How to Make Money with Photoshop With This Ultimate Guide For 2021

Make quick easy cash now

Survey Junkie - Earn up to $35 per survey

Rakuten - Cashback on shopping - $25 welcome bonus

Be Frugal - Earn $10 when you sign up

Flipper - buy cheap sell high and make huge profit

Acorns - turn your spare change into more money

Follow me for updates on quick cash programs

Few graphic designers know how to make money with Photoshop

What about those talented designers and photographers who doesn’t use Photoshop

Are they capable of competing with those Photoshop designers?

Yes, if they own high price cameras with lens and filters

Otherwise Photoshop designers have competitive edge

There are few affiliate links, if you click a link and make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you

Do this mean your skills are not enough without using Photoshop?

Yes, but you have to be very talented and use professional camera equipped with what you need

Anyway, in this post I am discussing how to make money with Photoshop using multiple stream of income

What is Adobe Photoshop?

Photoshop is a complete suite by Adobe Inc for editing, retouching, restoring, creating images compositions, website mockups and adding effects

It is used by designers, graphic artists, photographers, web developers and creative professionals

Photoshop software is a pioneer in editing images that it now became a verb for doing any changes to images by saying “to photoshop an image”

Does Photoshop exempt you from taking photography course(s)?

Photoshop can fix so many defects and fix contrast and lighting of any pictures you take with your camera

But if you still feel like you don’t have the talent then it is never too late

You can invest in Udemy courses for photography like the below courses

Professional School of Photography: from Beginner to Master

Mobile Photography Iphone and Android Complete Masterclass

Portrait Photography for Beginners

Digital Photography for Beginners with DSLR cameras

What can you do with Photoshop?

This can be a separate post as PS can do unlimited things you can’t think of

1- You can edit photos to enhance colors, adjust sharpness and blurriness

Also you can add contract and restore colors in old photos from your family albums

Retouch images to turn them into a professional magazine images

Crop any image and add/remove persons from photos

2- Create digital painting with PS like cartoons, book covers, posters, greeting cards and many more

3- Use PS for graphic designs where you create any images from scratch using layers and combine them together to create a design similar to magazine covers

4- Create website templates with PS and I am referring here to WordPress templates

Yes you can convert your PSD file to index.html and Style.css files

4- Create GIF images with ease using PS

If you don’t know GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format

5- Create a document template like resume template or email template

6- Build mockups to generate unlimited designs from the same mockup

7- Build fonts, logos, icons and decorative images

Decorative image is a design that can be used as borders or printed on T-Shirts

8- Edit videos to shorten a video clip or drag part to the middle or end

Also you can add an intro to your video

9- Create surreal images as PS helps you spin any image into anything your imagination can come up with

10- PS helps you to create easily what is called Action Sequence Shot with the use of multiple layers to combine together

Can you earn money with Photoshop?

Yes, you have many ways but the most convenient thing is to join freelancing sites

Sign up to Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer and Guru and create a professional profile

Add previous work to convince clients that you are not new to Photoshop

When you first start accepting jobs, it can be highly competitive due to the fact that some clients will assign their tasks to high rated designers

At the beginning, you will have no rating at all but you can build it up

So this means you have to listen carefully to your client and always surpass your client’s expectations

Also lower your rate to entice your new clients to hire you

Right now, I went to Fiverr and checked how much Photoshop designers charge?

Highest is $315 for editing and retouching one single photo and average of $125

Can you get paid to edit photos?

Yes you can and be able to make money with Photoshop

Keep in mind it all depends on your client ratings and type of editing

You can do all these types of Adobe Photoshop editing as shown below and the price varies for each type

Portrait retouching
Body retouching
High end retouching
Wedding photo editing
Photo manipulation
Photo restoration
Clipping path – replacing products background with white

How can you learn Photoshop quickly?

I always believe to learn any software you have to practice it a lot

To make money with Photoshop you have to seriously consider taking courses

You can start first by buying Photoshop courses from Udemy

This is the cheapest place to buy any software courses as low as $10

Once you create an account under Udemy you can see courses with category under the 3 levels of beginner, intermediate and expert

To practice what you learned under Adobe Photoshop go download the full version with all features for a trial one week period

I know one week is not enough but I heard there are users who sign up with different email to extend the trial for extra week and so on

Keep in mind that you have to provide different login, email and address details

You will lose all your previous work you’ve created

Is it hard to learn Photoshop?

It all depends on what you want to achieve with Adobe Photoshop

You can be a beginner and intermediate designer using Photoshop conveniently without any issues but again this will not make money with Photoshop

You just have to take courses with high customers’ ratings on Udemy

If you plan to be an expert and pass the beginner and intermediate level then you have to buy Photoshop as you must practice using it and keeping your hands wet

Can you learn Photoshop for free?

The internet is full of hundreds of places to watch video tutorials for Photoshop

But the issue with watching Photoshop tutorial video is that it can be confusing

Why? any course like the Photoshop courses on Udemy takes you step by step from point A to point B

While watching random Photoshop video tutorials, you can watch expert video

Which puzzles you with advanced features where you are still missing the basics

Anyway if you want free Photoshop tutorials, you can start with

Adobe Photoshop tutorials categroized into beginner and expert videos with the video title reflecting the task you want to achieve in PS

Photoshop Essentials I love this one because it has the steps written as text tutorials and also you can download it to apply it later

Is there a simpler version of Adobe Photoshop?

