Here’s a list of 30 cheat sheets (most of them printable) for popular graphic design programs, as well as printable photography-related sheets to help when shooting photos.

These cheat sheets contain reference cards for tools, keyboard shortcuts and other important commands to help speed up your work.

Note: Links with ‘(PDF)’ beside them indicate that the link goes directly to the PDF file itself.

Fireworks

• Fireworks CS3 For Mac OS X
• Fireworks CS3 For Windows
• Fireworks MX (Mac)
• Fireworks MX (Windows)

Photoshop

• Adobe Photoshop CS4 Help (PDF)
• Photoshop Secret Shortcuts (WebDesignerWall)
• General Photoshop Tool Shortcuts (With a video ‘manual’)
• Photoshop CS4 (Mac) (PDF)
• Photoshop CS4 (Windows) (PDF)
• Photoshop CS3 For Mac
• Photoshop CS3 For Windows
• Photoshop CS2 Keyboard Shortcuts For Mac
• Photoshop CS2 Keyboard Shortcuts For Windows

Illustrator

• Illustrator Shortcuts (WebDesignerWall)
• Illustrator CS4 Shortcuts (Mac)
• Illustrator CS4 Shortcuts (Windows)
• Illustrator CS

InDesign

• InDesign CS4 Keyboard Shortcuts (Mac)
• InDesign CS4 Keyboard Shortcuts (Windows)
• InDesign Cheat Sheet (PDF)
• InDesign CS

Photography

• Black and White Cheat Sheet For Photoshop (Helps you convert color photos to black and white)
• Portrait Lighting Cheat Sheet (Helps you set up lighting for portraits)
• Reflector Card Cheat Sheet (Shows color bounce and effects of different covers on a 5-in-1 reflector)
• Light Falloff Cheat Sheet (Shows the effects of a large light source will have on light fall off)

Fonts and Typography

• VisiBone Font Cards
• Periodic Table of Typefaces

Other Cheat Sheets

• GIMP Quick Reference Card (PDF)
• GIMP Keyboard Shortcuts (PDF)
• Color Hexagon (GIF)

What cheat sheets did I miss? Share your links in the comments below.

Remember the mottoes you learned when you were a kid: “Winners don’t do drugs”, and “Cheaters never win”?

Well, a little cheating never hurt anyone… when it comes to using cheat sheets, that is.

TechPosters has a colossal collection of cheat sheets for just about every program, coding language or OS that uses code or keyboard shortcuts.

Since there’s such a huge list of cheat sheets, let’s look at some of the useful cheat sheets for web designers.

HTML

• HTML 5 Quick Reference Guide
• HTML 5 Cheat Sheet
• XHTML Cheat Sheet v 1.03
• XHTML 1.1 and HTML 4.01 Extensible Hypertext Markup Language
• HTML Help Sheet (HTML 4 and XHTML)
• Form Tags
• Character Entity References in XHTML 1.0 and HTML 4
• HTML – Special Entity Codes
• HTML Common Tags

Note: If you’re looking for more resources for UTF-8 special entities, check out my earlier post, Most Used XHTML Character Entities.

CSS

• CSS3 Quick Reference Guide
• Core CSS Part 1 (by Molly E Holzschlag and published by DZone), Part 2, and Part 3
• CSS Properties
• CSS2 Cascading Style Sheets
• CSS Shorthand Guide
• CSS Shorthand Cheat Sheet by Example
• CSS Property Index
• CSS Cheat Sheet v2
• CSS2 Quick Reference Guide
• RGB Colour Codes

jQuery

• jQuery Selectors (DZone)
• jTouch – jQuery Cheat Sheets For iPods and iPhones
• jQuery 1.2 Cheat Sheet 2
• jQuery 1.2

There are a ton of other cheat sheets for javascript in general, as well as other frameworks like EXT JS, Prototype and an entire category for Mootools.

These can be found in the general Javascript Cheat Sheet category.

PHP

• PHP Cheat Sheet (DZone)
• Symfony PHP5 Framework – Admin Generator Cheat Sheet

Plus Many, Many More

There are also tons of other web design cheat sheets for MySQL, ASP.NET, Flash, Silverlight, XML and more.

Another nice thing about the TechPosters site is that you can subscribe to RSS feeds for each category and know when new cheat sheets are added.

Share

Do you use any great cheat sheets for web design that are not included here? Where do you get your cheat sheets from?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Many of the fonts are free and can be used in both personal and commercial projects, but as always, check the license of each font first.

Individual Retro Fonts

B-Movie

Make your own ‘classic’ movie poster with this dramatic family of retro fonts.

Surrounding__

A sans-serif font that would be great for signs or posters.

