 Microsoft enters the graphics market (again)
Thanks for the news, sPECTre!
Traffic is something else on Microsoft's site this weekend! It took me three tries to download "Acrylic", but I finally got the install down, pooped it and played with it.
Overall, it's a whimper and not a bang; Adobe has nothing to lose sleep over--they encorporated custom brush strokes in Illustrator a couple of years ago...as did Xara and CorelDraw. Basically, Acrylic is Expressions...I see no major innovations except a Web menu.
If you've never tried Expressions, by all means download the public beta. If you've been there, however, save your bandwidth for downloading Right Hemisphere's Deep Paint 2.
I think it's interesting that Mother Microsoft is intimating that they're going to go toe-to-toe with Adobe Systems, first with a PDF clone, and now with Expressions. The public beta thing is right out of their marketing department. I personally liked Image Composer (originally Altamira Composer, designed by Alvy Smith, who was a Microsoft Fellow until recently), because the original program works with image layers in a very intuitive way...and Altamira was out there with layers before Photoshop.
Again, if you've never tried Expressions, by all means sidle up to the salad bar. But you will not be likely to master the program without a lot of time and effort...the samples are expertly crafted, and acheiving the same level of detail takes time. I'm busying myself with other apps such as Vue, zBrush, and Poser; their learning curve to get at least results that make me feel as though my time is well spent is greater.
My Best,
Gare
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