MS Unveils Beta of New Image Editing Program 492
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.'
Re:Nice (Score:4, Informative)
Surprise!!! It's proprietary... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Fark Acrylic Competition? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Office (Score:5, Informative)
Any windows application can export to PDF via the miracle of PDFCreator [sourceforge.net].
Not as fast as an Oo.o export to PDF, but export to PDF is hardly a world-shattering feature.
Not exactly... (Score:5, Informative)
"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.
Corel Photo-Paint anyone ? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Surprise!!! It's proprietary... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
It's really its own thing. (Score:1, Informative)
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.
Re:Not even JPEG (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see the problem here.
Non-passport Download (Score:5, Informative)
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/e/7/1e7c
Re:What!? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.deviantart.com/view/17908194/ [deviantart.com]
Re:Nice (Score:3, Informative)
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.
It seems Acrylic does not require Win XP SP2 (Score:5, Informative)
If you check the Yahoo! Expression3 mailing list [yahoo.com] (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 [microsoft.com] on the Acrylic project page) can run under Linux with WINE:
http://frankscorner.org/index.php?p=expression3 [frankscorner.org]
Re:Nice (Score:2, Informative)
OS 9 and OS X version (Score:1, Informative)
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
Re:M$ is really on a tear today... (Score:2, Informative)
This should be modded as a troll.
Re:Nice (Score:1, Informative)
Re:It seems Acrylic does not require Win XP SP2 (Score:1, Informative)
To get it, download the
http://download.microsoft.com/download/platformsd
extract Orca_Msi.FD66E721_5AA0_41BC_AA26_1EC8F7FA1175 and rename it orca.msi, then just run the msi.
In Orca, open acrylic.msi, click the "LaunchOption" entry on the side bar, then right click on the "VersionNT>=501" entry on the right and choose "drop row". Save and exit.
It will install no problem.
Re:Sigh. Not All Software Has To Innovate (Score:2, Informative)
Come on, Microsoft (Score:2, Informative)
Re:M$ is really on a tear today... (Score:1, Informative)
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.