Not as good as I hoped unfortunately....

I've downloaded lots of free fonts in the past, and hoped this would boost my collection, but it was fairly disappointing. It's more like clipart than the downloadable fonts I've used, and although there are a lot of great headlines, you'd be hard pressed to use more than one or two ever, as they are very specfic. Also, this software has an American lifestyle bias, and this limits it's British usefulness.

A fantasic web design tool.

Microsoft Expression Web is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and general web design program by Microsoft, aimed at designers rather than developers. It provides a powerful integrated development environment combining drag and drop with hand crafted code, all in all it is aimed squarely in opposition to Adobe Dreamweaver and manages to beat this stalwart of web design tools in its ease of use and manipulation of CSS styles.
Expression Web is focused on the needs of professional Web designers seeking to build high-quality, standards-based Web sites for companies. It provides support for integrating XML, CSS 2.1, ASP.NET 2.0, XHTML, XSLT and JavaScript into sites. Expression Web uses its own standards-based rendering engine, the same as is used by Visual Studio. Microsoft claims that Expression Web's rendering engine currently provides the most accurate standards-compliant rendering on the market, especially CSS rendering and I whole heartedly agree with this. One of the key benefits, if you work as part of a team is the project file structure is the same for Expression web as it is for visual studio; so it is possible to share the same code base between developers and designers.
It is not a replacement for Microsoft FrontPage as many people believe FrontPage has been renamed SharePoint Designer. It is part of the Expression Studio suite.

INVASIVE AND DAMAGING

I had to remove this software when, as described by a previous reviewer, Internet Explorer 7 started to act strangely and I also started to lose my ability to browse online.

The program itself works well - you get fast and efficient conversion. The major negative for me, however, is that this software tries to take over your entire computer. My anti-virus warned me at every Startup that this program wanted to launch its own 'Registry Controller'. It also makes itself the default programme for opening PDFs - over-writing Acrobat's rights. You get a new, dedicated Menu Bar in IE which has one single PDF button on it that you can't move to the main Menu Bar.

Lots of niggly draw-backs that forced me to simply remove this software and restore my system to an earlier Backup. I'm now looking on Amazon for a better piece of kit to convert to PDF.

Absolutely fantastic!

That's it!
OK, since you want more detail, here goes. Comic Life is an extremely simple program to use and, when you've tried it for a couple of minutes, addictive. You choose a page layout ... from early comics, through manga, to futuristic/modern. You then browse either a folder of pictures or your iPhoto library (did I say it was MAC only? There are plaintive cries over at plasq.com for a PC version) and drop them into the boxes. Resizing and clipping done automatically, although some resizing and rotating is possible.
If you are running Tiger on your mac there are also filters available to make the photos more"comic-booky". Then add captions and speech balloons and you're away. The final thing can be exported to several graphics formats, HTML, or even directly sent to your .Mac account.
Who would use such a quirky piece of software? Well, I thought it would get old quickly, until I thought about it. Yes, simple comics out of photos are a bit"jackie" photo story but what about any scrapbookers out there? How about step by step instructions for replacing the battery on an iPod? As a teacher I have used it as a way of reminding students how to carry out their experimental work.

Go on. Download a copy for yourself. Have a play. You will be hooked!

i didnt buy it off amazon

but the software is brilliant, the premium package has everything for what i need, highly recommend

The bee's knees for digital art

For what is now an industry standard title for digital art, this is a very good price and you get a lot of bang for your buck! To use it, you do need to own a graphics tablet - to get the most from it, you need a Wacom tablet, which is expensive - but I get by just fine with a Trust 400-V2 Wireless tablet which cost me about £40.

The goal of Painter is to simulate natural media on your computer and it does exactly what it says. Best of all though, is the simulation of oil colour, everything from dirty brushes, and the impasto texture - and every feature of the brushes is subject to your control. All that control looks a little daunting at first, but as a newcomer to Painter, I've found most of it quite intuitive to pick up and the manual contains nine tutorials that take you through some of the functions. I've also been suprised by how intuitive the actual brushes are to use, it starts to feel very natural very quickly. Don't think that this is only for traditional art images though. There are vector layers and the liquid ink in particular lends toward some impressive graphic images that would make Illustrator users drool.

There is a good chance that you will want to use this with either photographic material or images created in a 3D program such as Poser. (I use Poser 6 as an ideal partner) If this is the case, then you will find it remarkably fast to create natural media versions of you images. Of course, you can use Photoshop plug-ins to achieve this to some extent but this method always looks like a filter effect. The advantage of using Painter, is that you are making those brush strokes yourself and this input from you is what makes it all work. When you create a clone image, you set up your brushes to sample their colour, not from the colour pallet but from the picture you are cloning, it then places a sheet of virtual tracing paper over this image as a guide to your paining - all you have to worry about is your choice of brush and brush strokes.

If that sounds like a super quick solution, I'm afraid it isn't. There is no 'make art' button, you do have to do some work. What this is, is the best tool for the job. Nothing else comes close.

All in all, this is one investment you will never regret with endless possibilities for image creation and manipulation.

Oil paintings fron digital photo's

Having read the review in"digital photo art" which ran to three pages, where they thourghly recommended this product, I was not disappointed when the product arrived and I'd installed it. Very clever piece of software allows you to take a digital image and then transform it into a watrecolour, oil painting or a variety of other styles. Take a little time to get used to this and it will be very rewarding.
Very good, glad I bought it, I can thourghly recommend.

Instant results

ARCON has no steep learning curve and allows for non-qualified CAD users like myself to very quickly produce instant results.

In 2D mode create your plans by accurately dragging and dropping elements such as walls, doors and windows. There is also a room planning tool allowing you to quickly place walls to further modify. If you want to create new floors, you can easiliy do this by transferring all elements from existing floor to further modify.

The visualisations created in ARCON are very impressive. In 2D mode you simply click a button and hey presto you have a 3D model. Furnish the model with choice of objects and textures from catalogue. You can even walk through your project and experiment with lighting conditions. Collision control stops you walking through walls.

Placing furniture objects is easy and can be modified to suit e.g. size and orientation. I suggest placing objects in plan view as manual suggests - this is much easier to control and position objects. Some objects e.g. kitchen units can even snap to one another.