RSSMicrosoft 'Acrylic' Takes On Photoshop
By Ed Oswald | Published June 10, 2005, 11:40 AM
In hopes of leveling the playing field with Adobe, Microsoft on Friday released a beta of Acrylic, a professional graphics creation tool. The program is based on Expression, which the company acquired the rights to through its 2003 purchase of Hong Kong company Creature House.
Microsoft describes Acrylic as the "codename for an innovative illustration, painting and graphics tool that provides exciting creative capabilities for designers working in print, web, video, and interactive media."
The beta version of the software will work for 180 days, and the company would like early adopters to provide feedback through online forums set up for the software.
It is unclear how Acrylic will play into Microsoft's future plans. The Windows operating system already includes image-editing capabilities -- however rudimentary -- through Microsoft Paint.
The software is able to both open and export to Adobe's Photoshop PSD and Acrobat PDF formats, so it is clear that the company intends to offer Acrylic as an alternative to Photoshop, likely at a lower cost.
Acrylic still has some issues, Microsoft admitted, such as performance and speed. The company said it was working on ways to optimize the code to help the software run faster.
Users in Microsoft's forums, however, were a little more critical.
"This preview just shows me an unpolished, poorly laid out graphics editor that acts more like a glorified "Paint" rather than any type of competition to Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro," one user wrote.
But Microsoft says it is listening to the feedback, good and bad. "What people say here is going to shape the Acrylic program. So please don't expect too much in the beginning or be too quick to give up on us," said an Acrylic beta coordinator named Annie. "Your input could have a big impact on the program."
Microsoft Acrylic is available to download via FileForum.
And now Microsoft has a tutorial on Adobe PHotoshop
http://labnol.blogspot.c...-tutorial-on-adobe.html
Score: 0
|Well now that I have had a chance to play with this preview a little bit, I must say I'm impressed with it as a "technology preview" and am interested in seeing how this progresses towards release, but obviously it's not quite there yet and has a lot of rough edges.
I'm curious to see how Microsoft handles the Photoshop plugins-- hopefully they don't strip out that ability.
I hope they continue to improve the pixel-editing to make it a serious contender with Photoshop, since it already makes a great Illustrator competitor.
This is something that, with the necessary polish, I would gladly pay for if it meant maintaining Photoshop compatibility without the added expense of buying from Adobe.
Score: 0
|If Microsoft was smart they should put a basic version of this in longhorn to replace ms paint and then just sell plugins for more advanced users since many features seem to either be dropped or are going to be available for XP aswell they need some incentives for poeple to upgrade.
Score: 0
|sorry, about the extra clicks.
Score: 0
|For the home user this is useless.
Something like Paint Shop Pro is much better for someone who tinkers around with pictures.
I never understood why people use PhotoShop to work on general stuff like pictures of the dog that's just inefficient.
Score: 0
|For the home user this is useless.
Something like Paint Shop Pro is much better for someone who tinkers around with pictures.
I never understood why people use PhotoShop to work on general stuff like pictures of the dog that's just inefficient.
Score: 0
|Acrylic is an almost UNCHANGED version of CreatureHouse Expression, which is DAZZLING if you give it an hour to see what it's capable of.
Marktomi, Expression was always able to use Photoshop plugins. Much of the bitmap stuff is greyed out in the Acrylic beta, so I couldn't tell you if that's still the case, but MS would be really shooting themselves in the foot to remove that feature, since Pshop plugins have become a de facto graphic plugin format.
I have no idea why the default installation of the Acrylic beta chooses to hide the layout of toolbars that was default in Expression. It's not like they've really changed anything, and since Expression/Acrylic is not immediately intuitive, the fact that the most useful toolbars are hidden by default is absurd. But the program is truly incredible, and was very costly when a private product.
Score: 0
|It is not so much about the rest of the UI as it is about the plugins. If it can't use the *thousands* of PS plugins (or provide relatively free replacements) then it won't win.
There is almost as much niche as there is market.
Score: 0
|Mark, you just nailed it. In certain categories, to compete you have to be better, and when you read the developers' comments in the Acrylic forums, they are serious about bringing competition to Photoshop. But they're also realistic enough to understand it won't be done in the first couple of versions. Millions of users are looking for an affordable alternative to Photoshop, but not at the cost of quality. (NitroPDF is currently finding out how much work it takes to meet, much less exceed, an established standard like Acrobat Pro/Standard enough to get users to switch.)
Score: 0
|Once again, who wrote the headline? Just because Acrylic can open and export to PSD doesn't MEAN it's "taking on Photoshop." Better to think of this as the second attempt at PhotoDraw, which had some very clever features, but was so fat and bloated that it collapsed under its own weight. Can't BetaNews report anything without a silly "drudge-like" headline attached?
