Yourself as Art
Instead of creating art you can actually be part of it. The Power of Self international contest is announcing an open call for entries for self portraits. The sponsors of the contest state:

“We cannot tell you what is or is not your self-portrait. A reflection of your own image would be an easy “yes”. But does your work fall outside those bounds? We want to see it.

“We are looking for exciting, engaging & innovative work that is an expression of your self. We are looking for your likeness as much as we are looking for your interpretation of self-portraiture.”
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What to Submit

• The contest accepts a variety of mediums such as fine art, painting, sculpting, drawing, print making, graphic design, glass, book art, performance, video art, street art, photography, illustration, and tattoo art.

• The entry fee is $10 per image. Contest entries may be submitted in the form of an online portfolio with a biography of the individual. For an example, click here.

• To view the entry form and submit your pieces click here.

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Awards

• The Grand Prize winner will be honored with an Art-Star reception in New York City, international exposure and a feature in 3rd Ward Magazine, plus the choice of free living accommodations for six months at The Edge - an upscale apartment complex in New York City or $7007 cash.

• The People’s Choice Award winner will have their entry published on dozens of networked websites plus $1,000 cash.

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Contest Deadline
The final date for entries is January 14, 2010.

Graphic Design Software
The standards in the graphic design and publishing industries are Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, InDesign, PageMaker, and Dreamweaver. These software tools are essential for many designers, artists, illustrators, and media professionals in producing content.

A quick tally of the cost of all these programs is staggering if you are on a limited budget. If you are a student or individual thinking about attending a graphic design college, you may want to experience some of these programs to see if you have the ability and talent to use the software. But then, the factor of high cost comes in once again.

The Alternatives
For students or perspective students investigating a career in graphic design or media, there is a free and legal alternative in using free design software. These programs can allow you to experience and get familiar with the process of using applications that are similar in nature to the “big guns” of design programs.

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free image authoring and photo retouching software program very similar to Photoshop in features and operation.

It supports the operating systems XP, Vista, Mac OS X, and Linux. GIMP has an active community which helps to improve the program through plugins and add-ons. GIMP is free of charge and is supported by donations from its users.

INKSCAPE is an “Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format,” according to the description found on Inkscape’s website.

Inkscape is a full featured editor that supports markers, clones, alpha bending, and other operations that allow for advanced graphics manipulation.

NVU pronounced “N-View” is a web authoring system that is similar in nature to FrontPage and Dreamweaver. It allows you to edit HTML pages.

NVU has a number of extensions and is community supported in its development. The developers of NVU say that creating web pages with their software is as easy as using a word processor.

SCRIBUS is an impressive professional desktop publishing program that is similar to PageMaker. It supports CMYK color, ICC color management, color separations, Spot Colors and PDF authoring.

Help Support the Developers and Their Work
These programs are freely available for download and are free of charge.

The quality of these applications is astonishing once you realize that the efforts behind these design programs have been fueled with voluntary time, resources, and research.

Donations to the developers of these applications will help them to continue to expand and improve their products. Don’t forget to show your appreciation by sending in your donation.

You may not be able to afford to buy the big name software design programs, but the ones listed here are pretty close to the mark. As you prepare to go to the graphic design school of your choice, these free applications may help you to understand the basics of software design tools.

If you produce lots of media or important files on your PC, you may have experienced the heartbreak of your computer crashing with a BSOD (blue screen of death), or seeing your computer hopelessly disabled.

Result: You lose important data, graphics, and images. You cry, “Never again!” and proceed to purchase a backup software program.

Backup Your Files
What is a backup imaging program?

The theory is that if your physical drive goes to that big hard drive pile in the sky, you can still restore your computer exactly the way it was by installing the back up image to a new or existing drive.

In theory, this is what is supposed to happen. Unfortunately, the majority of software imaging programs do not work or can actually harm your computer.

Peace of Mind Equals ShadowProtect Desktop Edition
Enter Storagecraft’s backup-disaster recovery program, ShadowProtect. This software is aptly named because it does just that; it shadows everything on your desktop computer or laptop, and protects your files.

ShadowProtect is an easy to use program and also one of the most full-featured imaging software programs on the market.

It is deceptively simple to use, but so powerful that you’ll have peace of mind the first time you use it. A full listing of its benefits can be found by clicking here.

Installation
You can purchase the program by downloading or buying the DVD version.

The DVD version acts as a recovery disc, while downloading the program allows you to burn a recovery disc.

The recovery disc allows you to start your computer independently of your boot up hard drive, which means even if your computer is dead, the disc allows you to bring it to life again and run the recovery program.

