1 comments about Miraizon Cinematize 2.

1. excellent little app, though over priced, it does what I could do on linux for free, but since I have many apps which meet common ground on the hideous OS from redmond (xp pro), I decided to go with it.
   In my tests with some minidvds (Vob mpeg2 codec which is a pain to encode) it created three quicktime files, one which played with both audio and video but could not be edited in Avid xpress pro (video only no sound) yet the other two files were one audio and one video which were easily combined and edited with Avid, and with Vob, separating the video and audio had always been the way to do things.
   
   so three stars, does what it is told, and is a quick solution. took away two stars because the price is a bit much. Now, if it had the ability to encode a variety of codecs, well....

5 comments about ClickArt 750,000.

1. I have complaints about everything in this package. The extra software did not work and the whole package turns out to be a continual advertisement for Broderbund to buy more online products and subscriptions. Like the users above, I expected the box to contain the graphics advertised. It is just as well, since I found most unusable anyway. Junk. Cute junk but junk. Trite.

   This has angered me so much that I will never purchase any product from Broderbund again.




2. The images are not beautiful and the software is not easy to use. I am very disapointed in the software and it is too bad that you cannot return the opened product!



3. This program is SIMPLE to use. The fact that many of the images are online is OK with me (and should be for most broadband users) because this way I do not have as many disks to swap or room taken up on my hard drive! The images are wonderful and they go on forever. How can you not find what you are looking for with this many images? This really is a great product.



4. Three quarters of a million clips and none of them graceful. All jarring junk and limited at that. Hard to use. Editing not possible. And now I have an icon on my desktop so I can order more with no trouble. (I don't think that will happen.) Still trying to find out what the web clip art is all about--beyond me. Regret I did not order through Amazon. I would have had a heads up and not gone forward.



5. Broderbund offers the worst customer service I've seen in years. Not only did the product refuse to install on a new all-Intel computer with Windows XP, it did so with a flashy notice that came on for a SECOND, declaring that I already had parts of it on the hard drive and would have to remove it before this Princessware would deign to continue with Installation.
   
   If this package does contain duplicates of other Clickart packages, it's because THEY are issuing duplicates. They're generating more cash by dividing up one large messy pool of graphics and selling overlapping bits of it. Their own software realizes this! It's amazing that the software refuses to work with its own subsets. They couldn't even bother to rename files? Or insert duplication management functions? What kind of crazy policy is that?
   
   I'm annoyed that this skinny little box contains mostly air anyway but the customer non-service put a capper on it. They run you round pages in circles. Finally, after clicking every possible button, you realize they only want email from folks who've bought the software directly from THEM, off their web site. I don't know why they bother to have retailers, if that's how they're going to treat customers. They're passing the buck to people who really shouldn't be the ones doing software support. It's Broderbund's mess, they should clean it up.

No comments about AutoCAD LT 2009 - 5 users.

5 comments about Microsoft Publisher 2002.

1. One of the biggest sins Microsoft committed with her Office XP Application Suite is removing the Publisher from its Professional edition without lowering the price. (The Professional edition of Office 2000 has Publisher, in addition to all other Applications present in XP Professional). But that apart, I must say that this Publisher 2002 works fine. It is fast, very easy to customize, and yields high quality Desktop Publishing outputs. Still, a close scrutiny revealed that its 'improvements' over the 2000 edition is only marginal. The difference between the two is mainly on the interface. Hence, I regard this 2002 edition as a great value for anyone upgrading a 9X version; but not for the 2000 one.



2. I agree...poor girl! I am a real newbie (massage therapist turned computer user) and have found this program to be a web creator's nightmare. I think I'll cruise on down to the freeware sites to see what I can scare up there. I want a fairly simple web page that links to a few more. For those of us that know the anatomy of the human body better than HTML...I would stay away from THIS BEAST. It will make the less confident feel even more so! And by the way.... these other sugar coated reviews...does Microsoft pay some slouch to type them up all day, or what? Nauseating!!!!!



3. My goodness, you would think a $10 billion company could do better than this.

   They talk about double sided printing...

   You CANNOT even "print even" or "print odd" pages. You have to sit in front of your computer and print EACH and EVERY page manually.

   You cannot print to an image file (well, yes you can, but the low resolution makes the file unusable)

   You cannot print to a PDF

   Printing to a post script file cut off half the image on one of the projects!

