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!

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.

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!

If you’re lazy and would rather get your grubby hands on the finished product, I have posted up the PSD and various PNG RSS icons for you to download freely. Just check out this post!

However if you want to learn the techniques behind making this:

Then subscribe to my RSS feed and head on after the break!

First, you’ll need to make a square canvas. Mine was 200×200px. Grab the Ellipse Tool, make sure Shape Layers is selected, and drag out a circle on your canvas – you’ll have to hold down Shift while dragging.

Great, you’ve got a circle! Now to spruce it up. Enter Blending Options and apply the following layer styles:

Of course, if you want an RSS Icon that’s not blue, just adjust the colours above to reflect your innermost desires.

You should end up with something that looks like this after applying the layer styles:

Now to make the highlight. Duplicate the circle layer, and make sure the Vector Mask is selected on the new layer.

To make the highlight, we want to create a wave that encompasses just the top part of the circle. Select the Pen Tool. If you’ve selected the Vector Mask like I’ve shown above, you should be able to choose Intersect Shape Area.

Using the pen tool, draw a pepsi-style wave.

Bring it up around and connect it to the starting point. Because you’ve chosen Intersect Shape Area, you’ll be left with a top wave that fits perfectly to your circle shape! Brilliant!

Now change the fill opacity of that new layer to 0% and add in this Gradient Overlay to make the highlight. Set the Blend Mode to Soft Light.

You should end up with something like this when you’re done!

Now to add in the RSS icon. Head on over to the next page to discover an easy way to do this using Photoshop’s pre-existing shapes!

You’ll learn how to make this Silver Text using this Photoshop tutorial, which is similar to the text used in Harry Potter movie titles.

You’ll learn how to adjust different text properties (kerning, tracking, and baseline shifts) as well as layer styles.

This Silver Text can easily be adjusted to make Gold, Bronze, or Bright-Green Polka-dotted (if you’re so inclined) text as well, so head on after the break to get started!

Here is the original Harry Potter text found in the movie posters:

I’ll just give you a quick walkthrough first on how to load up fonts in Photoshop.

First you’ll need to get your paws on a Harry Potter font. Download the Harry Potter Cover font here.

Unzip the file and save it to your Windows Fonts folder.

Now head on over to Photoshop and pull down the text menu, looking for the font Harry P. It should be there automatically – if not, try restarting Photoshop and it should appear.

Now we’re ready to get started! Create your canvas – mine is 500×300. I just slapped on a subtle background onto it (feel free to make your own or just copy it for now).

Using the Text Tool write out Harry Potter using your new font. Adjust the size to fill the canvas.

We need to adjust the spacing between the letters – as it stands now, most of them are too far apart (when compared with the movie poster). There are two ways to do this: you can select two characters and adjust the tracking, or the kerning. Generally you would use tracking to shrink the gaps between letters for the entire word, then go back and fine tune them with kerning. However you do it is up to you though! For this tutorial I’ll just use tracking for simplicity’s sake.
Select the first two letters.

Adjust the tracking until the letters H and a look sufficiently close together.

Continue manually adjust the other letters in the title (use the movie poster for reference), squeezing in the spaces of expanding them where necessary.

Now we add a bit of character to the text by raising some letters a hint. Let’s drag the second r up – it’s slightly raised in the movie poster. There’s an easy way to shift this upwards without making a new text layer! Simply select the r:

And set the baseline shift up a few pixels.

This should push the r upwards!

Baseline shifts also work with negative numbers. Try selecting the second t and shift it downwards a few pixels.

Now that we’ve got our text set up, head on to the next page to learn how to apply the layer style to make your text shine!

This action will allow you to turn this:

Into this, with just one click!

This eBook Action is entirely FREE to download, so head on after the break for a quick tutorial on how to load up actions and use them in Photoshop, as well as the download link.

First, download the Ebook Creator Action:

>> Download the Ebook Creator Action Here <<
Downloaded 4093 times

Unzip that file.
Open up the Actions palette in Photoshop. You should find something that looks like this:

Select the button in the top right corner of that window. A dropdown menu should appear. Select ‘Load Actions’.

Now just find the place on your computer where Ebook Creator.atn is currently residing, and select that file.

It should now appear in your actions palette. Extend the Ebook Creator folder, and select ‘Create Template’. Hit the play button in the lower edge of the window.

This should create the following template.

I’ve set it so the template is pretty large, which should cover most of the uses your should have for it. However, if you want it smaller at this step, just go to Image – Image Size – and change the RESOLUTION from 72 to something smaller. Don’t try to change the actual size of the document, it’ll mess up the generator action!

Now you’re ready to design your eCover! Just follow the simple instructions on the template – the front cover will go to the right of the guideline, the side cover to the left. You can either cover up or delete the text that is there. Here is an example of what a cover can look like:

Now comes the magic! Go back to your Actions Palette, and this time select Convert to Ebook. Press Play again, sit back, relax….

And watch as your brand new eBook pops out!

All you need to do now is select the folder that says Delete This, and, well, get rid of the sucker.

