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MS Unveils Beta of New Image Editing Program
docdude316 writes "CNET is running a story about Microsoft's new photo editing software, Acrylic. The new program is based on Expression, which Microsoft purchased in 2003. From the article: 'Microsoft describes the software--currently available as a 77MB free download--as bringing together pixel-based painting and vector graphics features. These capabilities will put the product squarely in the market currently dominated by software maker Adobe Systems with its pixel-focused Photoshop and vector-driven Illustrator products. Acrylic appears to support opening and exporting to Photoshop and Illustrator file formats, as well as other standard graphics formats. In addition, the application appears to be able to export to Adobe's Portable Document Format, or PDF.'
It's funny it requires Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2. Sorry M$, GIMP and Photoshop run just fine on my WIN2k boxes.
Science is the Real TRUTH!
FTA - "Microsoft noted Acrylic would not currently save pixel-type data to formats other than its native XPR file type" Well, that diminishes usefullness!! I recently had some pictures forwarded to me in PictureIT file format and they took 45 minutes to open...
Mod Parent up for both being relavent AND using a wonderful Fark Cliche!
Any windows application can export to PDF via the miracle of PDFCreator.
Not as fast as an Oo.o export to PDF, but export to PDF is hardly a world-shattering feature.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
This is not a rival to Adobe products, definetly not Photoshop. It's primarily a vector graphics program with some unique features in that area. It was orignally a program Creative House Expressions which Microsoft bought in 2003.
e xpression.htm
"Creature House Expression (formerly Fractal Design Expression) is a vector-based drawing tool featuring "skeletal strokes," a 2D drawing primitive which offers complete editability and scalability."
http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/illustration/gr/
This new Acrylic beta is essential version 4 of that program.
Giving the timing of the release of a program that Microsoft had seemingly killed off years ago. I'd say they were planing to use it for vector creation in Avalon.
AFAIK, Corel Photo-Paint does already "bring together pixel-based painting and vector graphics features".
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
FTA - "Microsoft noted Acrylic would not currently save pixel-type data to formats other than its native XPR file type" Well, that diminishes usefullness!! I recently had some pictures forwarded to me in PictureIT file format and they took 45 minutes to open...
You can save to jpg, gif, tif, etc by using "File/Export."
Same result, just a different part of the menu. XPR is analogous to a PSD file. You can still create jogs of your work when you're done.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
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It's really not much like Photoshop at all, or even Illustrator, but more like Painter. Expression has been around for about ten years. Like Painter, which was a fellow Fractal Design product at the time of its initial release, Expression has remained on the sidelines, relatively obscure.
The idea is that vector strokes are drawn and have a natural media brush profile attached to them. Since this it all remains as vectors the brushstrokes can be changed at will at any time. Illustrator can sorta do something like this these days but not nearly as well, and Expression could do this long, long ago.
Bitmap manipulation had been limited mostly to converting strokes into bitmap layers, or filling vector regions with bitmaps, with a few basic manipulation tools. Acrylic seems to add a little more to this, but do not expect it to be like Photoshop.
It has a Painter-like interface which can drive the Adobe user nuts, but the hybrid vector-natural stroke workflow feels rather liberating once you get the hang of it. If this is a free or low cost package when it is fully rereleased, it may pick up something of a following that may help get Metro in the door. That's a longshot though - Adobe still holds all the cards.
You can save to JPG, GIF, TIF, etc by using the export feature. It would be nice to have them in the save as dialog, but it's not like they'r enot there at all. When you do a File/Save, all you get is XPR. Everything else is under export.
I don't see the problem here.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
I hate passport...
a 4ef-46f0-4acd-abb6-d3d8618d6c3c/AcrylicBeta.zip
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/e/7/1e7c
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
It's enough for some people.
http://www.deviantart.com/view/17908194/
The free beta version "expires" October 1, 2005. Someone may figure a way around that, but it suggests that MS probably does not intend to give away the release version.
If you check the Yahoo! Expression3 mailing list (Yahoo! registration required), it seems that you can get around the installer by unpacking the file and install Acrylic on pre-SP2 machines including Windows 2000. Running the installer, however, would detect your system and prevent it from installing on pre-SP2 machines on purpose; so it may just be another lure for you to install SP2 =( .
Also, Expression 3.3 (click the Previous Versions on the Acrylic project page) can run under Linux with WINE:
http://frankscorner.org/index.php?p=expression3
Requirements aren't in TFA they are on the download page.
Expression can create beautiful art and is popular in Japan among Anime fans. Just be advised that it isn't a Photoshop clone. The interface is very different, so it takes time to learn.
--Mike Perry Untangling Tolkien
Almost all profesional tools accept importing of those files. Adobe gives out the specs for these file formats so there is no reverse engineering.
This should be modded as a troll.
It's called a beta. Microsoft regularly makes it's software available for beta testing for free. For example, right now you can go and download for free, from Microsoft, the installation for SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition. That doesn't mean that Microsoft is making SQL Server free or is attempting to crush Oracle by doing so. They want feedback from as many people as possible.
Tabbed browsing is an innovation? Safari, MyIE2, SlimBrowser, and more all had Tabbed Browsing long before Firefox ever existed.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Create the fucking "Photoshop Killer" already. Adobe customers need it to get some competition to bring the prices down if nothing else. Right now if you're a digital photographer and you want a high bit depth color managed workflow you have no choice but to use Photoshop. That's fucked up.
You are wrong about IM.
/. readers know nothing about this.
Unix had IM _way_ before it got commercialised into various PC based products.
Although talk(1) is more chat-style than IM, there was a to(1) which was the command line version of write(1) and a daemon orientated version of that.
This goes back to before the WWW existed, so I'm not surprised that the
When it comes to chat, I would argue that open source (if you want to call it that) has been way more innovative than the commercial vendors.