Total
Training for Adobe Photoshop 6
AUGUST 29—Every time a new version of a software
application is released, there are always new features that users
must get used to, old features that have been dropped or changed,
new shortcuts to learn, changes in the interface and, of course,
a bigger, thicker manual. For users who have been using the program
for a while, adjusting to the new stuff can have a short or long
learning curve, and new users can find themselves completely lost.
While manuals are an excellent source of information, the printed
media doesn't have the ability to show you how the application
works without resorting to long tedious steps with no explanation
as to why you are doing things that way. Luckily there are training
videos available, and some of the best ones for Adobe products
come from Total Training.
Corel
Bryce 5
AUGUST 23—I haven't even looked at Bryce since
version 1 or so, so when I got a hold of Bryce 5, I was, needless
to say, pleasantly surprised. Bryce 5 is Corel's 3D landscaping,
modeling, animation and rendering suite that the company acquired
during the dissolution of Metacreations. As with an awful lot
of tools originally developed by Metacreations, Bryce has achieved
something of a cult status among users, along with Painter (which
Corel also owns), Poser (now owned by Curious Labs) and Carrara
(now owned by TGS). There's better reason for this now than ever,
as we'll get to below, as well as more reason than ever for professional
3D artists to consider Bryce as an addition to their toolset.
Macromedia
Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio
AUGUST 2—So here we have the granddaddy of multimedia
authoring. I can remember playing with early versions of Director
and liking it all right, but not being in love with it and not
really caring for what was being produced with it. Last year,
I got a hold of Macromedia Director 8.0, and all of that changed.
With version 8, Macromedia did a serious revision of this hulking
suite of authoring tools, tightened it up, brought in some usability
features that almost made me cry and overhauled the workflow to
make it about as easy to use as a graphics program, but retaining
and expanding the robustness that gives the program its real power.
ALAP
Imposer
JULY 25—Not every publishing job requires the
imposition step. Even when imposition is required, it has almost
always been done by a technician in the back of the service bureau
or print house using expensive, often custom imposition software
as the last step before ripping and generating film or a proof.
Quark can't even do imposition without forcing the designer to
jump through hoops—unless you've added ALAP's (A Lowly Apprentice
Production) Imposer 2.1.3.
Sorenson
Video 3 Basic
JULY 19—Recently Sorenson released the Sorenson
Video 3 CODEC. According to Sorenson, this CODEC is a vast improvement
over Sorenson Video 2, giving higher quality video at the same
bit rate with faster compression and making better use of VBR
(variable bit rate). Currently, Sorenson Video 3 is available
in two forms; Sorenson Video 3 Standard Edition, which is included
in the latest release of QuickTime 5.0.2, and Sorenson Video 3
Professional Edition.
Adobe
GoLive 5
JULY 12—Adobe GoLive 5.0, now packed with many
powerful enhancements, is an impressive upgrade. Despite the bevy
of new features, this Web-authoring and site-management tool is
still very easy to use. And buying the upgrade makes a lot of
sense when you consider what you get: 360Code, which protects
your code from accidental reformatting; the new WebDAV tool for
workgroup collaboration; and Dynamic Link, which automatically
writes the code for Active Server Pages.
Macromedia
FreeHand 10
JUNE 27—Macromedia is nearly as dominant in certain
areas of graphic creation as Adobe is in others. Although the
two graphics giants do clash in many areas, nowhere is the battle
as fierce, or relatively unsettled, as in the vector drawing arena.
Macromedia's FreeHand 10 is the latest version going against Adobe's
Illustrator 9.
Hemera
Photo Objects Vol. 2
JUNE 19—Here's a slight change of pace for a
review. We usually look at software applications and plugins for
graphics software. But this week we're taking a look at a collection
of royalty-free images from Hemera Software. Normally I wouldn't
review a royalty-free image collection because, first of all,
most of them aren't very good. Second, the ones that are good
are usually quite expensive. And, third, how much can I write
about a collection of royalty-free images? Well, as you might
have guessed, this collection is different.
Human
Software Classic Frames 1
JUNE 6—This is the first plugin I've reviewed
for this site that borders a bit on the consumer level. Human
Software, maker of a number of higher-end image editing and effects
plugins, publishes a filter called Classic Frames 1, which is
designed exclusively to add frame edges to images. This is, of
course, a one-trick filter, but it has several variations and
a few pretty decent professional applications as well.
Creating
Web Graphics in Photoshop 6
MAY 31—Regular readers of Digital Media Designer
should be pretty familiar by now with the work of Total Training.
They supply us with the bulk of our QuickTime-based video tutorials,
which always prove popular with our readers and are always loaded
with handy tidbits that you're not going to find in your manuals.
Flaming
Pear Flood
MAY 9—Flaming Pear is a company that you might
not be familiar with but that has put out some pretty serious
effects filters for Photoshop. I've previously reviewed two of
their products, BladePro and Super BladePro, both of which are
designed to generate general material effects like stone and metal.
