4 comments about Freeverse LineForm Modern Vector Illustration (Mac).

1. Figured I'd submit a review since there are none here yet...
   
   I am new to using these sorts of programs. For all my design work at home I have in the past been forced to use very ghetto programs, so this is a great upgrade. And the price is certainly right. I've used it only on a couple projects so far, in combo with the MacAlly IceCad. The program is great and does what I need it do to. I am very happy that it has decent text editing capabilities, since I do a lot of logo work. And the 'convert to bezier' and 'convert to outline' options have proven very useful. Not to mention it loads at light-speed.
   
   I'll have to get back and update when I've been able to play around more (but there is plenty of buzz about this program on the web!).
   
   So my verdict: Wonderful for someone who wants a fairly sophisticaed design program, but doesn't want to shell out the tons of cash most require. I'm not versed in Photoshop/Illustrator, so I can't compare to those, but it certainly stands on its own very well.



2. This is probably one of the best software products I've ever seen for the creative artist or business person. I had been trying the 30 day free trial and after a week, I had created so many logos and animated characters for my business that I couldn't wait to get the whole program. I've been able to use it in conjunction with other programs like Comic Life and even word processing programs. This program is one of the reasons I am always trying to sell my friends on Mac and why I will never use anything else. There is nothing that even comes close to this program for ease of use, adaptability and creative potential. And I can say this now that I have the program, but at twice the price, it would still be cheap for what you get. I suggest you go to their website and download the trial version first. I think you'll see what I'm saying is true.



3. I'm sure there are more feature rich drawing programs but I just wanted one that would allow me to manipulate text for a simple website logo and to build some texty gifs. This program was cheap and did the job though it has a couple of quirks, which you could file under mildly irritating rather than very annoying.



4. "So you are going to buy a Mac?"
   
   "Yah. I love the way they work and the software tends to be intuitive."
   
   "I agree, but my wife wants a graphics product and unless she is willing to buy Adobe, there isn't anything that does the job."
   
   That is where I started when I bought a new iMac for my medical office. I wanted to use the machine to create some graphics and use it to run the business. I expected that the graphics wouldn't be a problem, but a medical office--hmmmm.
   
   Surprisingly the business was no problem, but graphics? Think again.
   
   Cash solves any problem, but I was trying to be frugal. Adobe, wow! Price, wow! What about the amateur? Well, a little research yielded LineForm. It did almost everything I needed and for the most part it was and is the application I need.
   My only issue with the program is that I don't spend all my time creating computer graphics, so I don't commit to memory all the nuances of the software. Given ample time, I don't think LineForm would present any challenge in its interface design, but I get to it only occasionally. The power is definitely there, yet a "parttimer" doesn't have the flow at their fingertips. Normally I would go to the software help menu to answer a question about an operation, but LineForm is supported by only a meager 37 page pamphlet. A more robust discussion of the product's features still eludes me. I can use it for most of my simple needs, but the higher functions are a bit difficult to glean from trial and error alone.
   
   I expect LineForm could be everything I need and more, at a very reasonable price, if only I didn't also have to learn cryptography.

No comments about Web Easy Professional 6 Complete Web Design Studio.

2 comments about Art Explosion 525,000.

1. Finally, Nova Development has got it right, delivering an excellent antidote to the cheesy and outdated Art Explosion 250,000 collection. The Art Explosion 525,000 has been updated to reflect the more sophisticated aesthetic of the 1990s, with thousands more images in contemporary styles such as brushstroke and woodblock. In addition, Nova places no restrictions on the use of these images in commercial materials, unlike their nearest competitor, IMSI. This collection wins my vote.



2. Of all the collections I have sampled, this is the one I chose to purchase, and in two years I haven't regretted it. Most of the art is useful, but even with a half million images, there are topics which are not covered in useful depth. I wish there was a greater emphasis on complex vector illustration, and that it was possible to search electronically; you really have to use the bulky catalog to find something.
   Don't take this review as being too negative. If you are going to rely on a single collection, this is the one to get. The larger Art Explosion collections offer little more than extra variations on the images here, and most of the other publishers' mega-offerings are just junk.

5 comments about Paint Shop Photo Album 5 Deluxe [Old Version].

