Designjet Z3100 review
HP’s new range of 24- and 44-inch photo printers bring some innovative ideas to the large format market and are capable of producing some cracking prints.
HP’s new range of 24- and 44-inch photo printers bring some innovative ideas to the large format market and are capable of producing some cracking prints.
Storyboard Artist is aimed at creatives who wants to map out motion media from short animations to feature films. It has lots to offer but suffers from a messy interface.
First impressions of Microsoft’s efforts are mixed. Unsettlingly, the interface looks like a cross between Word and Dreamweaver, and even when using the application, it’s hard to forget Microsoft’s Office suite.
In first inspection, Softimage|XSI 6.0 doesn’t look like much of an update. Once you get stuck into the new features though, you’ll find a wealth of new tools to get your teeth into.
Photoshop plug-ins have come a long way since the cheesy filter effects that made up the first few generations. Snap Art, however, is a throwback to an old age.
From a team of film studio modellers whose most recent work graced both The Lord of the Rings and King Kong, the highly anticipated Mudbox has the feel of a custom tool.
Quark Interactive Designer is an XTensions kit for QuarkXPress that lets you set up interactive Flash presentations from within the DTP application.
RealViz Stitcher is a flexible and easy-to-use program for assembling seamless panoramas and ‘immersive’ images from multiple overlapping photographs.
natFX offers 3DS Max and Maya users the ability to create bespoke, highly realistic vegetation in 3D, albeit at a high price. The new version 4 is currently for 3DS Max only.
For photographers on the move, Sony’s GPS-CS1 records your location while shooting, enabling you to incorporate this data into how you use your photos.
Strata is a 3D application aimed at giving designers the kind of simplicity they experience on the likes of Photoshop and Illustrator, offering an accessible route into 3D design.
The EOS 30D is Canon’s latest mid-range SLR digital camera. It builds on the strengths of the semi-pro EOS 20D, but features the same 8.2-megapixel CMOS sensor.
VTour is a new program that allows you to construct 3D virtual environments with photorealistic textures, starting from a single photographic panorama. It’s available for Windows 2000 and XP, and a Mac OS X version will be released in the summer.
Apple’s first laptop since the move from Motorola to Intel processors isn’t the groundbreaking machine that many were expecting. If anything, the move has made the mobile Mac more ordinary, and the chip switch will put off anyone reliant on Adobe applications.
Portfolio 8 is the latest version of the digital asset management system that started life as Aldus Fetch around 15 years ago. It’s not just for images – it works with word processing and layout files, PDFs, movies, and other media files.
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.
The DualHead2Go adds multi-display output to laptops – allowing you to connect two monitors to the laptop’s VGA output port.
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 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.
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...