Have you ever wanted an easy way to visualize a headline in many different fonts at the same time to see which one you like better?

You need to check out a utility called the Font Thing.

Despite its strange name, The Font Thing does one thing incredibly well. It lets you organize all your TrueType fonts (Windows only - sorry Apple) into collections based on font type. For example, I’ve group all my fonts as:

• San Serif
• Modern
• Script
• Stereotypes (funny fonts)
• Symbols
• Times

Now, whenever I want to compare the look of a headline in say, Avant Garde versus Futura, I click the Collections tab on the upper left, click Modern, type my headline on the right, and click the Multiple tab to see the headline in both (or all) of the selected fonts.

When I need to mix text and images in Photoshop, the Font Thing is always open in the background (if you don’t want to jump back and forth, just use it to print out all your similar fonts on the same page). Give it a try, and see if it doesn’t become one of your most valuable utilties.

This is your perfect opportunity to show off your best prints, to update your studio, to send a gift to a valued customer or friend, or to sell some to a new client! Don’t miss out on this great pricing before it ends September 17th.

To take advantage of these prices, you must enter either of the following promo codes in your order:

• Deluxe Prints: PROMO2030del
• Econo Prints: PROMO2030eco

David over at The News in Print has compiled a list of 21 free and paid alternatives to Adobe Photoshop. It is a good list, although it is still missing some of the alternatives like Picassa, openCanvas, ArtWeaver, ArtRage, Alias Sketchbook, Corel Painter, Expression Studio, Xara Extreme and the perennial favorite, Photoshop Express.

Which begs the question: with so many alternatives to Photoshop available, why would anyone pay the $500+ and continual upgrade fees to use Photoshop? Here are the bottom-line reasons:

• It is the industry standard. I can send a graphics designer a layered PSD file and 99% of the time no additional instructions are required
• Support includes thousands of books, videos, tutorials, brushes and scripts.
• You can ask any pro graphics designer or photographer how to accomplish a task and they will be able to show you on either of your computers
• One common file format for both PC and Mac

But perhaps the most important reason is that if you’re a professional photographer, you should be using professional tools. In the same way that you wouldn’t use a no-name consumer camera to photograph a wedding, you shouldn’t use an image editing program that hasn’t been tested by thousands of pros like yourself.

Having a high-powered PC or Mac that boots up the latest version of Photoshop (that you know how to use) shows your clients, your staff, your peers (and even yourself) that you are a professional deserving of professional prices for their services.

With the huge growth in high-speed Internet connections, there are now virtually thousands of free on-line tutorials to teach Photoshop. After having reviewed several of them, below are some recommendations:

-If you are brand new to Photoshop, you should start with a class that starts with the basics like menu options and keyboard shortcuts and builds step-by-step into using Photoshop for everyday tasks. A good example of this training can be found at www.lynda.com. They have hundreds of Photoshop training videos broken into 5-7 minute downloads. Many of the basic videos are free - if you want to see videos that are more advanced, a membership ($25 per month) is required.

-A slightly more expensive alternative is to use Adobe’s official online training at adobe.elementk.com. For $129 you get a year’s worth of access to over 30 courses in Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and GoLive. Adobe has partnered with ElementK (the top supplier of online education to Fortune 500 companies) to produce these videos, so you can be assured of their quality.

-If you already know your way around Photoshop and are looking for a specific advanced technique, go to www.tutorialized.com or www.pslover.com. Both of these sites are collections of thousands of free tutorials submitted by Photoshop professionals. These sites assume you have a good working knowledge of Photoshop and are just looking for a “trick” to accomplish a specific special effect.

UPDATE: Siyab over at listfied.com created a list of 75+ advanced techniques for Adobe PhotoShop and Adobe Illustrator. Check them out. If their is anything here you’ve always wanted to do, click on the technique an in 5 minutes you’ll have a new skill.

Adobe recently introduced PhotoShop Express, an on-line image-editing program. PhotoShop Express is designed to compete with Google’s Picassa and Shutterfly’s Picnik: two free, yet powerful image-editing programs used by millions of beginning photographers in the consumer market. Since young photographers grow up to become professional photographers, PhotoShop needed a product like Express to maintain relevancy to the next generation.

The PhotoShop Express beta is also a test to see if a single browser-based program could replace both PhotoShop CS3 and the $99 Elements. The plan would be to offer basic photo-editing for free, then encourage users to purchase a subscription to enable premium features. Many future programs (including the next versions of Microsoft Vista and Office) are slated to be totally browser-based. Adobe must certainly be considering this option too as it develops CS4, CS5, and CS6.

Here’s the question: will PhotoShop Express (and the subscription-based model) work for professional photographers? On the one hand, I like the idea of only paying for the functionality I need. On the other hand, I like holding the program CD in my hand. With the CD, I can postpone purchasing the latest upgrade until I’ve got the free time to learn the new features and where they are on the new menus. I don’t want Adobe forcing me to update in the middle of an important project.

It will be interesting to see how the software as a subscription model plays out. I’m willing to keep an open mind, but my gut reaction is that I’m not going to be happy about it.