   This product assumes your printing service uses Publisher.
   Guess what... most don't

   David




4. This Microsoft product may be fine. But I do not recommend buying it through Amazon.com. The seller, softmall.com, is totally unresponsive to e-mail queries. When I asked to have my order cancelled, I got no reponse from them. And Amazon.com was unwilling to help resolve the issue. It has been 6 week, and I have not received the product, nor have I received a refund.



5. I have Windows 98SE and unfortunately this is what was the best that was available for this operating system. With all these newer versions of similiar programs only functional with Windows XP, my computer will soon be completely obsolete.

4 comments about TV SlideShow Studio.

1. I recently purchased TV SlideShow Studio and spent many hours creating a presentation that would be shown at my daughter's wedding reception. What I found after the effort was that, despite periodically saving my work -- or so I thought -- NONE of my work was saved.
   
   Abacus Publishing's Tech Support, after waiting more than a week after I asked how to get a file to save properly, finally responded -- by noting that the problem was apparently known, and the problem would not appear in the upcoming Version 2 of the product. That, of course, did me no good whatsoever; I paid for a product that does not function properly.
   
   There are some very nice features in this product and it offers much promise, particularly given its relatively low cost. But if the presentation cannot be saved, what good does any of this do?
   
   Look elsewhere if you're seeking software to put together a presentation of your photographs.



2. I purchased this program to put together a 20 minute project. I also saved the project every 10 minutes only to find out after the program was closed that the file never actually saved. Lost hours of work. Avoid this software.



3. The Program is great and is working properly thank you for a speedy delivery, and for your services.



4. I recently purchased and installed TV Slideshow Studio 2.5 ... it was a BIG mistake!
   Every time I tried to select a transition from the transition screen by double-clicking, the program aborted with a 'memory could not be read' error.
   When I tried to create a VCD slideshow(NOT a VCD disk), the compression progress screen would abort with an 'Invalid Pointer' error.
   This program has many nice features, but it's definitely not ready for prime time! Save your money!

No comments about The Print Shop 22 Pro Publisher Deluxe Sb Cs By The Print Shop.

1 comments about Corel Print House.

1. I have had this product for years and have used it to make more cards, signs, invitations, etc. than you can imagine. It has a huge variety of images to use and tools to change things also. Totally worth it to buy this item! I couldn't to without it!

No comments about MY BUSINESS PUBLISHER.

No comments about Tchaikovsky's Musical Adventure Pod.

5 comments about Corel Painter 8 Windows/Mac.

1. As the other reviewer noted, Photoshop users will be on home ground here, but some basic Painter functionality seems to be lost. The "new" brushes are not really worth spending money for a new version, if you don't have any version of Painter already. Painter 7 is a fine program, with a vast functionality, though its learning curve is steep. Along with my compatriot, I mourn the loss of the capable and extremely useful expressions palette. The mixing window is fun, and I would suppose it to be useful to those who cannot mix colors easily. Once again, mixing, then eyedropper choosing was very easy before.

   The new brushes palette is not that hard to use, but what really new brushes are there? None that I can see. The Photoshop-like layout is not bad, but why change the interface so much, and not include some of Photoshop's best features? How about some really new filters that no version of Painter ever had? How about allowing difference, color, multiply, lighten, and so forth brush functions on the canvas, like Photoshop does? (If Painter 8 does this, I've missed it!)

   Now for the good... if a new user wants to get a Photoshop interface, then this is the program to get, considering it's half the price of Photoshop. For those who want Painter's wonderful brush engine, this version supplies a great deal of it at a great lowering in price from the earlier releases. This really is a fine program, capable of incredible raster graphics. The brushes are great, and the capabilities it presents for designing one's own brushes is a great plus. I like Adobe's interface, but I also liked Painter's interface. Six of one, half a dozen of these over here for me. By the way, the color choosing palettes are still the same as any of Painter's earlier releases, which is vastly superior to Adobe's anemic, hard to use color palette.

   Is Corel afraid Painter will supercede their raster graphics programs? (Corel Draw is a vector map graphics interface, hard to use, since it's a memory hog of colossal proportions.) I do not have the answer to that question. For my uses, I find Painter's earlier releases from 5 on up to and including 7 to be superior to ALL the other graphics programs I've ever used put together. That includes Adobe Photoshop, up to and inclusive of 6, Fauve Matisse, TV Paint, Ulead Photoimpact, XRes, Corel Photopaint, Pixia, Paint Shop Pro, and several others scarcely worth bothering to remember. All the named programs are fine, but only Ulead's program comes within sighting range of Painter for creating raster graphics. Adobe's fine program boasts excellent printing capabilities, and a suite of fine filters, but, even for editing photographs, I find Painter better, even this latest version.