A free 30-day trial of this program is fully functional except for the lack of the recovery disc. During the trial period you can buy the program and fully activate it.

Into the Abyss
We made the ultimate sacrifice to test the imaging properties of ShadowProtect. We overwrote our programs partition and essentially wiped it clean.

Many of the program files were system dependent. Prior to wiping out the drive, we made an image of the disk on a USB external hard drive.

We used the restore function through the recovery disc,  and a couple of minutes later the partition was fully restored.

(But one big word of caution: make certain you read the manual and understand how to use this program to avoid accidentally overwriting drives you don’t want to.)

We clicked on several shortcut links that led to our program partitions and each one worked flawlessly without receiving the “this program cannot be found or has moved…” error message.

You have the option of backing up entire disks or only certain volumes/partitions. ShadowProtect is fully configurable and can run silently in the background making incremental or differential backups of your hard drives even while you are working on your computer.

There are online tutorials and user guides on Storagecraft’s website and these are very helpful, if not somewhat technical in nature.

ShadowProtect: A David Among The Goliaths
There are big software companies that sell well known backup programs, but ShadowProtect out performs them all and does exactly what it promises to do.

Storagecraft may be a small company compared to the big dogs, but it is a giant as far as what it does.

Laura Shafer, Director of Public Relations at Storagecraft said:

“…with a lot of word-of-mouth and grassroots support, ShadowProtect has really taken off.

“We’ve especially had a lot of support from resellers and small to medium sized businesses because ShadowProtect is easy to use, extremely reliable and affordable.”

ShadowProtect is an excellent program and will pay for itself dozens of times over by giving you peace of mind even after a serious crash on your computer.

We give ShadowProtect our highest rating: 5 out of 5 pencils.

Click here to find out more about ShadowProtect.

Pronounced “Paint DOT Net, this free image and photo editor is the brainchild of Rick Brewster. Paint.net started out as an undergraduate senior design project guided by Microsoft to be offered as a free replacement for its Windows paint program. But the project took on a life of its own and has advanced to a level where it compares very favorably with some of today’s leading photo/image editors.

Paint.net is a very user-friendly and powerful program that incorporates plugins you’d expect to see only from expensive software kits. Paint.net offers photo and image manipulation through gamma adjustments, color correction filters, special effects filters, alpha channels for overlays, paintbrush, magic wand functions, layering, and other plugins. Paint.net also has an avid user community that contributes add-ons on a consistent basis for the program. These accessories are downloadable through its official website.

While Paint.net isn’t a full-blown image editor when compared to high-end packages, it manages to incorporate many of the features that are most useful for graphic designers, photographers, and anyone who needs an easy to use program to quickly and efficiently edit photos or images. The program is constantly being revised to improve its performance, and it has gained a strong reputation as a solid graphics program.

If you are a college student, you may find that Paint.net bridges the gap between expensive photo editing programs and low end programs that fall short of usefulness and depth. The amazing thing about Paint.net is that it is not only free of charge, (contributions are always welcome, however, to help Paint.net development continue), but offers a great deal of functionality and features that all levels of designers, pro or amateur, can take advantage of.

Smith Micro Software, Inc. Consumer Group today announced the availability of GroBoto, a fun and easy-to-use software program that lets artists generate fresh and innovative 3D images and animations in minutes.

Available for PC and Mac users, GroBoto provides a set of powerful and professional-quality 3D modeling, imaging and animation tools to create imaginative images and animations without the hassle of long 3D render times. GroBoto can be used with 2D graphics tools for unique webpages, fliers, posters and illustrations and with 3D tools to build whimsical scenes and objects.

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Smith Micro Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMSI) Consumer Group today announced the immediate availability of Poser 7.04, the latest update to its popular 3D character and animation solution. Poser enables creative professionals, graphic artists and hobbyists to create art, video and animation optimized for models that depict the human figure in three-dimensional forms. The update offers performance and feature enhancements including improvements in rendering, the ability to better manage characters’ speech and walking characteristics, and enhanced artistic control in creating hair, faces, material and much more.

“This latest Poser service release stands as a firm commitment to Smith Micro’s confidence in the Poser product line and underscores the fact that we take end-user satisfaction and ongoing support very seriously,” said Steve Cooper, Product Marketing Manager, Graphics Solutions for Smith Micro Software. “Poser 7 already provides the easiest way to design human forms in 3D for users of any experience level. Moving forward we will continue to offer our customers timely and cutting-edge advancements in the latest 3D design technology including many additions to our comprehensive library of content which delivers fast, simple and nearly limitless possibilities in character and scene development.”
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