This week we'll look at a plugin of theirs that has a much more
limited scope but that might prove pretty useful to you compositing
folks out there. It's called Flood, and its sole purpose is to
place bodies of water onto an image.
Curious
Labs Poser Pro Pack
MAY 2—You're probably familiar with Poser, the
3D character animation suite formerly owned by the company formerly
known as MetaCreations. When MetaCreations killed off its software
division to focus on Web technologies, Poser went on the auction
block (along with Painter, Carrara, Canoma, Bryce and a host of
other well respected titles). It was snatched up by the team that
originally created the software and others involved with its development
and marketing. Thus was born Curious Labs.
CValley
FILTERiT 4: Filter effects for Adobe Illustrator
APRIL 17—FILTERiT is probably the most remarkable
set of tools I've ever seen for a vector illustration program.
This is a package of innumerable effects for Adobe Illustrator
8 and 9, ranging from new types of transformations to object distortions
to effects that can be applied to text without even converting
text to paths. I reviewed version 3.0 of this set of filters last
year and was impressed with its variety, power, stability, performance,
ease of use, versatility and price point. (You can read this review
here.)
Version 4.0 adds even more to the package, while still maintaining
the incredibly modest price of $129.
Future
Fantastic Genesis V2 Pro: Special lighting effects for Adobe Photoshop
APRIL 11—I
first encountered Genesis V2 Pro just a few months ago when I
was compiling our guide to commercial Photoshop filters. I had
left it off the list because I had never heard of it. So a reader
wrote in and said, "Man, you have to check this out,"
or something like that. So I did. True story. What
I found was an incredibly powerful plugin for Adobe Photoshop
whose sole purpose is to generate lighting effects and related
special effects, such as glowing fogs and the like. Probably familiar
to those of you who come from the 3D side of things (3D Studio
Max or NewTek LightWave), Genesis V2 Pro is, nevertheless, relatively
new in its form as a plugin for Adobe Photoshop and not even a
year old as a Photoshop plugin for the Macintosh. (It was introduced
for the Mac back in May 2000.)
Nowhouse
Propeller Paint Engine: Paint and effects for Adobe Photoshop
APRIL 4—If there's one thing lacking in the most
popular image editor in the world, it's paint capabilities. Sure,
you have a tool shaped like a paintbrush and one that functions
like an airbrush, but paint functionality in Adobe Photoshop is
incredibly limited.
Creature
House Expression 2: Vector illustration program
MARCH 28—Over the course of just the last couple
years, vector-based illustration programs have begun making their
first serious strides into the territory of bitmap painting tools.
That is, programs have introduced vector tools that behave in
many ways like bitmap tools but retain the editability of vectors.
These include Macromedia Fireworks and Freehand, which retain
most of the functionality of traditional vector (formerly known
as EPS) applications, and Synthetik Studio Artist, which you would
never identify as a vector tool unless you were to engage in some
research to discover this fact.
Electric
Image Amorphium Pro 1.1: 3D modeling and animation with Flash
export
MARCH 21—I've mentioned before that for designers,
particularly those who work in Flash, skill with 3D is rapidly
becoming a prerequisite. Last year, the only tool on the market
for bringing 3D content into the Flash format was Swift3D from
Electric Rain. Now, however, it seems that every 3D publisher
wants a piece of the Web, and they're all either offering Flash
expansion modules or are developing export options for SWF animation.
Macromedia
Fireworks 4: Web graphics and vector illustration program
FEB. 21—I've been using Macromedia Fireworks
just about every day for the last year. I've been impressed with
its ability to crunch large files into tiny JPEGs with virtually
no loss in quality, and I've fallen in love with its effects and
batch processing capabilities. Now, for the last few weeks, I've
switched to Fireworks 4, which is available as a stand-alone product
or in a bundle with Dreamweaver 4. This latest release builds
upon the firm foundation laid in Fireworks 3 with a refined interface,
some improved functionality and a smattering of new features.
Synthetik
Studio Artist 1.5: Paining and rotoscoping software
FEB. 14—It occurs to me that with all the squawking
I've done about the virtues of Synthetik Studio Artist, I haven't
yet done a review of version 1.5 or explained its broad range
of features all in one place. I'll rectify this now. Studio
Artist does everything, so it's a difficult application to pin
down. However, it's not too hard to describe the overall effect
of Studio Artist. Since it's only available on the Mac, I'll describe
it this way: It makes you feel the way you felt the first time
you used your Mac. That is, it's the kind of thing you use and
then have dreams about. (Yes, I have dreams about my Mac and Studio
Artist. Further details are unavailable at the moment.)
ALAP
ShadowCaster for Adobe InDesign: Shadow effects for Adobe InDesign
FEB. 7—The drop shadow is a fact of design, and
ALAP's ShadowCaster for Adobe InDesign is here to address this
reality. Like its elder sibling, ALAP ShadowCaster XT for QuarkXPress,
ShadowCaster for InDesign is a plugin that allows the user to
select an object in a layout and generate a shadow based on that
object. The shadow is generated automatically as a TIFF file.