1. I currently use PSP8 at home and work and find it very strong so when I needed a photo program I turned to JASC. I had a project to do, pictures slideshow to music. While the image editing worked great, turning a group of pictures into a video slideshow didn't. Pictures were out of order which I had painstakenly put in a certain order and although I had created a video menu screen with music it failed to work in both my computer and home DVD player. If your instrested in video or DVD production I would look elsewhere.



2. I love Photo Album. It's so easy to use. The Quick Fix feature is worth the price of the program - it fixes all of my photos and is totally amazing. I also like the picture frames.
   
   I haven't made one of the hardcover books yet, but I do use it a lot to create greeting cards. I made one for my father with a picture of me and him. He loved it and it's so much more personal than a regular greeting card. Best of all, I made it in about 5 minutes before I went to work!



3. I first started using a digital camera in 1999. It was a $700 1 megapixel Epson, it was such a big deal then that Epson coined it 'The Megapixel' camera. The sofware included was 'Image Expert' by Sierra Imaging. ImageExpert was compact and very easy to use. It allowed me to accomplish 90% of my photography tasks. I've used the software it for the next 4 digital cameras and 2 computers. Never felt the need to upgrade or replace the software. Although once in a while I would use Photoshop to really work an image.
   
   I liked Image Expert very much and was trying to find the latest version of it. I couldn't find it initially since a few years is an eternity in the digital world. With a little help from Google, I was able to trace it to 'JASC PAINTSHOP PHOTO ALBUM 5'. Jasc Software, the makers of Paintshop Pro bought the rights of Image Expert from Sierra Imaging and called it 'Jasc Aftershot' eventually it was changed to it's current name. In October 2004, Jasc Software was bought out by Corel, makers of WordPerfect, CorelDraw etc. I was pleased that this software is part of Corel as it would certainly guarantee support, quality and longevity.
   
   I have 4 days left in the trial version I'm ready buy it and to share my experiences:
   
   The first thing you'll notice is a very clean and simple interface with pleasant colors and large buttons. The top of the screen is your traditional Windows Pulldown menu's, (file, edit, view ...tools, help ...etc) so there's inmediate familiarity. Right below you'll find four large tabs: Organize, Enhance, Create and share. Clicking each Tab will reveal a separate set of related tools buttons. The program is very intuitive and these tabs pretty much summarizes the software.
   
   Tool highlights (This is the sequence that I use) :
   
   1. Cropping: click on the crop button, a cropping box appears on the image, click and drag the edges of the box, click the ok button and that's it.
   
   2. Quick Fix: a one button tool that will eliminate the 'haze' found in many digital photos, It's similar to the 'autolevels' tool in Photoshop. I suspect that there's some sharpening and contrast enhancement also. Unless you have extreme lighting and colorcast situations the 'QuickFix' button is all you need!
   
   3. Red Eye: Never used a redeye tool it until now. Simply click on the redeye tool, pan and zoom, place the circle on eye, click and voila! Like magic.
   
   4. Keywords: open image, select key work on left panel (birthday, vacation ...etc) or type your own. Once you save the image the keywords are imbeded. You can then retrieve the image by keywords, no need to mess around with filenaming.
   
   3. Print Templates: This is my favorite feature. Navigate to templates, choose your template and the software will populate it with images of your current folder. My favorite template is an 8.5x11 sheet containing two 4x6's and several wallet and mini wallet sizes.
   
   Well that's it! I recommend this software without hesitation!



4. Some of the other reviewers have here have spelled out where the program works well so you can consider this the CONS review.
   
   1. The biggest complaint is speed. Opening, editing and building thumbnails are all agonizingly slow. My pictures are stored on a server in my home so there is some understandable delay. But I also use Paint Shop Pro 6 (PSP6) which builds thumbnails faster that I can see them and opens and edits pictures far faster. My wife gets so frustrated with PSPA5s slow speed that she ends up opening and editing in PSP6 and then I loose all EXIF data. Last night added a new folder of about 45 images and it took at least 3 minutes to build all the thumbnails.
   
   2. The next thing is opening folders. PSPA5 calls folders albums. This is a nice idea but is it really necessary to take a thing we all know and love and try to convince us it is something else? Anyway, jumping to folders is a little annoying. PSPA4 would not open into the last used folder if that folder was on a network share. That apparently is the case with PSPS5 as well.
   
   3. Also when you navigate the folders it attempts to catalog every folder you click on. There should be someway of getting to the folders without having to wait for every other folder to get cataloged. You can use the +- tree expanders but they are small and you find yourself clicking the folder anyway. Again the speed issue is a thing.
   
