Little by little, Google`s window on the desktop widens By The Associated Press A lot of people seem to believe that Google Inc. can rule any market segment it wants. Hype meters have gone haywire assessing the search company's expansion into such far-flung fields as financial news and wireless Internet connectivity. ...Read More »

Apple Aperture 1.1 By Dave Nagel I panned Aperture pretty hard in my last review. So did a lot of reviewers. But Apple seems to have taken those initial criticisms to heart and attempted to rectify them in version 1.1. And, what's more, they've lowered the price and even offered a $200 rebate coupon to early adopters--even though this new release is a Universal Binary update. Now that's a step in the right direction! ...Read More »

SmartDisk Digital PhotoBank By John Virata One of the neat aspects of digital photography is the capability to shoot as much as you want and not have to worry about all that film development cost. One of the banes of digital photography is, because you can shoot as much as you wish, you often fill up your memory cards more quickly, especially when shooting in the highest image quality supported by your camera. ...Read More »

Razer Pro|Click Mouse and Pro|Pad By Don Lee Design work requires that you have the proper pinpoint precision to create your project. Using tools that don’t work as well as you would like will leave you wasting your time and leave you very frustrated. When I picked up the Razer Pro|Click mouse and Pro|Pad mouse surface, I was surprised by the sleek design of the products but I was very curious about its functionality. ...Read More »

First Look: Pixmantec RawShooter Essentials By John Virata With more digital cameras sporting the capability to shoot in the Raw image format, those who have cameras with that feature might not want to invest in software that offers the capability to convert Raw images. While some digital imaging tools offer some sort of Raw support, some do not. Pixmantec RawShooter Essentials 2006, previously marketed by Corel Corp. in North America but available free from Pixmantec, enables you to convert Raw image files to JPEG or TIFF. ...Read More »

Corel Painter IX.5 By Dave Nagel I'm beginning to feel spoiled. Corel Painter IX.5 is the second free upgrade to Painter IX in the last year and a half, building on what was already the best, fastest, most powerful version of Painter to date. The latest release adds new creative tools, several functionality and workflow improvements and even more performance tweaks to make it faster and more responsive than ever before. ...Read More »

Flaming Pear LunarCell 1.5 By Dave Nagel LunarCell is a plugin for Adobe Photoshop that allows you to create planetary terrains--complete with atmospheric effects and options for producing either fully composited planetary bodies or terrain maps (including bump and transparency masks) for use in 3D applications. The software is simple to use, yet offers a potentially infinite variety of unique terrains. ...Read More »

OWC Mercury On-The-Go Pro Review By Guy Wright We had the opportunity to evaluate a 120GB Mercury On-The-Go Pro portable hard disk drive case kit ($84.95 without drive) from Other World Computing (www.macsales.com) and have to admit, once you get the drive up and running it’s a pretty cool little device. ...Read More »

Learning ActionScript 2.0 for Macromedia Flash 8 By David James Rockingham III Learning ActionScript 2.0 for Macromedia Flash 8 was written to help you not only learn the basics of ActionScripting but to also teach you some of the more advanced features that you can incorporate into your projects. Here’s a closer look at Learning ActionScript 2.0 for Macromedia Flash 8 from authors Jen deHaan, Peter deHaan and Macromedia Press. ...Read More »

Photoshop CS2 RAW By John Virata Shooting RAW images with digital cameras is becoming more common as camera manufacturers introduce inexpensive, RAW capable point and shoot and digital SLRs. The RAW format to many is often misunderstood, with some saying the only way to shoot digital is to shoot RAW, and others discounting that notion. Mikkel Aaland's Photoshop CS2 RAW is written to address some of the issues photographers face when shooting RAW ...Read More »

Apple iWeb 06 By David James Rockingham III iWeb 06 is the newest addition to Apple Computer’s popular iLife consumer software suite. Along with iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, iTunes and Garageband, iWeb 06 was designed to provide consumers with the ability to build and publish a website with just a few clicks of the mouse. ...Read More »

MANGA STUDIO 3.0 By Ko Maruyama Manga is known by many as a Japanese style of illustrating cartoons, both illustrated and animated. “Manga Studio 3.0” is the American release of the #1 manga-style illustration software. Previously known as Comic Studio, Manga Studio offers all of the tools needed to produce pages that are ready to go directly to the printer. ...Read More »

Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Unleashed By David James Rockingham III Macromedia Dreamweaver is the de facto standard in WYSIWYG web design software. While Dreamweaver can help you design a basic HTML website, the program’s real power is focused on dynamic websites. With Sams Publishing’s 1020 page Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Unleashed book, you can move your static HTML website to the next level. ...Read More »

Razer Pro V1.6 Mouse By Dave Nagel I'm not a huge fan of mice in general, preferring pressure-sensitive graphics tablets instead for the vast bulk of my work (something on the order of 95 percent of my work). When I do swap out my stylus for a mouse, the reason is invariably the need for absolute precision--masking out difficult images, working with paths, etc. But in this respect, even mice designed for "pro" users (as indicated by their marketing nomenclature) can fall woefully short of my needs. ...Read More »

Dreamweaver 8: Training from the Source By Don Lee Macromedia Dreamweaver has been considered one of the best WYSIWYG web design programs available on the market. As the web evolved so did the program in trying to keep up with the changing technologies being used to develop more sophisticated websites. With the release of version eight, Macromedia has this program pointed towards more dynamic website development beyond standard HTML code. ...Read More »

ACDSee Pro By John Virata ACDSee Pro is an image management and photo editing application for Windows that gives digital photographers the tools to better manage their photography work flows. The strength with this application is in its photo management capabilities, although it does feature very robust image editing tools. ...Read More »

Apple Aperture 1.0.1 By Dave Nagel The first time I saw Apple's Aperture 1.0 in action, I couldn't wait to get my own copy and dig into it. Its looks were gorgeous, and it was blazingly fast at opening and manipulating raw files. With Apple touting Aperture as "the first all-in-one post-production tool for photographers," my expectations were high. Sadly, Aperture did not live up to those expectations. ...Read More »

Color Management for Photographers By John Virata If you work with color images for print and prepress on a daily basis, color management issues are one of the most important issues that crop up on a daily basis. Today, all photographers and art directors worth their pixels use Adobe Photoshop and must deal with color management on a daily basis. Andrew Rodney's Color Management for Photographers is a work that helps explain the topic, through color theory to case studies and tutorials. Here is a brief synopsis of his 10 chapter, 464 page book. ...Read More »

Cocoatech Path Finder 4 By Kevin Schmitt Let me put this as succinctly as I can: if you use a Mac, you need to be using Path Finder 4. Period. That's about as direct as it gets. Granted, $34.95 may seem a bit steep just to replace a part of Mac OS X, but with the native Finder as (arguably) bad as it is and with Path Finder 4 as good as it is, the price is a pittance, especially in light of the sheer volume of features Path Finder 4 packs under the hood. ...Read More »

Pantone/GretagMacbeth Huey By Dave Nagel For those just getting into digital imaging, color management can be a confusing issue. But let me try to simplify it. Different devices all handle color differently. The picture you see on your camera's LCD is going to look different from the same picture displayed on your computer monitor, which is going to look extremely different from how the picture looks when it comes out of your printer. But there are ways to minimize these differences, thus saving you money on the ridiculously expensive ink you would otherwise waste whenever you print something that comes out wrong. ...Read More »