Knoll LF Training By Ko Maruyama Now that Knoll Light Factory is available for every popular professional application, including Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Eyeon's Digital Fusion, Autodesk Combustion, Smoke, Flame, Apple Final Cut Pro, Motion, and Avid, editors and compositors need to know how to use it effectively. ...Read More »

First Look: Wolverine ESP Professional Portable Media Player By John Virata The Wolverine ESP is a portable media player designed for professional and digital photography enthusiasts who also enjoy listening to music, watching videos and recording TV and FM radio on a single device. ...Read More »

Lenovo ThinkPad Z61T notebook computer By John Virata Notebook computers have been fast outselling desktops, and the market for these devices is fast becoming glazed over as notebooks become more similar in look and feel as well as in price and performance. First it was the widescreen format that attempted to differentiate units, then it became price. Lenovo has begun to address this bland, me-too disease by delivering the ThinkPad Z61T notebook, which not only offers speedy processors, WiFi, and other features, but delivers the experience in cases that others can only dream of delivering. ...Read More »

Astute Graphics Phantasm CS By Dave Nagel If you sat down and compiled a wish list for Adobe Illustrator, chances are that a suite of robust color adjustment tools would make it somewhere in the top five. It's such a basic, fundamental feature that you'd think somebody on the development side would have crammed it in there by now. (Give them time. Illustrator's only 20 years old. They'll get to it eventually.) But fortunately, Astute Graphics has come along with an affordable and robust solution to fill this void: Phantasm CS. ...Read More »

Moho Reborn By Ko Maruyama A robust, although lesser-known animation application called Moho has been in the pocket of many vector-based animators. With the ability to create tons of animation styles with more features than similar software, Moho's metamorphosis into a studio-style package is no mystery. It's pairing with other eFrontier software however, is a surprising, but interesting match. ...Read More »

CREATIVE AFTER EFFECTS 7 By Ko Maruyama After Effects users, or artists who want to learn the software, constantly ask me which book they should buy as a guide. After Effects has been around for quite a while, and as a result, there are many books about the application. The first book I've seen on After Effects 7 is Angie's Creative After Effects 7. Here's the scoop. ...Read More »

Drawing Conclusions: This Pen-and-Tablet is a Good Value By Esther Schindler Graphics professionals easily can justify devices to draw on the computer. For ordinary office workers, a tablet might be a gratuitous toy. Yet, this pen and tablet combo is inexpensive enough use for occasional graphics use — and perhaps even as your everyday desktop interface. ...Read More »

The Art of RAW Conversion By John Virata The RAW file format is the preferred format for professional digital photographers because it serves just like a digital negative, enabling photographers to tweak the file without changing the makeup of the file. There are several RAW converters on the market or in development. Apple's Aperture, RawShooter, and Adobe Lightroom are some of the products available or in pre-release. ...Read More »

Alien Skin Blow Up By Dave Nagel Alien Skin is known for its effects filters for Adobe Photoshop, but the company's latest software release falls into a different category altogether. "Blow Up," as the software is called, is designed for a single purpose: to enlarge images using alternative methods to Photoshop's built-in algorithms. Is it worth the $200 price tag? We shall see.... ...Read More »

Lost Minds Vectoraster 1.0 By Dave Nagel There's no shortage of tools out there for making halftone and other line-screen effects on still images. But there are two things that make Lost Minds' Vectoraster 1.0 stand out from the crowd. First, this software gives you a tremendous amount of control over the effects you create. And, second, it allows you to export your effect as an EPS file, making it fully editable in vector illustration programs like Adobe Illustrator. ...Read More »

TOOLFARM PREMIUM TUTORIALS By Ko Maruyama Toolfarm, a portal known historically for its collection of plugin sales for motion graphic and design software, has started offering a collection of tutorials. Authored by long-time After Effects pro, John Dickinson, the walkthroughs are more than simple steps to producing a project. Creative Background Design tutorials are premium online lessons. ...Read More »

Reduce Death-By-PowerPoint to a Harsh Beating By Esther Schindler Within minutes of installing Serious Magic's Ovation, without cracking open a manual, the quality of my presentations improved tenfold. And I never felt as though I had to commit myself to an intensive study course. ...Read More »

Xara Xtreme: Lots of Power, Not Much Dough By Esther Schindler Xara Xtreme has an impressive suite of graphics editing features and most of the power of the big boys. Unfortunately for us casual users, it also has some of their learning curve. ...Read More »

InterVideo MediaOne Gallery By John Virata InterVideo MediaOne Gallery enables you to organize and share your media files. The application, priced at $49.95, takes a visual approach to photo and video files, icon based look at documents such as Word or PDFs, and a song name, artist, duration, album, and location look of music files. ...Read More »

Fluff-Free, Pragmatic IT Hiring Advice By Esther Schindler Techies aren't known for their social skills, a fact that makes the thought of their devising interview questions somewhat frightening. Fortunately, in her book, Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds, Johanna Rothman shows managers and tech staff how to define what they're looking for... and how to get it. ...Read More »

MDM Zinc 2.5 for Windows (with Mac OS X Plug-In) By Kevin Schmitt Adobe Flash is great for browser-based stuff, but let's face facts: it's pretty lousy for offline use. Sure, you can save Flash movies as standalone projectors, but the glaring lack of customization or ability to interface with the host OS has created a mammoth opening for third parties to drive through. Enter Zinc, from UK-based MDM, which (to put it simply but crudely) puts Flash movies on an enormous steroid regimen. How well does it make Flash into a full-blown application development environment? Let's find out. ...Read More »

Adobe's Proxy By Ko Maruyama If you've been following Adobe as long as I have, and were buying Adobe software like me, you may have cashed in on the subscription to their hardcopy magazine that helped many Adobe designers find footing after purchasing their first copy of Adobe software. Well, the magazine is back. Finally. ...Read More »

Outdoor Photographer: Landscape and Nature Photography with Photoshop CS2 By John Virata Author Rob Sheppard is the editor of Outdoor Photographer magazine, and he brings his experience with outdoor photographers and their art to this book in an effort to help readers create better outdoor and landscape photographs. Photoshop CS2 serves as the main tool for this book because it is the standard application that most outdoor photographers, and photographers for that matter, use in their digital endeavors. ...Read More »

Kodak V570 digital camera By John Virata The Kodak V570 digital camera is the first of its kind that sports dual lenses in the same unit. That is right, this point and shoot digital camera features a standard lens as well as a 5X (39-117mm) optical zoom lens. Two all glass, Schneider-Kreuznach C-Variogon lenses are incorporated into this slightly larger than business card-sized digital camera. It incorporates Kodak's new Retina dual lens technology to achieve the ultra wide angle (23mm equivalent) and 5X optical zoom range. ...Read More »

MOGRAPH R9.6 By Ko Maruyama Instead of a detailed overview of Mograph (that's what documentation is for), I've decided to put together an alternative look at the software, integrating it into my C4D-FOR-AE series as a little distraction. ...Read More »