   4. While I am thinking of folders, renaming an album (folder) can be frustrating. I occasionally get errors saying the folder cannot be renamed - especially if you are renaming to correct an upper case/lower case problem. I then have to edit the folder name in Windows and wait for PSPA5 to re-catalog the folder. Again the speed issue is a thing.
   
   5. The default operation when dragging pictures between folders is to copy them. Quite by accident I found that if you hold the key while dragging and dropping then the program moves the pictures. I think the default should be to move them or at least allow the user to set a default. This would emulate the basic Windows interface that we are all used to. In addition, when moving files while holding the key I frequently get errors. If I just keep moving the same files again and again eventually they all move. So obviously there is no real problem or they wouldn't end up all moving.
   
   6. Imaging sorting is all over the place. I can find no standard that is used to sort images. It makes me think they are sorted in the order they were written to the hard drive. Even the most basic sort you would think of, alphabetical, is not used be default. In fact there is no default sorting. It doesn't even keep the sort order from the last time you opened the folder. After speed this has got to be the most annoying thing about SPSA5 (and 4 by the way). At least they added the ability to sort by Date Taken. But again when you sort it takes forever. At the very least each folders sort should be remembered and reused between startups. Better yet would be the option to set a default sort for all folders.
   
   7. Red-eye - This is pathetic. I tried last night to fix red-eye on a lot of these 45 pictures I mentioned above. The pictures were taken inside in a dimly lit room so there was lots of red-eye. I think PSPA5 was able to fix about 10% of them without making the people look like zombies. On a scale of 1-10, the Quick Red Eye function is a 2 and the Advanced Red Eeye function is a 3. I am really disappointed with this.
   
   8. Network support is terrible. As I mentioned above, building thumbnails of a network folder is slow, the program won't re-open a network folder on startup and then I find that is apparently doesn't like Windows Offline Files and Folders. I set some of my picture folder for Offline Use so I could take them with me on my laptop to show other people while on the road. So when on the road and in Offline mode, PSPA5 takes even longer to load. I get frequently errors on the first startup attempt, only to start successfully on the second attempt. Occasionally it won't start at all unless I restart the PC. In the year 2004 when more people are using networks at home and sharing images, music and other content among multiple PCs, media players and other new devices, any program like this should work flawlessly in that environment.
   
   9. Some of the sharing tools are pretty poor -
   - Some of the web templates look like they were designed by 8th graders
   - The slide show is still rough and shows the Jasc advertisement when run on a PC. There is no apparent way to bring back the slideshow toolbar once it is closed.
   - The Photo CD function only allows you to make one CD layout at a time. There is no way to save a project and start a new one. If you need to stop one you are working on to do another you must loose all your work. Not to mention the poor reliability of making a working CD. You can only use one song per show instead of multiples (I got around this by merging a couple MP3s to get the right length and not replay the same song)
   
   10. Support - in the many months since release they have come out with all of 1 update, 5.01. With all these potential fixes they couldn't come up with a few more updates to improve the user experience. Oh sorry, I forgot, they are saving them for version 6 for which they expect us to pay.
   
   11. Online forums - Jasc has some nice looking forums where users can share their experiences (translated: Complaints) and Jasc has apparently been nice enough to setup these forums and then ignore them completely. Users post all kinds of questions, feature requests, technical issues and the only response they get is from other users with the same problems. These forums may be the number one place to find out about competing products. I gave up on the forums months ago.
   
   
   So after all that where does one go if not PSPA5? I am not sure. I have tried several other photo managers/editors and they are all mediocre at best. This market is not mature enough to say there is a clear winner. PSPS5 covers a lot of bases and the others I have tried all have equally if not even more annoying "features". The others all have their advantages but one cannot spend 40-50 bucks each on 3-4 different programs just to get all the features you want.
   
   A programmer book I read a portion of (Joel on Software) talked a lot about user expectation being a huge part of a successful user interface. And user expectations have been set by the Windows environment. So when a program comes along and accomplishes similar functions as Windows but in a different way the user gets frustrated and thinks the software is poorly written. The programmer can get on their soapbox all they want and preach about why the Windows method is inferior and theirs is superior - but in the end if the program doesn't perform the way the users expects, the software is perceived as flawed and inferior. The products in this market segment suffer from programmer piety a great deal.
   
