Flux Web Design With a Twist
By: Erik Vlietinck
May 06, 2008
2 comments
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 don’t like the application but you also don’t want to be condemned to hand-coding your web site. In those cases, Flux comes to the rescue. But it comes at a price --and I don’t mean money.
iCalamus Lightweight Layout Design
By: Erik Vlietinck
April 29, 2008
0 comments
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 costs 129 Euros, but it is far from a replacement for InDesign nor QuarkXPress. And to be honest, the developer is very clear about that. So, waht can you expect from iCalamus?
DrawIt 3.x A Replacement for Adobe Illustrator?
By: Erik Vlietinck
April 28, 2008
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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 just yet. Having said that, DrawIt has a couple of nice touches.
It must be awfully difficult to create an illustration program in a world dominated by Adobe. Illustrator CS3 especially offers so many features that blur the line between vector and bitmap program. Think about Live Paint or the capability to embed Photoshop images into Illustrator.
Jobo GigaVu Extreme
By: Erik Vlietinck
April 24, 2008
0 comments
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 as well.
ColorMunki Design System
By: Erik Vlietinck
April 20, 2008
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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 two systems are entirely attributable to the software. While the Design version focusses strongly on spot colour management, the Photo version focusses more on skin colours, black and white profiling and a completely new exchange model for photos.
Groboto, A 3D System for Artists
By: Erik Vlietinck
April 14, 2008
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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 work. Imagine yourself being like a god and controlling 3D drawing “bots”, then you’ll get a feel of what Groboto is. One thing is sure: it’s not your every day 3D creation tool, and as such it’s more of an art tool than something you can use for commercial work --although you never know…
Scriba XML, Cross-Media Publishing
By: Erik Vlietinck
April 07, 2008
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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 XML conversion and workflow system that treats cross-media publishing as a workflow diagram.
PCI gave me a demo of the system, which I think must be the easiest way to get content from a print document into a Content Management System (CMS). Scriba can be used as an intermediate agent between InDesign and any XML-capable CMS, but if you’re using Softcare’s K4, you can just use K4 and let the Scriba XML Server engine do its work completely transparently in the background. As from April 3, Scriba and Quark also announced a closer working relationship, further extending this system’s appeal in the cross-media publishing market.
Aperture 2.1
By: Erik Vlietinck
April 03, 2008
11 comments
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 Aperture 1.x remained second (or even third) choice.
For a long time, nothing happened with Aperture, and the world thought the giant that Apple is, had fallen asleep. But then Leopard was released and not so terribly long after, Aperture 2. And now we have Aperture 2.1 only weeks after version 2.0.1 was released. And the photographers’ world is cheering, and for a reason. Aperture 2.x is fast, its RAW 2 engine --Leopard’s really-- is excellent, giving near-perfect results when converting. Aperture 2.1 has an open architecture; developers can --and are-- creating plug-ins for Aperture 2.1.
Capture One 4 by Phase One
By: Erik Vlietinck
March 30, 2008
0 comments
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 can output RAW images. I tested the RAW quality earlier, with good results.
Freeway 5 Pro
By: Erik Vlietinck
March 27, 2008
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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 a designer --even a web designer-- who wants to concentrate on design and less on technology.
Freeway 5 Pro has support for accessibility analysis, full CSS layouts, Scriptaculous Javascript Actions, full form editing, background effects and images, and more. It allows for easy set up of Blogger pages, and its CSS capabilities are robust. Freeway 5 Pro is not Dreamweaver; it doesn’t aim at that market. It’s better then Dreamweaver in creating powerful sites without any knowledge at all of the underlying technologies, but if you can’t get it exactly right, you’ll have to resort to hand-coding outside Freeway.
SilkyPix Developer Studio
By: Erik Vlietinck
March 19, 2008
0 comments
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 and better (read: less noise) detail in low-light photographs.
Phantasm CS Studio for Adobe Illustrator
By: Erik Vlietinck
March 17, 2008
0 comments
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? The latter is the easiest on the designer; he or she doesn’t have to know anything about prepress details such as Total Area Coverage (TAC), also known as Total Ink Coverage.
Astute Graphics developed Phantasm CS, an Illustrator plug-in. Originally intended as a system that was capable of maintaining an almost one-on-one similarity between Illustrator and Photoshop when it comes to colour manipulation, Phantasm CS Designer and Phantasm CS Studio --the newly released versions of this plug-in-- now also deliver prepress capabilities to designers.
