The Graphic Mac

From March 1 through April 30, 2010, For Dummies invites customers to join its annual “Dummies Month” celebration, offering a $5 mail-in rebate with a purchase of any For Dummies book or Audio Set (with the price of $6.99 or more).

Along with the rebate, Dummies.com is hosting a special sweepstakes; from March 1 through April 30, visitors can enter for a chance to win an Apple iPad loaded with For Dummies Apps.

If nothing else, you can visit the Snow Leopard for Dummies section to read some helpful tips for Apple’s latest operating system.

Ever find yourself trying to remember the keyboard shortcut for a funky symbol like ‡ (dagger) or ∞ (infinity), or perhaps the elusive ¡ or ¿ for Spanish text? There are a ton of special characters included in many fonts that you can use if you could only remember the keyboard shortcut to access them.

Download the special symbols keyboard shortcut chart and print it out to keep near your computer for quick reference. The 600k PDF chart is 5 x 7 inches in size.

There are no set rules to arrive at a successful portfolio, but here are some sure-fire ways to set it on the right path. These tips apply mostly to a Web-based portfolio, but most also apply to a print version as well.
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Alien Skin Software today announces the immediate start of a store-wide sale to benefit Haiti. From now through February 28th, 2010, everything in the Web store is 20% off. 10% of Alien Skin Software’s profits for the entire month of February (not just from the sale) will be also be donated to Haiti through the Red Cross and the Community Coalition for Haiti. This is on top of significant donations already made by the company and individual employees.

“I am confident that the sale will generate a significant donation to Haiti relief funds,” said Jeff Butterworth, CEO of Alien Skin Software. “I also encourage everyone to donate blood. There is no substitute for this precious resource. I do it for the free cookies and bright bandage to show off around the office!”

Alien Skin, maker of Eye Candy – perhaps one of the most popular filter sets for Photoshop of all time, has been one of my favorite design-related software makes for many years. In particular, I LOVE Blow Up 2 for enlarging images to huge sizes, and Bokeh for creating awesome focus and depth-of-field effects with your photos.

If you’ve had a few freelance logo design jobs in the past, you’ve no doubt accumulated a few dozen versions that never made the client cut. You generally have two options. You can keep the unused logo designs stored on your hard drive, just in case some future client needs something similar, or you can try to sell the as is right now.

WebMediaBrands, the company who brings you such popular sites such as Ads of the World, AgencySpy, CreativeBits, and LiquidTreat, have launched a new site which offers designers the ability to sell those unused logos littering your hard drive.
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I’ve found the following Web sites to be a fantastic resource for advice, resources, and in one case, a little light-hearted laugh on a tough day with clients. FreelanceSwitch – FreelanceSwitch is a community of expert freelancers from around the world contributing to a blog which covers a vast array of topics about life as a freelancer. AIGA – Founded in 1914, AIGA remains the oldest and largest professional membership organization for design. Guerrilla Freelancing – Provides straight, to the point advice and tips for the guerrilla freelancer. Freelance Folder – A community for all types of freelancers, entrepreneurs, work-at-home business owners, and web-workers. Smashing Magazine – Along with all the great resources and inspiration, Smashing Magazine offers a fantastic job board. Fuel Your Creativity – The place to turn to when you’re having one of your “I’m-going-to-implode-if-I-don’t-get-an-idea-soon” moments. Fuel Your Writing – An offspring of the original Fuel Your Creativity. Being A Starving Artist Sucks – Some great advice for freelancers, wrapped inside a big dose of humor. If you have another great site for freelancers, feel free to share in the comments.

These Photoshop features found in an Adobe Labs video look just absolutely sick, and I can’t wait for CS5 to be released – which is rumored to be around April of 2010.

Adobe has released Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone application, allowing users a convenient way to edit photos, apply effects and share images in – all with the flick of a finger. Integration with Adobe’s free Photoshop.com accounts enables photo sharing and data back-up, saving valuable space on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone provides users a simple way to view photos with full-screen previews and edit images with gesture-based editing. You can transform your photos with basic editing tools like crop, rotate and flip; as well as adjust color with saturation and tint tools, enhance exposure and vibrancy and convert images to black and white.

The app also offers eye-catching special effects. The Sketch tool helps photos look like drawings, and Soft Focus can give photos a subtle blur for artistic effect. With a single click, you can also apply dramatic changes to the look and feel of your photos with effects such as Warm Vintage, Vignette and Pop. Edits or changes can be undone or redone so you can experiment without the worry of losing the original photo. The Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone application is available as a free download from Apple’s App Store on iPhone and iPod touch, or by clicking here. The application is available in the U.S. and Canada only. While you’re certainly not going to use an iPhone for anything remotely resembling heavy-duty image editing, it’s nice to see Adobe recognize a market, and move quickly to fill the need. Quite frankly, I’m kind of surprised Apple didn’t build-in more of these types of features. The only thing that irks me about this is that iPod Touch users don’t have the benefit of having a camera to really take advantage of the features Adobe offers with this app.