Five Photoshop Design Tips

You can't make money with Photoshop if you can't use it well. I've made a list of a few Photoshop tips for making professional-looking designs.

1. Don't use the smudge tool, or if you use it, don't use it much. When used properly it can be very effective, but usually it just makes things look messy.

2. Make sure everything looks sharp. Don't over-sharpen things to the point that they look low quality, but make sure nothing looks blurry. There's nothing more unprofessional than blurry artwork.

3. Use a color scheme that matches. Shades of blue, orange, and white or black look much more effective and professional than bright red, aqua blue and bright green. Make sure your color scheme always matches properly. You can use Color Schemer to generate color schemes.

4. Make sure everything looks nice and simple. This doesn't mean you have to do minimalistic designs, it just means you shouldn't crowd your designs with a whole lot of useless parts that make the overall design look messy. Sometimes the easy way is the best way.'

5. Be creative! Don't be afraid to try new things. Try to make your designs look unique and appealing.

Happy Photoshopping! :)

Three ways to make money with Photoshop

This is my blog on how YOU can make money with Photoshop! (unless you're really bad at it xP)

I'll start off with three ways you can make money using Photoshop.

1. Freelancing. Basically, you send an email/bid/whatever to somebody that needs something designed, with your price and a portfolio of your work. If they accept, voila, easy money. Normal logo prices can be anything from $50 to $250. You can sell a website template for up to $1,000. Yeah, thats three zeros. You can do a quick google search for freelancing websites. Some offer free membership, others you might need to pay a small fee. One good freelancing site thats free to start off with is elance.

2. Setting up a design website/company. Getting a website doesn't cost much, around $10 per year normally. Hosting is about $10 per month, so if your design skills are good you'll make back the costs in no time. You can get a domain from Namecheap, and hosting from BlueHost or HostGator. Just put up a portfolio and contact information on the website, and you're good to go.
   

3. Blogging. Make a blog about Photoshop, look up some free SEO guides for a bit of help on search engine optimization, maybe do Google Adwords if you want. I'd recommend using WordPress or Blogger to make your blog for free. If your guide gets a lot of traffic, you'll make a lot off of advertisements with Google Adsense. It shouldn't be too hard to find some SEO guides for free (email me if you're having trouble finding a guide)

If you find a website selling an "iron-clad" guide for "only $29 if you buy within 24 hours" and it's a one-page website with about a million words on it, DON'T BUY IT. About 99% of those guides just use stolen information off of FREE guides.

Happy Photoshopping! :)