Hitchcock

A fantastic retro movie font from the great Saul Bass/Alfred Hitchcock movie posters.

Blackout

A unique but very readable open source sans-serif font. Also available for web embedding via @font-face (CSS 3).

Chunk

Thanks to the League of Moveable Type for pointing out this open source slab serif font (as well as Blackout). Also available to embed via @font-face.

Plaza

The art deco font used (or really close to it) in ITV’s Poirot television series of the ’80s and ’90s during the opening credits / title sequence.

Mayberry Pro Semi Bold

A very nice free sans-serif typeface from Ascender Fonts.

Comfortaa

An art deco / sans-serif font that also looks very clean and modern.

Roadgeek 2005

A clean, subtly-retro font family inspired by the lettering on US interstate and road signs.

Retro Font Resources

You can find tons more retro and vintage fonts on the web. To get you started, here are a few places you might try.

Tack-O-Rama

A huge collection of 757 free retro fonts, as well as retro clipart, photos and more.

B-Movie Poster Fonts (MyFonts.com)

Did you like the B-Movie fonts? My Fonts has a whole category dedicated to old movie poster fonts.

FontDiner.com

Font Diner has some fun and unique retro fonts. Makes me want to go and grab a ‘burger at a roadside diner!

Chank.com

A must-stop site for funky, fresh, fun retro and vintage fonts.

RotoDesign.com

Find instantly classic retro fonts and even some dingbats on Rotodesign’s site. (PS: I want me some x-ray glasses)

Fontoville.com

Fontoville’s got a fun collection of retro typefaces that work equally well for surf posters or cartoons and illustrations (think Dexter’s Laboratory).

GirlsWhoWearsGlasses.com

A diverse collection of classic clipart and fonts.

Die Typonauten (MyFonts.com)

A type foundry specializing in retro and vintage fonts.

Retro Fonts (FFonts.net)

Some nice retro fonts from the newly launched FFonts.net site.

DaFont.com

A whole section dedicated to classic fonts at DaFont.

15 Beautiful and Free Urban & Retro Fonts (Web Resources Depot)

Web Resources Depot’s recently featured blog post of free urban and retro fonts.

Retro Category on SearchFreeFonts.com

Some funky and psychedelic fonts at SearchFreeFonts.com.

Prop-A-Ganda.com

Large collection of advertising and product fonts from the Prop-A-Ganda font foundry.

Retro Fonts (1001FreeFonts.com)

1001FreeFonts.com has an entire category of retro-style fonts.

Retro Fonts (UrbanFonts.com)

UrbanFonts.com’s retro font category has classic ’50s, ’60s and ’70s fonts, as well as quite a few art deco typefaces.

1001 Fonts

A wide variety of vintage fonts.

Free Retro Fonts (AndyNortnik.com)

Some fun and funky vintage fonts and clipart.

High Resolution Textures

Living up to its name, High Resolution Textures offers jumbo-sized free textures in a number of categories. There are also tutorials; offering tips on creating and photographing textures yourself.

Lost and Taken

The Lost and Taken blog features posts targeted on specific types of textures–from vintage wallpaper to tape to book covers and more.

Textures on BittBox

BittBox has been providing free textures for quite a while, so there’s quite a selection to choose from.

CG Textures

CG Textures boasts itself as the world’s larges free texture site. It contains 34 categories of textures, including some unique textures: animals, bones, x-rays and ink.

CG Textures also contains a nice collection of texture tutorials.

Mayang’s Free Texture Library

If you’re looking for unique textures that won’t be found anywhere else,  Mayang’s Free Texture Library is a good place to start. All the textures on the site were either photographed or created by site owners William Smith and Mayang Murni Adnin.

Wood Textures at defcon-x.de Textures

Defcon-x.de has an impressive collection of free wood and wood grain textures scanned at 720 DPI.

TextureVault.net

TextureVault has an insane number of royalty-free textures in 19 main categories. While larger sizes must be purchased, the medium quality/sized textures are available as free downloads.

Textures at Psdtuts+

Psdtuts+ has released and collected a nice bunch of textures and texture packs for your downloading pleasure.

Other Quality Textures

• 20 High-Resolution Denim Textures (Six Revisions)
• Fabric Texture Pack (Psdtuts+)
• Free High Resolution Wood Textures (Six Revisions)
• 50 Free Fabric Textures (DesignM.ag)
• Free High Res Rough Textures (Six Revisions)

OpenX 2.8–the newest stable release of the open source ad server has just been released. If you haven’t heard of OpenX before, check out the OpenX site to learn more.

With the new version of OpenX, I’m releasing an update to our free icon set (version 2.0) for the OpenX 2.8 admin.