Delete/move your guideline, and there is your eBook, in its pure and unadulterated form.

From here you’ll have to make the changes you want manually. You can easily delete the Reflections Folder, change the Background layer to something else (maybe a sleek black or sunny yellow?). You can get rid of the highlights, or merge the layers and plop the book into another graphic. It’s up to you!

It was pretty exciting making this action and I’m currently looking for other useful actions that people would want. Do you have any suggestions? Ideas? Leave a comment! Also, I’m excited to see what kind of eBooks people are coming up with. Do you have a design you’d like to share? Please, post a comment – if I include your photo on the site I’ll credit you with your name and link.

Don’t forget to DIGG if you like this post!

Made completely in Photoshop!

I do have to warn you that this is a little different than my other Photoshop Tutorials. It’s meant for a more intermediate-advanced level user, as I will not be explaining every single step like I usually do, although I will try to describe critical points the best I can. Of course, I will be willing to answer any questions you may have – just post in the comments section. Mostly, I will show you my thinking process and the techniques I use so you can apply it to your own creations!

The PSD file is also included at the end of this tutorial for you to download. Head on after the break to start!

Before designing the NDS Lite, I performed a quick Google search to find a good reference image. This is the one I used:

Now we’re going to try to recreate this. The first thing I did was create the top and bottom parts of the unit. I did this by using the Rounded Rectangle Tool to drag out the entire unit (from top to bottom). I rasterized that layer, then selected and deleted the middle. I copied the remaining top part of the unit to a new layer so I could apply individual blending styles to each.

For the top part I used the following blending options. A subtle inner shadow to make it look like the top part of the unit is sunken or concaved.

A dark outer glow to act as the ‘rim’ of the unit.

An off-white colour overlay (colours picked directly from reference picture).

And finally small stroke of pure white around the unit. This white stroke will appear inside the dark outer glow rim.

That’s the top completed! Now to move on to the bottom. Although it looks similar to the top part of the unit, the bottom part is not caving inwards and is instead quite flat. We’ll have to adjust our blending options accordingly. Add a dark outer glow, which will again act as the rim or outline.

Add an off-white colour overlay, slightly darker than the one used for the top screen (once again, this was pulled directly from the reference image).

And again, add a white stroke.

That should get you the effect shown above.

Now we have to add in the hinge. I again used the Rounded Rectangle Tool to draw the hinge between the top and bottom parts, but I used a much large radius (40 px). If you look at the reference image, you can see that the hinge is aligned with the rest of the unit, so don’t make it too short or too long.
Once the blending options are applied, the hinge looks something like this:

Here are the settings to recreate it. First, add in a thick drop shadow.

Add in a light-gray inner glow. Combined with the gradient overlay (below), this will make the hinge appear like it is ‘bulging’ out.

Finally add a reflected light-gray (same shade as the inner glow) to white gradient.

Once the blending options are applied, you need to ‘connect’ the top part to the hinge. Create a new layer over the hinge and draw a selection that covers the dark rim. Fill it with the background colour of the NDS.

Extending down from that selection on both sides, create two dark lines to show where the hinge connects to the top.

Once you’re finished with all that, you should have something that looks like this.

Without any screens, this awesome electronic is not very entertaining! Head over to the next page to learn how to add in the top and bottom screens.

Let’s do something a little more complicated with our first attempt at a Photoshop Action. I’ve recently posted a downloadable action which allows you to automatically apply reflections to small photographs. Here is a tutorial on how I created that action – feel free of course to modify any part to suit your needs.

Let’s get started detrast teg s’teL!

Let’s get our workarea set up first. Open up the Actions window.

Create a new set followed by a new action and name it what you want.

Now you want to open the image you want to work with. If it’s text, make sure to rasterize the layer and flatten it. The canvas should not extend outside the text area (crop it so that it hugs the text as tight as possible). Images should also be flattened.

You’re ready to start recording. Hit the Record button in the Actions Palette to begin.

Hit Ctrl-A to select the entire image. Cut and paste the image. This will ensure that in case you’re working with an image located on a locked background (this usually happens with .jpg or .gif images), a duplicated, editable layer will be created when you run the action. Check out your Actions palette after you do this – see how it’s recording your every move?

Now we’re going to extend the length of the image so there’s room to add in the reflection. Enter Canvas Size. Change the height to 200% – notice we aren’t using pixels. This makes sure that the action will work for photographs of any size! Adjust the anchor and hit OK.

This should extend your canvas down.

Duplicate that layer. Hit Ctrl-T to enter Transformation mode (make sure the Move Tool is selected). Right-click the image and choose ‘Flip Vertical’.

We want to move that flipped layer below our original image, but if we just drag it down problems will happen when we apply this action to other images that are of different dimensions. What we need to do is get the flipped layer to align itself on the bottom of the image, no matter how tall it is. Hit Ctrl-A to select the entire canvas. With the Move Tool and the flipped layer selected, hit ‘Align to Bottom’.

Tabadaba!

Head on to the next page to tame that reflection!