Now part of the Adobe family, this release of Flash 9 is already starting to take on more of an Adobe feel. Depending upon who you speak with this is either a good thing or the the coming of the Armageddon. FWIW, we are optimistic about this union and hopeful Adobe will streamline the rough [...]

This is the only brand new (version 1.0) application in the suite. It is also the only audio specific application and It replaces Adobe Audition in the suite, which is now available as a separate item. Adobe says Soundbooth (SB) is designed for video and Flash developers who need audio, and that Audition is [...]

Some wonder why Illustrator is part of Adobe’s video suite. We think the proper answer to that question is, “because they could”. Think of it as an extra and a way of Adobe underscoring the fact that they approach all things from their heritage of the “graphic eye”.
Truth in reviewing, most of our team [...]

PSX, as we will refer to it from this point on, came out back in April of this year and has already been the focus of many competent articles and reviews so rather than simply be repetitive we will run down a few haves and have-nots and give you our bottom line thoughts.
The first [...]

This is the application that started the desktop revolution back in the early 90’s when computer video meant only QuickTime (to many it still does), and QuickTime maxed out at about 160×120 pixels. Video professionals (working on traditional systems or perhaps the Video Toaster) watched from afar and laughed. As the years clicked by [...]

This is the program that brought high-end video compositing to the personal desktop back in the early 1990’s and it remains the most successful and loved program in the category. This is saying a lot for a program that has had a fair amount of very accomplished competition from the likes of Apple’s Shake [...]

Another former Serious Magic application, Ultra is a keying and blue/green screen application with some fabulous capabilities and features. While owned by SM, its two big selling points were that it could do some great “real world” chroma keying from less than ideal source material, and that it was a very inexpensive solution for [...]

OnLocation (OL) runs on a mid-powered or better Window’s laptop which is ideal for location work. It provides all of the studio style hardware via software incarnations, like an NTSC monitor, scope, waveform monitor, audio spectrum analyzer and other tools.
These software versions of the real things—which would be thousands of dollars as real hardware—help calibrate [...]

Company: Autodesk
Website: www.autodesk.com

Price (MSRP):
Complete $1999.99 (upgrade $899)
Unlimited $6999.99 (upgrade $1249)
Alternatives: 3D Studio Max, Lightwave 3D
Maya’s world just keeps rockin’. Out of the blue last year comes word that Alias was bought out by giant competitor Autodesk. Now just a short time later we have the very first version of Autodesk Maya on our desk. Exciting, and a bit [...]

Company: Alien Skin Software
Website: www.alienskin.com
Price: $149 MSRP

Alternatives: Painter X (Corel),
Virtual Painter Plugin (P&A America, Inc.)
Three or four years ago a commercial art job came across my desk that screamed out for a particularly illustrated look. But the artwork provided by the ad agency was
photographic. I had once solved a similar [...]