   Maybe you should just print all your photos and put them in real, touchable, tangible photo albums - ya know, those book-like things you used to buy to store your photos?
   
   Good luck



5. I replaced my computer and reinstalled PSPA5 deluxe which I'd bought from Amazon last year. I received several error messages during the installation but the program worked. I tried to install the downloaded upgrade but got an error message that my version was not valid. Corel recently bought Jasc so I went to their site and, rather than pay per incident for tech support, I described the problem and asked for help which was free and promised the next business day. After two weeks with no reply. I sent them another e-mail and waited another week with no reply. I then sent them a fax, on the belief that my ISP might be blocking their reply, and asked for a faxed response or snail mail help. NOTHING! Spending real money for PSPA 5 apparently buys you a decent program and being totally ignored by Jasc's new owners, Corel. I gave the program a low rating because I believe that prompt e-mail support is an essential part of the cost of the program. I uninstalled PSPA 5 and will buy nothing new from JASC/COREL. Picasa 2 from Google works well and is free.

1 comments about COSMI 3D CAD Graphic Mapping Program (PC).

1. Do not buy this or any Cosmi or Starshine software. It installs Spyware on your computer and it will take an expert to get rid of it. Don't make the same mistake I did!

4 comments about Microsoft Publisher with Digital Imaging 2003 [Old Version].

1. A publishing program for under $200 that works great. If you are comfortable working with Microsoft Office programs, then you'll find it easy to adapt to Microsoft Publishing. I've been using this program for about a year without any problems. Since using it, I've found that any other variations for card, flyer, newsletter creation are almost impossible. After feeling like you can do "anything" in this program, it's hard to deal with a different platform.



2. I'm finding it a little difficult to do what I want - I want to create my own designs, and the stock designs are not what I want. I found one that I am using for my business cards, but is there a way to make up my own? Also, I just haven't had time to get on and learn all there is to learn about the program, so that is my fault.



3. I recently became an editor for our Gem & Mineral Club and put out a ten page newsletter each month. Publisher is wonderful and easy to use and has been a great help. I also use Publisher for making mailing labels for our members. I have found using the help feature useful and have found solutions to my problems. I like the clip art included and use it to make the newsletter more interesting.



4. I don't understand Microsoft selling such complicated software and not including a manual for it!!! There is a comprehensive manual for the digital imaging portion, but nothing for the Publisher. I have not been able to find a manual anywhere else either. Plus, it is not always possible for a person to go online to Office Online.
   
   CJ Gribner

1 comments about Microsoft Digital Image Standard 2006 [LB].

1. This is a good product, but it doesn't have the "Smart Eraser" or "Blending Brush" that the Free Trial has. I was disappointed. It really didn't have much that the free version doesn't have. But an easy to use and learn product.

1 comments about LP/Tape to CD/MP3 Conversion Software Suite-Convert LPs and Tapes to Wav & MP3, Remove Pops, Clicks, Hum & Hiss, Break Files into Tracks, Burn to CD, Export to MP3 Player.

1. I was amazed at the ease with which I was able to record my records and tapes with this system! You plug everything in, set the parameters, and push the record button--and presto! beautiful, clean recordings (when the record is clean). I was able to remove a lot of noise and extra sounds from not-so-clean records. Burning to CD was also easy, and I was able to make a play list of just the tracks I wanted from several different records.

3 comments about Music Studio 11 Deluxe.

1. I am a total beginner. I have no clue about why I can create a midi using the midi studio, yet when I save it, changing it from a MAGIX midi to a standard midi, all the midi instruments turn into nothing but piano. As with my Cakewalk software, the tutorial provided here is completely useless to me. All I want to do is create midi files!



2. This software product is unusable to the everyday consumer. It is not user friendly. The instruction booklet is clear but actually using the software is more difficult.



3. I don't know who is having a difficult time using this program, because it's pretty much as user friendly as audio editing, mixing and mastering can be. The truth is, it is ridiculous how many features you get in this package for the money, just awesome (it even supports VST plug ins)! It's not full of glitches, does pretty much everything under the sun and is fairly easy to use. At this price level you're not looking at pro quality in the effects area, but Magix is an excellent option for one entering into music production.

1 comments about QuickStart T-Shirt Studio.

1. Poor Graphics, NOT user friendly. Just a
   very bad program. DO NOT PURCHASE.