Score: 0
|*sigh*
Score: 0
|More to the point, it's NOT immediately a Photoshop competitor, it's an Illustrator competitor... however, by the time it's finished, if they continue their pixel-based editing, it will be a competitor to both.
I think it looks promising, but they really do have a ways to go.
Score: 0
|Two words:
Use GIMP!
Score: 0
|true that.
Score: 0
|GIMP is every bit as good unless you work with graphics professionally, even then it's good enough in some cases.
Score: 0
|Adobe won't care, until this is a freebie / $50. Hey, I sure would like a program that's close to Photoshop, but something I wouldn't need to crack.
Nice call cement; competition is good. Now if Apple would just not DRM its OS, we'd be at total chaotic software wars again. Viva the 90's!
Score: 0
|Fools, this is not taking Photoshop, it's taking Illustrator
Score: 0
|Actually, it appears they're looking to do both... it's primarily vector-based now, but it is also implementing decent (although currently slow) pixel-based graphics manipulation.
Score: 0
|Sweet! This should keep competition going when the Adobe/Macromedia merger completes.
I was beginning to wonder if anyone would step up.
Score: 0
|Won't be able to try this 'til tonight, but it's based off of Creature House Expression 3 -- one heck of a program. It's still a free download of a once pricey product. http://www.microsoft.com...s/expression3_home.aspx
Score: 0
|Able to open PDF files eh? Finally--don't care how it works, goodbye Acrobat Reader!
Score: 0
|Amen, now if only the adobe pdf format would just dissapear all together...
Score: 0
|Whats wrong with PDF format?
Score: 0
|Nothing. It's the Adobe Reader that's a bit slow, but after you do the trick with the plugins that are unnecessary, it works pretty well.
Score: 0
|I have Adobe 7 and it is a lot faster than 6. But if you really don't care for the adobe products, it seems to me there are other alternatives out there.
Score: 0
|The format is extremely "limited" ... even with the full-featured Professional edition of Acrobat... You still have to create your document in a separate program... "print it" to PDF format... and then open the document in Acrobat for "touch ups" and form-creation.
But wait, you can create a form ... that can't be saved by your users, only printed. Unless, of course, you want to buy the $30,000 Acrobat Reader Extensions edition of Document Server, and then you can allow users to save their files. So next time you download your IRS tax forms... just keep in mind where your tax dollars are going. (Yes, I priced this out recently for my job when I needed to do this for 3 lousy forms, but you can only buy a minimum of 500 uses (not useRs) at $60/piece.
Did I mention that the Acrobat reader is extremely bloated and slow? Acrobat 5 and 6 took at least 30+ seconds to load up, then rendering documents was masochistically slow.
Acrobat 7.0 is better... but it is still got too many "features" that just aren't needed in a read-only document format. Seriously, why is Javascript necessary in a read-only document format that is mostly commonly used as documentation?
As one other user states, yes, there are alternatives that are reasonable... such as various web-format forms like HTML, PHP, ASP, CGI, XML, etc etc.
Score: 0
|But what's up with all these comments in favor of monopoly?
It's like being blind and accepting that you MUST pay $120+ for a OS, just like you did 5 years ago (piece of software)... while you pay a third for a WAY MORE POWERFUL piece of hardware (... of course, you have the argument of "software includes legacy support"... and hardware does not?) DUH!
Anyway... who can we convince to look at the whole picture if probably they DON'T actually purchase what they defend? :\
Score: 0
|PDF is only limited on the Windows platform out of the box unless you have given Adobe a considerable sum or you hunt for free software. It's by no means limited, the entire Mac GUI is Postscript which is basically just a PDF. On the Linux platform PDF is almost completely integrated out of the box.
Score: 1
|Yeah, yay for Mac & Linux... but like most people, I still prefer to use formats and applications that don't cause me to scream obscenities about their creator, which is why I try to refrain from using anything other than Photoshop in terms of Adobe unless I just absolutely have to (which thankfully, isn't too often).
Score: 0
|I don't blame you, i'm not a fan either. It does come in handy now and again though.
Score: 0
|I don't think any post here supported a monopoly... do try and stay on topic, since the rest of us are talking about Acrylic which is a graphics program being developed by Microsoft, not Reading Railroad...
Score: 0
|I've used Expression for a few years and wouldn't be without it. MS have done nothing helpful with the software as of yet - even removing all the drawing tools except the brush. Living Cel (an animation variant) but MS took over before it's conclusion. E3 is the best and puts the clunkiness and pure jargon laden Adobe illustrator into the dark ages. It's a tool for image creation not pixel based editing. You can save images as bitmaps etc no problem. Give the freebie a go (not acrylic)we paid for it before the rot set in!
Score: 0
|