Anaheim Artist Puts Human Touch in His Newsletter for Mac PCs : Publishing: It’s chatty, non-technical and designed for graphics professionals who use Apple computers.

As a boy, Fritz Richard was fascinated with computers. But that took a back seat to his real passion: artwork.

And when he become a graphic artist, the two interests came together. His employer bought a Macintosh computer, and work that once took hours by hand now could be done in minutes.

Richard became so proficient that he was soon showing other graphic artists how to manipulate the Macintosh to make their creative ideas come to life. Now he has made a business out of it.

He founded MacArtist, a bimonthly newsletter based in Anaheim that is targeted at graphics artists using the Apple Computer’s popular Macintosh. The first issue came out in February, and Richard said he has 500 subscribers, at $48 a year.

More advertising agencies, typesetting houses and commercial lithographers are turning to computer-generated processes as prices become more affordable. “It’s a real revolution in the whole graphic arts industry and it’s going on now,” Richard said.

“Before, you could only do four-color publication in computers using systems costing about $1 million,” he said. “Right now, it has just became more practical to do four-color publication. My system, a Mac II plus a printer, cost a total of only $10,000.”

MacArtist is chatty and informative. One recent article explained how an artist can transfer a photographic image to a computer. Another told artists how to create their own style of lettering or even paint pastoral scenes on their screen that mimic watercolor, pastel and oil brush effects.

“I find it useful and applicable to my work,” said Shellie Stricklin, a subscriber and owner of Computer Work Center, a computer rental service in Irvine. “It’s very easy to read, nicely laid out on good quality paper, and even though it’s just a little under 20 pages, it’s designed like a magazine.”

Another subscriber said that although other Mac newsletters stress technical things, MacArtist appeals to the human side and has a “refreshing personality” of its own.

As the latest Mac newsletter in the market, MacArtist has competitors. The largest is Step-By-Step Electronics Design of Peoria, Ill., with 10,000 subscribers. Others include Before & After: How to Design Cool Stuff, based in Sacramento, and the Page, a black-and-white newsletter out of Chicago.

John McWade, publisher of Before & After, was skeptical about whether MacArtist could make inroads. “He (Richard) is coming late to the market and he has got a weak product. It’s generally a chit-chat, and you don’t get anything new, or much out of it.”

Despite the growing number of Mac publishers in the market, Richard said he still sees a craving among graphic artists to understand their machines. He believes that his artistic background and computer expertise gives him an edge over other publishers in that he can recognize trends in artwork and understands artists better.