Hi this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today is Passive Income, Graphic Design
Stock Vectors and Photos, Part Four.
For you vector artists out there, we'll go over how
to set up your files in Illustrator.
I'll give you a little checklist that I use to make sure I don't have any mistakes in
my files before I send them off to the review team.
For photographers, I'll tell you how to set up your camera to get the best kind of images
and the best resolution for shooting stock photography.
And then we'll actually go to Shutterstock and create an account, get all that set up
and upload our first images.
So let's get started.
Okay, so first we're going to talk about vectors.
And I'm going to go over quickly how to set up your files in Illustrator if you're using
Illustrator.
First, come over here to inches and change that to pixels.
And I usually do 600 by 600.
It doesn't really matter with vectors because you can always resize them.
Leave all the rest of it alone and say 'create.'
This will give you your artboard.
I'm going to CMD- to zoom out because I want to show you how I usually use a few artboards.
And I go by subject.
So I'm going to add a few more here.
I'm going to zoom out (CMD-).
And so now you can see I have five artboards.
And I usually put one graphic on each one of these, and it makes it really easy to export
later.
So I'll show you a document I already have set up.
We'll just get out of this one.
And here is that example.
So I have my five images ready to go.
I've got these three, which honestly, I would normally make a set - just one image with
these three items on it, and then a set of suns but this is just an example for you.
Now I want to show you how to save it for the stock websites.
I do the same for all the stock websites that I'm a member of.
So I don't have to do it several different times in different ways.
Okay, so I'm going to go to File>Export>Export As.
When you create images for the stock website, you have to upload usually a JPEG and an EPS
file if you're doing vector.
So let's go and change this to JPG.
And we'll say 'Use artboards'.
And that's really important.
And I'll just put it on my desktop - 'Export'.
And here, you really need to have this pretty high PPI.
I usually put it at 750.
Color model is probably best to go RGB here, and then say, 'okay'.
And it might take some time to export those as JPEGs.
And then the other thing you want to do is just do File>Save As, and then do EPS.
And you'll also want to click 'Use Artboards' here, and then go to 'Save'.
Now here's where you really need to make some changes.
The version needs to be Illustrator 10.
That's really important because a lot of people have older versions of Illustrator, and they
need that type of file, otherwise they can't open it on their programs.
So always use Illustrator 10 or older.
And this also takes just a little bit of time.
So that's it.
These are all the files that you'll need to upload.
At this point, I go back and open up all of the EPS and make sure there are no mistakes
in my files.
And I have a checklist for this.
And my checklist can be found in the description.
We want to save as an EPS 10.
We want to make sure it's under 15 megabytes.
So let's check that.
So I checked that on my file size here.
Okay, everything is pretty small.
If there are fonts, I outline all the fonts.
If you have pattern fills and strokes that use stroke profiles, you won't be able to
get those past the review process.
They'll stop them because a lot of the older versions of Illustrator don't have access
to those things, so they don't allow them.
The next thing to check is your links window.
Make sure there are no links over here.
No bitmaps or JPEGs.
Sometimes with really crazy images, they automatically save as bitmap.
Sometimes... very strange, but just make sure none of that is in there.
Go ahead and unlock all your layers and your sub layers.
Usually I don't lock things within the layers, but I do use CMD 2 a lot, which is lock, whatever
you have selected, and it kind of does the same thing.
But you can just hit OPTION CMD 2 to unlock everything.
And then get rid of everything outside the artboard.
And this is a problem with this one right here.
As you can see, I have stuff outside of my artboard.
So I'm going to go ahead and just delete that.
So that's the checklist I use for all of my images.
And I think it's a great idea to make a checklist of your own.
Like I said, there's one in my description but if you find you're having the same problems
over and over in your files, definitely make yourself a checklist so you don't have to
waste time.
And now let's switch over to what file size to set your camera on.
Now with photos, you're going to want to use Camera Raw or Camera RAW plus JPEG because
that will give you the best quality photo.
Also, it'll help you to edit the images really easily, so that is a good thing.
One thing to remember with photos, it is totally okay to edit them in Photoshop to make them
look better.
And they really expect you to do that because they don't want images that don't look, you
know, as good as they could be.
So they want you to edit them, upload in Camera Raw to get the best effect.