221 Reworked Admin Icons

The release of OpenX 2.8, which brings a lot of performance, functionality and visual changes also includes a lot of new icons and images in the admin section.

Since I was going to add new icons to the set anyway to make it compatible with OpenX 2.8, I decided to rework the entire set. This version moves away from the Silk-based icons used in v1.0 to icons based on the Fugue icon set.

That ended up being 221 newly reworked icons for this set.

What Does This Icon Set Do?

The EsDev OpenX Admin Icon Set (EDOA) is a drop-in replacement for about 98% the images and icons used in the default OpenX 2.8 admin section.

It basically helps the admin section look more professional, and the icons match the rest of the user interface better than do the default icons.

Who Is This Icon Set For?

The EDOA icon set is for anyone running a self-hosted (as opposed to the hosted version on OpenX.org) version of OpenX; version 2.8 and above.

How Do I Use This Icon Set?

To install the new admin icons:

1. Make a backup of your OpenX images folder (and sub folders) located at: [openx-directory]/www/admin/assets/images/
2. Extract the EsDev-OpenX-Admin-Pro-Icons-v2.0 ZIP to your harddrive
3. Copy the images folder (and sub folders) to [openx-directory]/www/admin/assets/images/ — thus replacing the entire images directory (and sub directories)
4. Clear your browser cache and log into the OpenX admin to see the new icons in use

License and Use

EsDev OpenX Admin Icon Set v2.0 is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Share Alike license.

Based on a work at OpenX.org and the Fugue Icon Set, Silk, Tango and the Crystal Project icon sets.

Linking Info

All we ask is that you don’t redistribute the zip file on any other site, but rather link to this post.

When providing a link, do not link directly to the icon set–instead, link to this post:
http://esdev.net/free-openx-admin-icon-set-v20/

Show Your Appreciation

If you use this icon set and enjoy it, show your appreciation by giving a small donation. Any amount is appreciated.

I want to thank John Linden, CTO of OpenX for giving me a heads up about the upcoming release of OpenX 2.8 and the encouragment to update the icon set.

With tshirt sites like Threadless, Oddica and others that let designers submit their own designs, I know there are a lot of you out there that are looking to experiment with tshirt design.

Here’s a list of over 10 free downloadable tshirt and clothing templates in Photoshop (PSD) and Illustrator (AI) formats.

DeviantART

Designers can find a lot of useful stuff on DeviantART. Here are a few clothing templates.

Note: Be sure to check licenses and terms of use on the templates below.

Photoshop T-Shirt Template (DeviantArt)

GoSco from DeviantART has released a realistic-looking Photoshop tshirt template (PSD format).

Note: GoSco released this template under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.

Hoodie Template

Tee Shirt Vector Template

Tshirt templates for men and women in both Illustrator and Photoshop formats.

Tshirt Model by ~NX57

Photoshop vector tshirt template for both front and back.

Tshirt Vector Template

Photoshop and Illustrator tshirt templates.

Customizable T-shirt Template

Nice, simple tshirt templates (front and back) that would be good for a e-commerce/catalog site.

Idee Montabili

A couple weeks ago, I featured Idee Montabili, an Italian website that offers free packaging and box templates. Idee Montabili also has some great free tshirt and clothing templates that you can download from their site in PDF format.

Visit Idee Montabili

Adobe Illustrator T-Shirt Template

Adobe’s Illustrator Exchange community has a free tshirt template (front and back) for Adobe Illustrator.

The template is about 25% of the actual size and comes with both front and back templates.

Visit Adobe Illustrator Exchange–T-Shirt Template

ColorOverload.com

Color Overload has a free blank tshirt template–available in 40 colors!

GoMedia Photorealistic T-Shirt Templates

GoMedia has 7 photorealistic tshirt templates that, while not free, could tempt you into forking over a little green. These are about the nicest shirt templates I’ve seen.

These sets include tshirts (men’s and women’s), hoodies, sleeved shirts.

Have you ever sent someone a unique gift, but then put it into a boring square/rectangular box?

Never again!

Stop being a victim of BBS (Boring Box Syndrome)—download a free vector packaging / box template and make your own specialty box.

Idee Montabili

Idee Montabili contains 36 free vector packaging templates available in EPS and PDF formats.

Just Like When You Were a Kid

Remember all those rockets and things you used to cut out of the back of cereal boxes and put together when you were a kid (insert tab A into slot B)?

Well, these vector templates are the same basic concept—only cooler.

Download the template, print it out, use it w/ some posterboard or thin cardboard and fold it to assemble your box.

Unlike the cereal box toys you use to put together, you might actually want to show these off when you’re done.