Wacom
PL500 LCD Graphics Tablet
JAN.
24—Seems like we're burning through the Wacom products here
at Digital Media Designer. We started off with the little Graphire
4" x 5" model, moved on to the monstrous Intuos 9"
x 12" and arrive today, finally, at the king of them all—the
PL500. This
is the tablet all reviewers dream of reviewing. For you see, it
is not merely a tablet. It's a pressure-sensitive, pen-based LCD
monitor. The drool factor on this puppy is quite high.
Wacom
Intuos 9" x 12" Graphics Tablet
JAN.
2—The mouse is a clumsy, limiting tool ill-suited for the
process of creating art on a computer. If you're anything like
me, one of your first peripheral purchases back in the early days
was a graphics tablet or a mouse shaped like a pen (or, in my
case, both). But in the early days these alternatives were, at
best, reminders that technology was a long way off from adapting
itself to the needs of artists working in a digital medium.
Electric
Rain Swift3D: 3D Flash animation software
12/12/2000—A
little note before we get started: I don't want to give you the impression that
this site is all about the Web. Yes, our last three reviews have been on Web graphics
software, but this has been more of a function of the order in which I receive
materials to review than any editorial direction toward Internet-based design.
Too many sites these days are covering software and hardware for the Web at the
expense of content designed for print professionals. This will not be the case
with Digital Media Designer. That said, let's get on with this week's look at
a software package that promises vector-based 3D for Flash.
BoxTop
ProJPEG: Compression Through Adobe Photoshop
12/06/2000—Let's
own up to to one of the facts of Web design: Photoshop doesn't compress images
for the Web very well. Neither does ImageReady. In fact, if anything, these applications
seem to compress worse and worse with each new release. So what do you do? Well,
you can go out and buy Macromedia's Fireworks. It's the undisputed leader in compression,
and it's a full-blown image editor and Web graphics creation tool to boot. But
not everybody wants to shell out the bucks for another image editor, even one
like Fireworks that can do so much more than image editing. The other option is
ProJPEG, a plugin for Adobe Photoshop whose sole mission in life is to make your
JPEGs smaller and cleaner.
Panopticum
Plugin Galaxy
11/29/2000—Here's
a great set of utilitarian plugins for Adobe Photoshop. Plugin Galaxy, distributed
by Panopticum and developed by Harald Heim,
offers 20 plugins that generate about 120 basic effects, from noise and alpha
manipulation to texture, lighting and magnification tricks.
Terran
Interactive Cleaner 5
11/27/2000—It
would be physically impossible for me to write this review without gushing. I
was first introduced to Terran Interactive's Cleaner family of products through
Media Cleaner EZ and, later, through Media Cleaner Pro, and I was instantly in
awe of the sheer data smashing power of these applications, which could take huge
video files and shrink them down to almost nothing while maintaining great image
quality. We've been crunching QuickTime files with Media Cleaner Pro (as well
as the Media Cleaner Power Suite) here at Digital Media Net and DMN
TV on a daily basis for some time now, and the results have been stunning.
The quality is impressive; the speed is pretty decent; and the compression is
nothing short of impossible.
Alien
Skin Eye Candy 4000
11/21/2000—If you're anything like me, your Photoshop Plug-Ins folder looks
like a junk yard. It's full of old, decrepit filters that you haven't used since
you stopped designing your own custom Dungeons & Dragons character sheets;
demos of filters that expired before computers were even invented; and shareware
filters whose usefulness you've never quite figured out, but somehow you can't
bring yourself to throw them away. Hey, I still have Gallery Effects loaded on
one of my Macs!
Wacom
Graphire Power Suite
11/21/2000—The
low end of pressure-sensitive tablets sure has come a long way. I remember my
little ADB pad from back in the early '90s—one of the first truly affordable
pressure tablets. It was a great idea, but it just wasn't all there. The sensitivity
was too sharp, and the driver was slow as the dickens. (Remember watching Photoshop
finish sketching your strokes 15 seconds after you stopped drawing?)
Olympus
Camedia P-400 Dye-Sublimation Printer
11/21/2000—If you're
a purist in terms of the image quality that comes out of you're printer, you're
not going to be able to do better than the Camedia P-400 printer from Olympus
for $999. The P-400 is Olympus' latest addition to its printer line, a dye-sublimation
model that can handle paper sized up to 8.25" x 11.7".
Olympus
Camedia C-2100 Digital Camera
11/21/2000—Your first thought about
the Olympus Camedia C-2100 might be that $999 is pretty pricey for a 2.1 megapixel
digital camera. And you'd be right, if you compared it with cameras that have
no extra features and optics that would make you cringe. But the C-2100 is in
a different league.
Flaming
Pear SuperBladePro
11/21/2000—We previously reviewed regular ol' BladePro from Flaming Pear
Software and gave it high marks for its ability to create metallic textures inside
Photoshop. Super BladePro, which was released just a couple of weeks ago, comes
out even stronger—and $15 less than the original filter. What could I do?
I had to buy it—and that's saying something for a guy who gets his software
for free.
