July 11, 2005.

Intro/History

Microsoft's beta product, code-named Acrylic, is a combo vector/pixel graphics-editing program with Adobe Photoshop-like features. It's based on Expression, which Microsoft purchased from Creature House in 2003. Expression started life off as a vector-editing program and a companion to Painter, before that program was sold to Corel. The Microsoft End User License Agreement states that this product will expire on December 31, 2005 OR when the software is released for sale. The program is available as a free 77MB download from Microsoft's site.

On first launch, you're reminded of the program's Beta status by the unsubtle background pattern of the workspace (the word 'BETA' is infinitely repeated). The still-limited tool set, paltry effects/filters, and slow response speed seems to confirm this.

Although Acrylic can open files of many formats, when saving Acrylic offers only one format right now- .XPR files. You can, however, export to Adobe Illustrator .AI, PDF, or EPS. It's also unclear what kind of plugins will work with Acrylic: attempting to install an industry-standard Photoshop plugin yields no result. Moving and panning around within a document is a little unintuitive; there are no scroll bars, and you must use the hand tool or spacebar shortcut key.

Bitmap and Pixel-Pushing

When you open a bitmap image, Acrylic offers some familiar tools: selection box marquee, lassos, magic wand, smudge/blur/sharpen, clone stamp, eyedropper, paint bucket fill, gradient, etc. It may not be as robust as Photoshop, but it's a start. One impressive addition uncommon to Photoshop is the RedEye Brush. It desaturates pixels (particular their red channel) and is useful for removing redeye from photos, albeit bluntly. Of course, Adobe's products can do this too, but Acrylic's GUI offers it in a much more prominent place for newcomers.

Vector Editing

When opening a vector graphics file (Currently has problems with some .AI files, doesn't support Macromedia Freehand files) Acrylic offers an entirely different set of tools: stroke, path, pen, point controls, and other Illustrator-like vector tools.

Conclusion

My overall impression is that this is a fair program for a beta. It can't compete with Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator but all Microsoft products take 2 or 3 releases before their contenders in their respective fields of competition. For right now, Acrylic is a fun toy to look at, but I see no reason why any web designer would want to suffer through using it as their main tool.

July 11, 2005.