Microsoft offers early peek at designer tools

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Here's a review for you:

http://photoshopnews.com/2005/06/14/acrylic-vs-photoshop-the-winner/

Acrylic Evaluation Summary

At this point, I really must say that there is simply no way to characterize Acrylic as a Photoshop competitor. To do so would be unfair to both Photoshop and Acrylic?regardless of the pundits? claims to the contrary. Acrylic?s pixel editing capabilities are simply too primitive and crude to draw a reasonable comparison. Acylic?s most interesting aspects are in its vector painting capabilities. Its drawing capabilities, however, are also too primitive to compare directly to Adobe Illustrator.

To speculate on Microsoft?s motives for releasing Acrylic as a public beta is pointless. Only Microsoft really knows why they chose this time to reveal the existence of Acrylic and how they intend to position Acrylic as a commercial software application some time down the road. If Microsoft thinks that Acrylic would compete with professional drawing and pixel editing applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, I would suggest they disabuse themselves of such delusions. At best, Acrylic?s pixel editing capabilities fall somewhere in the Photoshop 2.5-3.0 version capabilities-but even then, Photoshop had a superior functionality set, UI and usability. To compare it to Photoshop CS2 is somewhat amusing but ludicrous.

You may think it's FANTASTIC, Ax... But then again, you're not a designer who has to rely on mission-critical stability and true cross-platform reliability, nor do you have to use your Acrylic output in a quarter-million-dollar print job inserted into a pre-press house's workflow. So in effect, your endorsement is meaningless because you're essentially clueless as to what designers like me really want/need and the kind of work we really do. As has Microsoft been...forever. And so you and they remain.

Posted by: Yen_z   Posted on: 01/24/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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