You can do that with your DSLR camera settings.
And then when you upload, all you need to have to upload to the sites is a very high
quality JPEG.
So you can just save your Camera Raw image as a JPEG, and then you're good to upload
that.
Of course, you'll need to keyword and all of those things, but we'll get into that in
just a moment.
Okay, so we've gotten this far.
I'm not going to go over in depth how to do a photo, because it's really different.
The editing is going to be different for every photo.
Okay, so I'm going to type submit.shutterstock.com and that is where you can sign up to be a
Shutterstock contributor.
Now this is going to be different than the regular Shutterstock where you buy.
This is a selling site.
So make sure you have 'submit' at the beginning of your website name.
And I'll bring you to this page.
And I'm going to go ahead and say 'Sign up now'.
And here's where we enter all the information.
And I'm just going to enter some fake stuff but enough to get me in.
Okay, I have to go verify my account.
It's just like any other account you sign up for.
All right, and here's the email.
And you'll have to click the 'verify', of course, and now we have to go through and
sign up.
Everything else, I'm just going to put a bunch of fake stuff in here.
Hopefully, they don't get too mad at me.
And then you'll have to upload your identification.
This can be your passport, driver's license, or just a state ID.
So I'm just going to choose a random file.
We'll pick one of these.
Okay, my identification has been successfully uploaded.
So I'll click 'Continue'.
And now we can upload images.
So just click that button.
This is just a pop up saying as a new contributor, you can submit up to 10 images.
And then once your first one goes through, you can submit as many as you want.
So it also talks about what to do if you have people or landmarks in your work.
You have to be careful about that.
You have to have releases for those.
And then if you're doing vectors, you have to put a JPEG with your EPS file.
And that's why we did that.
So I'll say 'got it'.
And we'll go ahead and upload our images... just going to grab all of them.
The EPS and JPEG have to have the exact same name.
So be very careful with that.
That might be why something is getting stuck.
I'm just going to grab everything and drop them here.
And it takes a little bit of time for them to load.
And you need to wait until the bar is all the way across everything... don't push 'next'
yet.
So depending on your internet speed, it might be something where you want to leave and come
back and see if they've uploaded.
For me, it takes a while.
Okay, it looks like everything has gone completely through.
So hit 'next.'
Okay, and now this part is where you can go ahead and actually submit things.
One thing about Shutterstock that makes it nice, you can hold SHIFT or CMD and select
different ones if they are going to have a really similar keyword.
So you have some keyword suggestions down here.
And these are looking pretty good, really.
So I'm going to add all of those and I'll also add trophy, award, medal, icon, ribbon.
So we have 19 out of 50.
You have 50 to fill out.
In my experience, the more the better as long as they're very relevant to the image.
So if you only have 20, like I do, 20 relevant words that match these images, only put 20.
Okay, and then we'll go up here to 'save', and then the suns I will...oh, wait...I'm
going to deselect everything here.
And then just select the suns.
I hold CMD to select two things.
Okay, and their suggestions here look pretty good, too.
I'm going to add sun, sunny, hot, bright, and sunshiny.
Okay, and that gives me 20.
And I think I'm fine with that.
Now you want to fill out category also.
So for this category, I think it's probably nature.
And I'll save that.
And then I'll deselect those, and then multi select and select all.
And I'm really ready to upload right now.
There's nothing else I need to do.
If you click More Options...if you've had these rejected in the past, you can leave
notes for your viewer, you can leave a case number and an illustration without a reference
previously submitted.
You can choose one of those.
If you have nudity or anything that's a little off color, you would definitely want to check
that, and then if you have releases, like model releases or architecture releases, you
would upload those there.
But since I do vectors, I hardly ever have releases.
Okay, and so I think I'm ready to go.
And I'll go ahead and hit 'submit'.
And it's asking me to review and these look good.
So I'll submit five.
Now, these will probably all get rejected because my ID that I uploaded wasn't real
and stuff like that.
So that's a good thing.
But you'll know probably within a week whether you pass their tests, and hopefully you'll
get on and you'll start making money.
If you watch this video and you actually uploaded something to Shutterstock, please let me know
if you're accepted or denied and why or if you're having any trouble with any part of
this, I would love to know in the comments section below.
Thanks, guys!!!