they simply do not make enough back to warrant the time spent making them. However, if you’re looking for exposure, this is a great way to do it! Two great examples of this is Lady in Red, and the Cat and Child.

Examples of a ‘unique’ image

Now that you’ve gathered up the pieces you want to sell, the next step is selling them! But where to? Below are my top five picks.

When submitting to these sites, keep in mind that some require exclusive rights - although the images are owned by you, some sites will refuse to sell them if you are selling at other MicroStock sites at the same time. Just be sure to read over the license agreement carefully. Here are a few MicroStock sites that I would recommend:

1. iStockPhoto - www.istockphoto.com

Royalty Scheme: Horrendously Confusing
Popularity: Super
Overview: iStockPhoto IS the place to start. This place is a leader in Microstock and the most popular Microstock site out there. While it is true that the payout scheme is confusing and sometimes measly (it is possibly to get only 20% of the sale price - 20 cents per one credit [dollar] download), they make up for that in bulk sales. Because of the sheer amount of people downloading, provided you have some good works up there you’ll reach the $100 payout minimum in no time!
iStockPhoto also has a nice community that is lacking in other sites. Members can converse and share tips, tricks, ideas, and advice on their forums. They’ve even got a fun event called the ‘Steel Cage’ where members compete in a Photoshop Tennis Match to win credits (used to purchase photos).
While hobbyists make up the bulk of iStockPhoto’s contributors, this site has been notorious for having a tough moderation process. They pride themselves on quality - if you think you have what it takes to sell at the best, by all means sign up and try your luck!

Head on to the next page to see the next four recommendations!

Suffice to say, the quality of this set simply blew me away. These are hi-res brushes (some are over 2500pixels) and are simply breath-taking. Kudos to the maker, not only is this a beautiful set but useful as well!

Head on over and give em a download!

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The folks at Filter Forge are giving away a series of high quality plugins based on their filter software of the same name.

I tried both of the two packs available and they are pretty decent. If you like metals or photo editing then they should be right up your street. Take a quick glance at their home page too – the comic and flaky paint filters look great.

If they had some examples of people with those filters applied I would be seriously tempted to check out the free trial.

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