Microsoft's Acrylic

Not a Mac related post but a design news nonetheless, Microsoft today announced the availability of the beta version of Acrylic, a vector based graphic application that mimics traditional painting style. This application is based on Creature House's Expression 3 which was acquired by Microsoft last year. A free version of Expression 3 for Mac OS is available and of course no further development (i.e. Acrylic for Mac) will be available in the future. I'm not sure why the press is calling this a “Photoshop Killer” since it really doesn't do any image editing or manipulation at all. This application is more comparable to Illustrator CS if any. It is a very good application if you're trying to achieve a traditional, painterly style but if you're trying to achieve a photo-realistic effect, stick to Photoshop.

Technorati Tags: design, illustration

Apple Switcheroo

Apple yesterday tasted their own medicine by being a switcher themselves and will be moving to Intel processors. I'm still a bit mixed about this strategy since game consoles (Xbox 2, PS3, Nintendo revolution) are all moving to PowerPC to gain more power in their consoles. Apple seems to be doing the reverse. One thing for sure is their current line will suffer since people (me included) will be deferring purchases to see how the Intel powered Macs will pan out.

Technorati Tags: apple, mac