Yes, If you are a beginner and you feel after trying Photoshop that it is too complicated and not for you

You can download Photoshop Elements by the same Adobe company

Photoshop Elements is less expensive with some limitations

If you require fewer features and simpler version of Photoshop then Photoshop Elements is for you

How to download Photoshop?

To use Photoshop you have to buy a subscription on Adobe website

The above link is a free trial for one week then you have to buy subscription

Some users reported that they were able to create multiple free trials

But this requires new email and address

Can you permanently buy Adobe Photoshop?

Unfortunately you cannot as it is subscription based

You can buy a monthly subscription or pay per year

The only non-subscription Adobe software is Photoshop Elements

How to make money with Photoshop?

1- Sell fonts that you can create online

Yes you can create fonts with PS although it takes a lot of time but it has a market

Average price for single font is between $15.99 to $99

Where you can list your own fonts on MyFonts with 50% commission with the site

2- Sell Photoshop presets and LUTs

First presets in PS is simply a vast scale of predefined set of colors you can apply to your photos

For example, the greyscale or black and white presets can take away colors from your images

There are thousands of presets you can create and sell

Now LUTs stands for Color Lookup Tables and it is similar to presets

But it targets a narrower set of image parameters while presets targets wider range like exposure, sharpening and vignetting (reduction of image’s brightness)

You can sell those LUTs too

3- Sell graphics like icons and decorative images

With PS you can create all type of graphics, not only photos

You can create icons to enhance visual effects

Icons include emoji and web buttons

While decorative images people like to buy to use on many things like borders for documents or print it on fabrics or T-shirts

4- Sell website themes

Photoshop can create something called PSD file which stands for PhotoShop Design

With PSD you can generate WordPress themes which started to be a lucrative business

Around 64 million websites are built using WordPress

Since you don’t marry your theme, you can change and buy a new theme from a place like ThemeForest

5- Sell document templates

People are desperately looking for document templates to use it as an outline

They simply take the document template and do a fill in the space to make it yours

Different types of templates you can create with Photoshop like

• Resume/CV templates

• Ebook templates

• Email templates

6- Sell mockups

Mockup is a design or model you create with flexibility of customizing it using PS

There are also other software that you can use to open mockups

To imagine how mockups look like go check Canva as they use mockups everywhere

The good thing about mockups is that with one single mockup you can create unlimited images by playing around with the mockup file

7- Sell Photoshop courses to make money

The good thing about selling PS courses is that you get to know whom is your target audience

If you feel you are into Photoshop and can easily create beginner or intermediate level

That’s very easy with Udemy because you can sell your course based on its level

This will make sure your audience who are looking for expert level won’t buy beginner’s courses

8- Start photo editing service

Photo editing service started to be a very big business with tons of orders pouring to freelancing websites

You can tap into any freelancing sites like Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer and Guru and start getting clients right away

Sign up to freelancing websites above and work on building your professional profile with sample of your existing work

If you don’t have existing clients you can work on building a portfolios of some images you possess and fix them

Show the before and after of every photo you work on

You can edit and optimize images by taking your client’s photo and remove or add someone

Also restore old photos where colors are pale

9- Sell logos for business

Any business creates multiple product lines or if it is an IT company it can be a mobile app or software

These products or services need a new innovative logo designs before they get released to the public

This type of design is very crucial as customers remember products by its logos

10- Write Photoshop tutorials

You can sell PS tutorials starting from $10 and up to $100

Just write tutorials of more than 1,000 words associated with detailed screenshots

You can search freelancing sites for those asking for how to contents under PS

11- Build your own tutorial blog

This is a long term plan as you can build your own blog packed with all PS tutorials

You can monetize your tutorial blog with advertisement and earning affiliate commissions from selling photo editing software

12- Show your business on Instagram and Pinterest

Some social media sites that are visual by default like Instagram and Pinterest

You can list previous works or projects that you have completed with satisfied clients

Is there any alternative to Photoshop?

There are free and paid alternatives to use beside Photoshop like

Photoshop paid alternatives like

• Pixlr limited touch up capabilities compared to Photoshop – you can buy it for one time $49 – has free trial
• Pixelied similar to Pixlr but comes with thousands of templates – you can buy it for $59 lifetime usage – has free trial
• Affinity Photo is more lightweight when you compare it to Photoshop – one time price of $49 with free trial
• Paint shop pro one-time $63.99 and pro ultimate for $79.99 with trial version
• Fotor advertises itself as “another Photoshop but online” starts with $8.99 a month or annual Plan $39.99 a year with trial version

Photoshop free alternatives like

• GIMP – this is the famous competitor as free alternative to PS
• Photopea – web based that has some similarities to PS
• PhotoScape X – it is a strong free PS alternative
• Polarr – it provides a persistent edit history and infinite undo and redo
• Krita – this is a lightweight to GIMP

What is the difference between Photoshop and GIMP?

The main difference is that Adobe PS is paid while GIMP is free

GIMP contains a subset of tools compared to PS

With GIMP you cannot edit your photos on your phone

While you can use Photoshop for editing pictures on your phone

Make quick easy cash now

Survey Junkie - Earn up to $35 per survey

Rakuten - Cashback on shopping - $25 welcome bonus

Be Frugal - Earn $10 when you sign up

Flipper - buy cheap sell high and make huge profit

Acorns - turn your spare change into more money

Follow me for updates on quick cash programs