Imagine making your own:

• Happy Meal-type box
• Beer bottle carrier
• Heart-Shaped box
• A box shaped like a house
• Awesome cake box
• Wine package
• Shopping bag
• etc.

The Idee Montabili site is available in different languages as well:

• Italian
• English
• Spanish
• French

Go Have Some Fun!

What’re you waiting for? Go download some free vector box templates, print them out and have some fun!

Previously, I wrote a post about Mozy—a fantastic online backup service for Windows and Mac users. Currently, they’re running a promotion: Sign up for their free plan and start using Mozy before Dec 1, and get 2.5GB of storage—that’s an extra 512MB of space free.

If you haven’t already, you’ve only got about 5 days left (midnight Sunday) to get your extra 512MB. After Sunday, you can still use the link above to get extra storage space, but you’ll only get an extra 256MB.

Earlier I wrote a post showcasing over 12 mega icon sets for designers. Most of those icon sets had over 100 icons per set.

Now I want to touch on 10 other icon sets from DryIcons — one of the sites featured in the previous post. These sets may not have as many icons in them as the others, but they are very useful and unique.

The icon sets below come in 3 formats for Windows, Linux and Macs: ICO, PNG and ICN.

Ruby Extended Icon Set

The Ruby Extended icon set probably should have been included in the earlier post, but I honestly missed it the first time around. The set includes 238 red and white, beautifully polished icons. There is also another multimedia extension set of 13 icons in the same style.

The icons include: hardware, databases, media controls, e-commerce, graphs and more. This is a fantastic icon set if you’re working with a specific color scheme.

Coquette

Coquette is a fun icon set with rounded curves and bright, bold colors. It includes 50 icons — symbols, email, chat and other icons that would be good for general site or blog design.

Coquette Part 2

Coquette Part 2 contains 50 more icons in the same style as the original Coquette set. This set is geared more toward e-commerce icons, with icons for shopping carts, user actions, monetary symbols and more.

Balloonica

If you’re looking for a unique icon set, Balloonica is for you. The monochrome 80 icon set includes e-commerce and various symbols inside speech balloons.

Grunge Icons

If you want some icons that are grungy, rough and dented-in, here are 3 icon sets for you: Distortion, Grungy Asphalt and Olive Grungy.

Distortion icons look like what might happen if you drop-kicked your iPhone a few times, with 68 red rounded corners, but all beaten, bruised and chipped.

Grungy Asphalt and Olive Grungy icon sets feature 56 round icons.

Sticker Icons

If you’re a sucker for stickers, you’ll love the following 2 icon sets.

Social Icons

If the last sets were a bit rough for your tastes, the Socialize set will brighten your day. They include icons for StumbleUpon, Technorati, Digg, Delicious, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Flickr, Furl, YouTube, Yahoo! and RSS.

Stickers

These Stickers icons remind me of the fat, puffy stickers that you just want to poke. The only thing missing is the googly eyes that move when you shake them. The set includes basic internet and monetary symbols in black and white.

License

All the DryIcon icon sets listed above are released under 3 different licenses: free, commercial and extended use. Please read the differences in licenses on their site before using them in any of your projects.

OpenX (formerly OpenAds) is a powerful open source ad publishing system that you can install and run on your website. With OpenX, you can serve all kinds of advertisements on your site: Google, Yahoo! Microsoft Ads, etc—even your own in-house ads.

UPDATE: A new version of the OpenX Admin Icon Set (v2.0) has been released. Please use this updated version instead if you’re running OpenX 2.8 and up.

The OpenX administration in the latest version (2.6.1 2.6) is pretty nicely laid out—all except the icons. Being a graphic designer, the icons detract slightly from the look and feel of the admin section for me and look like they’ve been cobbled on from previous versions.

For one of my projects, I decided to go through and replace some of the OpenX admin icons with icons from the, by now, practically standard Silk icon set. I liked how it turned out, so I decided to release the results for download.

OpenX Admin Icon Set v1.0

Installation

To install new admin icons:

1. Make a backup of the images folder (and sub folders) located at: [openx-directory]/www/admin/assets/images/
2. Copy the contents of OpenX Admin Icon Set v1.0 zip to [openx-directory]/www/admin/assets/images/ — thus replacing the images folder (and subfolders)

Optional: You can replace the OpenX logo that appears at the top left of the admin section with your own logo by replacing the image named logo-wtag.png inside the images/ directory. The dimensions should be 170×56.

License

OpenX Admin Icon Set v1.0 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
Based on work at OpenX.org and the Silk icon set.

As far as attribution goes, if you use the icon set you don’t have to put a link on your site, but an email of thanks or a comment would be appreciated.

Note: If you want to share this, please do not link to the file directly—link to this post. Do not place this file on another site for direct download.