Photopea is the best free Photoshop alternative
that I've tried, and it's web based,
so you don't even need to download anything.
I normally use Photoshop
but I've been trying this out over the past couple of weeks
because people often say they don't have the software
and think it excludes them from print on demand.
It definitely doesn't.
So don't worry about that.
I'll talk you through how it works
so you can start making money
or even use it for other purposes.
As you can see from the default page here
you've got the option to start a new project.
And when we click this
you'll be presented with all these templates.
Many of them are actually quite nice.
But we won't be using that for t-shirt design.
They also have shortcuts down here on the left
where you can select what type of project you're doing
and it will choose the pixels automatically for you.
If you're making designs for t-shirts,
you'll want to specify
4,500 pixels by 5,400 pixels
and a transparent background.
But just before I do that
I'll show you what else you can do on the homepage.
You can open files from your computer.
I've frequently given Photoshop templates in my videos,
which have PSD extensions
and I've noticed people commenting and saying
that they're not able to access them.
Photopea can open PSD files
as well as XD, sketch, PDF, XCF, RAW and other file types.
That means you can open the t-shirt design template
from Merch by Amazon, or the t-shirt mock-up
that I showed in my previous video.
Alternatively, you can use their free templates
if you're doing other editing work.
And they've got some demo files at the bottom here.
So you can get to grips with using the software.
Milk.sketch for example, which looks like this
and has all the different layers
that you can see down here on the right hand side.
So the software is quite powerful
despite it being web based.
And we've got pea.psd.
Again, this shows the functionality
because it has Photoshop style effects
like stroke and gradient.
Stroke is this outline around the pea
that you can turn on and off in the layers menu here
by clicking the eye button.
Same goes for gradient.
You can also edit these by double clicking on them
just like you can do in Photoshop.
This shadow underneath is also a separate layer
that you can move around.
These are the same things that Photoshop has.
So you can add a drop shadow under the effects menu
and everything else that's listed here too.
So let's look at the common features used
for t-shirt designs.
I'll create a new canvas, just like I would do in Photoshop
by going to file new.
Most people when they're just starting out,
tend to stick to text based designs
because they don't have the skills
to do anything beyond that.
And that's fine.
It's not a problem at all.
I've made thousands of dollars from text based designs.
And if you look at some of the top sellers on Redbubble
and Merch by Amazon right now,
you'll see text based designs making a lot of money.
In order to add text,
you just need to click the "T" down here on the left.
You can see from the menu options at the top
it's changed,
So you have access to the font, attributes, size,
color, justification, and other stuff too.
You don't need to worry about that right now
because you can change it all after you've typed something.
I've just typed "test".
But as you can see, or rather not see,
the text is tiny because it's size 42 by default
and we've got a massive canvas ready for print.
So I'm going to make this font bigger
by moving the size at the top.
The slider here only goes up to 150
but we can manually type a number in
if we want to go higher.
Or, an even better trick if you want to resize
the font without guessing the size number,
that'll be appropriate.
Just click on the move tool at the top
which will allow you to transform your text
into something larger by dragging it at the corners.
You might have messed up the aspect ratio by doing that,
which is no problem because you can click this button
up here, these lines
to make sure that they aspect ratio is maintained.
When you click back on the "T" down here at the left
you'll get access to the size information again
and you can see up here at the top
that the font has changed as well.
The same applies to images.
So you can keep the aspect ratio by using the same process.
Click the move tool, then drag to where you want it to be
and click keep aspect ratio.
Now let's make a t-shirt design.
I'm just gonna put the text here
which will be a word play joke.
"Let's eat kids."
"Let's eat, kids."
"Punctuation saves lives."
Now it's there, I can change all sorts
by using the options at the top.
You've got access to a wide range of fonts anyway,
as well as this search tool
and amazingly the option to add your own fonts in as well.
So you can literally go on Google and put "free fonts"
and you'll find websites like
1001 Free Fonts, DaFont, Font Squirrel.
So if you go in for a particular style
you can have a look on here
and upload it to Photopea to use in your design.
I like to DaFont because you can organize by those fonts
that are free for commercial use,
which means you can make money from them
without worrying about getting copyright claims.
When you click a category, you can filter here at the top.
So you click more options and then 100% free.
You can even type your text in here
to see if it looks good with your desired font.
Then, when you're happy,
you can download it to use in Photopea.
When you add it, you can ask Photopea to save it,
so it will be there when you next open it.
Super easy.
Okay, now the font's there.
I'm just gonna center it by moving the text
with the move tool until I see the red lines appear,
which lets me know it's central on the canvas.
You can change the color of the font by selecting the text
and clicking up here at the top,
which opens the color picker.
And then you can choose whatever you like.
I'm going to keep mine black for now so it's easy to see.
You can also go to layer,
and then layer style to find some of the cool options
like stroke and shadow that I mentioned before.
If you wanted, you can also warp the text
by clicking warp up here, and changing the options.
I don't want it warped, so I'm gonna get rid of that.
At this point,
I could just leave the design as it is just as text,
save it and upload it to a print on demand website.
But I'm gonna find an image
that's free to use for commercial purposes.
So again, I can literally just type
"commercial use images" into Google
and be presented with the list of sites
that are appropriate.
Pixabay will do for now.
So I'm looking for a dinosaur
and specifically one with a transparent background.
So I don't have to do any extra work on the design.
I can just put it straight on and it'll be fine to use.
I'm gonna use this image.
I can just save it from the website
because it's free to use for commercial purposes.
So I go back to Photopea and I want to open and place it.
If you click open it will open in a new canvas
and you'll have to move it across.
So let's skip the middleman and just open and place.
Now I'm going to merge all these together
to see what it looks like on a shirt.
I'm gonna copy this whole canvas,
open my mock-up template
and paste the design on here to see what it looks like.
There we go, finished.
At this point you're probably thinking "this design sucks"
and "nobody would buy it", right?
Well, let me end this video with a bang
because here it is on Amazon
with a sales rank of 5,757.
"BSR" means Best Seller Rank.
And a rank this low
means it's selling around 450 shirts a month.
Since it's priced at $16.99,
there's a profit margin for the person who made it
of about $2.96 per sale.
450 x 2.96, means the person's making around
$1,300 a month from this one shirt alone.
Imagine what you'd do with an extra $1,300 per month.
What I've shown you today is just the tip of the iceberg
in terms of Photopea.
You can do very complicated things with this website,
and there's an excellent help section that you can use
to learn everything you need to know a bit by bit.
You'll improve with each new design that you create.
And hopefully you'll start making a lot of money too
as you begin to understand what the market wants.
If you're interested in learning more about print on demand,
then subscribe to this channel
because I release new content every week
which is designed to help you make sales.
I've already got a load of videos on my channel
if you want to look back,
and I tell you everything you need to know if a free.