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Mapwing is an easy-to-use suite of programs for creating and viewing interactive photographic virtual tours. You can create 3D maps of anything from the rooms and corridors of an art gallery to the streets and buildings in a town.
Now in its thirteenth incarnation, Corel Graphics Suite seems confident enough to take on Adobe’s Creative Suite 2, armed with a stack of new functions and an attractive price. Its features are strong, but there’s obviously a desire not to tempt fate – the company decided against naming it CorelDraw 13.
As part of the Production Studio, Premiere Pro 2.0 ties into the workflows of Adobe’s other production tools. Even as a standalone application, though, version 2.0 offers tighter interoperability between the various Adobe applications.
Adobe hasn’t taken its foot off the pedal for AE’s seventh major release. High-end users working on digital intermediate (DI) and digital film projects will love the expanded colour space, with support for HDR 32-bit media.
If you think it takes too long to upload your photos, or you’d like to do it on the road without a computer, Kodak’s svelte EasyShare-One – a digital camera with built-in Wi-Fi – could appeal. But you’ll make sacrifices for the convenience.
Ricoh’s fixed-lens 35mm film-based GR1 and GR21 compacts achieved something of a cult following for wide-angle aficionados. The new 8mp GR Digital is a great improvement on the originals.
Sitting between the company’s D2-series and the popular D70s, Nikon’s 10.2-megapixel D200 is the long-overdue replacement for the D100 digital SLR. It uses the same DX-size CCD sensor as its six-megapixel forerunner, and is compatible with many Nikkor and Nikon-fit interchangeable lenses.
The EOS-1D Mark II N is the second upgrade to Canon’s action-orientated EOS-1D professional digital SLR. The first update saw Canon introduce an 8.2-megapixel CMOS sensor in a pro camera for the first time, replacing the 4.1-megapixel CCD of the original EOS-1D.
The biggest thing about the Olympus SP-500 Ultra Zoom is the lens: it’s an impressive 10x model that is significantly longer than those on most point-&-shoot cameras. However, it has no type of image stabilization, so this long zoom can be a mixed blessing.
Kinemac is refreshingly simple to get to grips with. Anyone who has used a timeline-based program will instantly recognize the usual conventions. The interface is split into four main areas – the Stage, Sprite, Inspector, and Bezier windows...
Samsung isn’t a name that immediately springs to mind when thinking of high-end digital cameras – most of their previous models have been point-&-shoots aimed at the budget-conscious. But that is about to change.
Boujou was the first automatic matchmoving solution on the market back in 2001. However, it cost as much as a small hatchback, so it wasn’t within reach of most 3D artists and smaller studios. 2D3 released the cut-down version, Boujou Bullet, to address the affordability issue.
The huge attention and adulation given to Apple Aperture even before it shipped proves that Steve Jobs’ salesmanship is still fully operational. Aperture is a very fast image workflow utility that lets you preview, sort, tag, and adjust digital images in a systematic way.
Digital Asset Management (DAM) application with an attractive price and an impressive feature set, iView MediaPro has always been popular with photographers. However, its ability to handle other document types makes it suitable for small design or publishing studios, too.
RealViz’s MatchMover Pro is one of the leading matchmoving programs, and version 4 has an all new engine called SMART. The manufacturer claims it’s between six and ten times as fast as the old engine.
An After Effects plug-in that creates charts and graphs is not the most creatively exciting effects tool you’ve ever seen, but the huge time savings that Data Animator offers over building graphs manually is a great bonus for corporate work.
The new EOS 5D is now the least expensive full-frame digital SLR available. At £1,958 plus VAT, it’s still pricey compared to the mass-market EOS 350D and the mid-range EOS 20D, but only half that of Canon’s other full-frame device, the EOS 1Ds MK II.
Paint Shop Pro has been around for years, but this is the first major version to be released after its acquisition by Corel. While often seen as a poor man’s Photoshop, there’s enough here to satisfy people who infrequently edit images, such as 3D modellers and animators, and video editors and compositors. At £99, it’s also a lot less expensive.
At under £400 for the body alone, the Dynax 5D competes with other consumer digital single-lens reflex models such as Nikon’s D50, Canon’s EOS-350D, and Olympus’ E-300.
The nine-megapixel S9500 Zoom replaces the prosumer S20 Pro at the top of the FinePix range. There isn’t much difference between the two in terms of size – both cameras are bulky – but the new zoom lens makes the S9500 feel a much larger proposition.