   My opinion? Painter 8 is a fine program at a reasonable price compared to Adobe Photoshop and Painter 7. For those interested in serious computer graphics and creating art, I will highly recommend it.




2. Today, a creative professional can only notice how mature the graphics software industry has become, new software are offering more and more features that are using more and more computer resources, without being adding real marginal benefits. New upgrades are only to keep the products alive, on the expense of making them more cumbresome.

   Painter 8 is a different story altogether!
   Corel® has made a great effort to make this upgrade of a previously clunky yet powerful product, a much more versatile, standardised and user-friendly juggernault. Gone are the days where you have to hopelessly search among dozens of panels for a particular brush, style or method. A slick bar at the top dynamically changes according to the tool you're using, where you set the size, opacity, curviness..etc.
   Another thing that was greatly improved is the process of choosing the brush (that used to be very annoying with the old selective dimming). The brush selector is tucked at the upper right part of the screen (also in that slick bar,) in a much more logical and standardised way.
   One also has the feeling that painter 8 was given something similar to the Macormedia® MX treatment, where the palettes can be customised into different panels and the layout saved according to the project.
   The mixer panel IS useful, and is very consistant with the philosophy of this new painter release: the small things that make your work faster and stress-free. The os X over all performance is much snappier, not to mention the beefed-up photoshop compatibility, and o! have i mentioned that you get both a windows and a mac version with the license price ?

   In short, If you thought painter was too eccentric and boggy for you, this is the upgrade you've been waiting for. Its new slick interface made me thank God that Corel® had taken the torch from Metacreation.




3. Corel offers essentially no support for the Mac. According to their website, there is no support after 30 days, except for customer discussions which are inaccessible to OS X (because OS X will not accept websites beginning with "news"). The program in version 7 is incompatible with Wacom drivers, according to the Corel website. Our copy will not open at all in Panther. Furthermore, the supposed upgrade for version 7 will not download from the Corel website. Clearly, Corel is in trouble -- and why should you get involved and founder with a sinking ship?



4. I've been using Painter since it's very inception as "Sketcher"--a b&w version that was sold in a cigar box to imitate a sketcher's kit of charcoal and pencils. The ensuing versions added virtual artists' media like oils, chalks, pencils and pens and textured papers to allow digital artists to create some astounding work.

   Painter 8.0 is now marketed by Corel, and it's definitely been slimmed down; the loading time for installation was very fast, indicating that the program overhead had been lightened considerably. Some improved features:

   1. Mixer Palette allows mixing of colors interactively--a big plus. Before, you only had the option to mix colors with a kind of blending algorithm and no control at all.
   2. Brush controls now are on a slider panel; you pull down the brush after loading the type of brush (oil, water, chalk, for example) and then can change the size with the slider. No need to pull down a menu to do this.
   3. The watercolor brush has been improved tremendously; the effect is like watercolor and wash, not just a smeary or blurred effect. It looks wet.
   4. The Image Hose (a brush that sprays or paints images rather than a stroke of paint) now has a fun cousin; a brush that lays down a flat stroke of patterns in a similar way. You can paint with feathers, stucco pattern and this is a very good enhancement to the idea of a digital image brush. For the image hose, you load pre-created images as the nozzle or make a custom nozzle from your own images. The pattern brush uses pre-loaded patterns (like the stucco) or you can create a pattern, capturing it from a graphic, and load it instead. This pattern brush is a wonderful addition.

   This program got an award from MacWorld (it comes in Win or Mac versions) and I think it deserves the award. While I use Photoshop Elements for photo manipulation, I still prefer Painter for digital art creation. This new version really impressed me.




5. I come from years of experience using Photoshop. I was VERY pleased to find out that the interface is VERY similar to Photoshop, so the learning curve was very very low. I find it extremely easy to learn.

   I find it interesting that in some areas it is the BEST program, and in other areas it stinks. It has by far the most powerful painting/drawing brushes anywhere. Simply amazing. It puts Photoshop to shame. But then simple things like Transforms (rotate, scale, etc) are just plain bad! For example, when you scale or rotate something, all you see is the bounding box... you cannot see how the image looks until you commit to it. Also, if you have a layer mask on a layer, and you then scale or rotate the layer, the layer mask is deleted.

   If you're looking to use Painter as a total replacement for Photoshop, you will be disappointed. Use Painter for your artwork (painting/drawing), and do most everything else in Photoshop!

   4 of 5 stars is pretty high... that's because the brushes are soooo good! :)

   John