2008
Bryan Bedell at Jewelboxing on The Art of Disc Labelling
With DiscLabel 5.2.x and Disc Cover 2.x being released, we decided it was a good moment to review these two applications and simultaneously ask an objective designer who has a lot of know-how in disc labelling, what he thinks of these applications, the market, and what…
Flux Web Design With a Twist
The Escapers were founded in 2007, in London. Their first product is called Flux, and it is aimed at web designers who don’t want to use Dreamweaver CS3 for whatever reason. Perhaps you don’t have a need for Dreamweaver’s integration with the rest of Creative Suite 3, or you just…
Advisory Report: ColorMunki Design vs. Eye-One Pro Design
The objective of this analysis is to inform about the differences between X-Rite / Pantone’s professional prepress colour management system, the Eye-One Pro with software, and the new ColorMunki Design. In order to compare systems that resemble each other as closely as possible, the Eye-One Pro Design package deal was…
iCalamus Lightweight Layout Design
How would you like it if a developer created an application that could compete with QuarkXPress 7 and InDesign CS3? And all for 129 Euros? I bet you would be running to the store to be the first to buy that software. Well, I have bad news for you, iCalamus…
DrawIt 3.x A Replacement for Adobe Illustrator?
DrawIt is a vector and bitmap program that relies heavily on Mac OS X’s built-in effects and graphic capabilities. For a moment, I thought DrawIt would be a perfect replacement for Adobe Illustrator, but after having reviewed the product, I don’t think you should throw away your copy of Illustrator…
Jobo GigaVu Extreme
The GigaVu Extreme is a hybrid device that allows you to view photos downloaded into the device straight from a CompactFlash or SD memory card, play videos (MPEG-2 or MPEG-4), or listen to music (MP3). Photos which have been enhanced in-camera with voice annotations, can be viewed and listened to…
Graphic Designers, What Must They Know
I keep hearing those complaints of prepress people about graphic designers not bothering to check their layout documents for errors that will pop up when printing the file. Colour space problems are always among those topics raised, but font problems and line thickness, the use of gradients, transparency, etc. are…
ColorMunki Design System
X-Rite and Pantone jointly announced and released a new colour management / colour measurement system with some innovative features. Two versions were released: ColorMunki Design and ColorMunki Photo. Pantone sent me one of the first ColorMunki Design systems available. I’ll receive a ColorMunki Photo later on. The differences between the…
Groboto, A 3D System for Artists
Groboto is a 3D system with a twist. Groboto can mean “Grow a Bot”, or it could mean “grow your 3D object using robots”. I guess it’s the latter, as Groboto is a system that enables you to create complex 3D art by letting the software do all the hard…
Scriba XML, Cross-Media Publishing
Publishing Connections Incorporated is better known in the industry by its acronym: PCI. PCI is a privately held company which has been active in publishing for fourteen years. It’s a small company with offices in Washington, Denver, Montreal, Slovakia and China. PCI puts most of its energy in Scriba, a…
Aperture 2.1
Who remembers Aperture 1? Aperure 1 probably was one of the applications that raised high hopes with photographers and editors of small publishing companies alike. Unfortunately, many users found the approach inefficient and ineffective. Apple didn’t take long to adapt the program so it would meet photographers’ needs better, but…
Capture One 4 by Phase One
Capture One 4 is Phase One’s amateur photo management application. Capture One 4 doesn’t offer media management or cataloguing. It uses the file system to manage your images on disk. However, it’s strong at correcting and retouching Camera RAW photos. Capture One 4 supports most semi-professional and professional cameras that…
Freeway 5 Pro
Softpress is releasing its newest version of Freeway Pro, version 5. As always, Freeway Pro is aimed at everybody who wants to design a web site --everybody, regardless of the level of knowledge of HTML, CSS and Javascript. Freeway 5 Pro is also a good environment to experiment if you’re…
EskoArtwork Enfocus Interview on the Gradual Acquisition
Peter Camps, Sr. Vice-President Enfocus brand, commented on the EskoArtwork acquisition of Gradual Software. The SWITCH family of products is being merged into EskoArtwork’s Enfocus operations. The resulting new entity is operating as a dedicated business unit within the EskoArtwork group, under the Enfocus brand.
In an exclusive…
What’s on at IT Enquirer
It’s time to give you an oversight of what is available on the site, and what will be published over the next few weeks. First of all, if we learned one thing from the cross-media publishing report, it must be that information is becoming a commodity. Business intelligence or information…
Creating a 3D Award Logo (one way of doing it)
You can create an award logo fairly quickly: just grab one of Adobe Illustrator’s ready-made award backgrounds, drop your logo and some text in the template and you’re ready. Your award logo will look good, but it won’t be any different from those of others who do the same. You…
SilkyPix Developer Studio
SilkyPix Developer Studio 3.x is a Camera RAW conversion application that compares favourably to the more “professional” sounding RAW applications such as Capture One, Adobe Camera RAW 4.x and even Aperture 2. SilkyPix Developer Studio is a Japanese effort that contains a number of innovations leading to more accurate conversions…
Phantasm CS Studio for Adobe Illustrator
Illustrator often being used for creating brochures and other printable media, the question crops up: when do you need to see how your design will do on its output medium? Early on in the design process, or as the final check --when the file has been converted into PDF already?…
PDF Editing: Necessary Evil? Use Neo
EnFocus has a specific application to edit PDFs. It’s called Neo, and it has full editing capabilities for PDFs. SmileOnMyMac has PDF Pen Pro which also has editing capabilities, but they are far more limited than what Neo is capable of. The issue with editing PDFs is that you’re editing…
Adobe After Effects CS3’ Puppet Tools
Adobe After Effects CS3 has lots of new and improved features such as shape layers, Photoshop layer styles and video layers, and Flash integration, but two of the most eye-catching novelties must be Brainstorm and Puppet Tools. Brainstorm is a properties experimentation tool, while Puppet tools is a set of…
Technology: Elvis Stores Your Media Content
Developer DutchSoftware has a tradition in custom solutions for the global publishing market. The company is active in Europe, the US, Asia Pacific and South America. Shortly DutchSoftware is going to be releasing Elvis, not some sixties’ rocker’s site, but a highly scalable enterprise-class media content store based on…
Atomik Xport for InDesign
Atomik Xport for InDesign CS3 is Easypress’ best-seller. Atomik Xport enables InDesign users to export their layout documents to richly structured XML files for re-purposing of content on the web, for mobile, etc.
Atomik Xport lets you export XML from a regular InDesign file with a minimum of…
Rubens Would Have Been a Graphic Designer
The best Graphic and Layout Designers are today what Peter Paul Rubens used to be in his time: tradesmen who understand their tools, know how to use them and achieve desired effects, and create art. Graphic and Layout Designers would have fitted in perfectly with Rubens’ time and age in…
Dymo DiscPainter
Before you can start producing a CD or DVD for content distribution, you will have gone a long way. Somewhere along the way, at the start of the production process you will have decided on a design for the packaging and the medium label. Your decision about the design of…
Interview: KODAK COLORFLOW Software Combines 14 Tools Into One
Integrated colour control across all devices --monitors, scanners, halftone and inkjet proofers, and digital and conventional presses-- is going to be achievable using one software solution across the entire production environment: KODAK COLORFLOW Software. Kodak announced that it will launch the new COLORFLOW Software solution at drupa 2008. Although the…
