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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.
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.
Xerox may be known to designers for high-spec laser printers, but the Phaser 7400 is a low-cost A3+ unit going up against the likes of HP’s Color LaserJet 5550 and Oki’s C9600.
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.
Designers love new bells and whistles in their tools. Adobe opened the DTP equivalent of Pandora’s Box when it added transparency to InDesign, and suddenly magazine designs were filled with drop-shadows and fancy overlay effects.
This 2D-to-3D software is an updated and upgraded version of Canon’s Software Object Modeller. It was originally developed in the UK at Canon’s Research Centre.
Primera’s Bravo Pro DVD offers combined CD and DVD authoring with high-resolution label printing. The Bravo Pro includes two DVD burners to speed up burning, and a 4,800dpi ‘photo-quality’ print system.
Epson's new UltraChrome K3 inks have purer colours, but cannot be used on existing printers, so the company is releasing new K3 versions of all its top models over the next few months. First to arrive are the A2 format Stylus Pro 4800, and a desktop A3+ format model, the Stylus Photo R2400.
Nikon’s latest brace of digital SLRs lower the entry-price into the professional camera market still further. Both will challenge the wave of high-end, closed-system prosumer models, such as Sony’s Cyber-Shot DSC-F828 and Nikon’s own Coolpix 8800.
Shanghai-based EasyPano offers major competition to the iPix when it comes to panorama creation software. The program stitches fisheye lens photographs into seamless spherical panoramas. These are viewed in Web sites or presentations.
Adobe has worked to improve the general workflow efficiency of InDesign CS 2, which takes prominence over fancy new layout features. To be fair, InDesign 2.0 and the first CS were so good that there’s not much left to ask for ...
Despite a low-key launch, the latest version of Adobe Acrobat has some solidly useful new features for creating and editing PDF exchangeable documents for use in professional Web, printing, and publishing cycles.
If you want to produce your own high-quality photo prints, especially on large-format paper, the new large-format inkjet Epson Stylus Photo R1800 is worth its price. Offering high-resolution and enhanced fade resistance, it’s a good choice for photographers who want to produce high-quality archival prints.
Colorproof XF is a professional networked proofing software for use with high-end inkjet or colour laser printers. It can very accurately predict the final printed appearance of a job before you send it to a repro or printing house.
The Exilim Pro is Casio’s first foray into the burgeoning prosumer digital compact market, and the company seems to have succeeded at the first attempt.
EFI’s Designer Edition RIP is popular with many design companies, because it produces accurate colour proofs when used in conjunction with relatively low-cost inkjet printers. Version 4.0 doesn’t represent a major upgrade, however, there are a few updated features.
Bravo II's a combination disc-duplication and inkjet printing system – ideal for churning out professional-looking CDs or DVDs for passing round your studio or sending out to clients. You create your master and the disc art, and then the Bravo II Disc Publisher does the rest.
HumanEyes 3D is an interesting new technology that creates stereoscopic images for print or on-screen viewing. It was originally invented to allow a single digital camera to capture 360-degree panoramas for stereoscopic viewing – this hasn’t previously been possible with one camera. Technically it’s not true 3D, but ‘2.5D’ as the subjects only rotate slightly, but your eyes see a realistic continuous-depth impression.
Canon’s latest, greatest A3 photo inkjet printer is overall the best traditional model that we’ve ever seen. However, if you’re willing to pay a little more, this printer can be topped. The Bubble Jet i9950 is the sequel to last year’s top-rated i9100 – reviewed and given a Best Buy as part of our group test in Digit 69. The i9950 adds two more inks ...
The Designjet 30 isn’t unique like its 130 brother (reviewed previously) but that doesn’t mean it’s any less impressive. The 30 is an A3+ version of the A1 130 – offering almost all of the features that made the 130 so great, though including the same few irritating flaws.
