Link via PC Pro
Where MindManager 9 steps out in front is with its advanced business features, in particular its integration with Microsoft Office 2010. The first sign of this is its toolbar, which looks identical in style to Office 2010’s ribbon, right down to the backstage view, found under the File tab at the top left. This gives access to recent files and locations, print previews and so on. The familiar UI makes MindManager easy to get to grips with, but it isn’t here where the real power lies, it’s with the Microsoft Office, Outlook and Sharepoint integration.
MindManager 9 for Windows is available at an educational discount price of $149.
Link via PCWorld
Users of Snagit’s version 9 may well have wondered what else could be stuffed into a screen capture program already filled with so many features. Version 10 shows there’s plenty more–and they’re important tools, not just filler to make it look as if there’s reason to upgrade. The changes weren’t as drastic as between versions 8 and 9, but they’re still quite substantial.
The most important addition to Snagit 10 is the “All-in-One Capture” feature, which is a big time saver. Rather than setting up the type of capture ahead of time (window, full screen Web page, and so on), you can instead use the “All-in-One Capture” hotkey or icon, and then decide on the fly what to capture.
SnagIt 10 Education (boxed) Windows is available for $37.
SnagIt 10 Nonprofit/Government (boxed) Windows is available for $42.
Link via PCWorld
PersonalBrain (available in a Free Edition, as well as paid editions) is quite possibly most intuitive mind mapping utility on the planet. Beyond that, its user interface looks like something that came straight out of Star Trek, making it the nerdily coolest-looking mind mapping tool I’ve seen.
The primary unit of organization in the application is called a Brain (as you might expect). Each Brain is composed of thoughts–essentially, idea components, tasks, or goals–which can be created with a double-click and associated with one another freely. Thoughts connect to one another not merely in a parent-child hierarchy, but can cross-connect to other thoughts.
PersonalBrain 5.5 Pro is available from Creation Engine at an education discount price of $179.
Link via ars technica
It’s truly impressive that Photoshop CS5 is successful at adding a lot of useful, engineering-heavy features in CS5, all while porting over to a new and stable Cocoa 64-bit code-base on OS X. And it’s encouraging to see that a program that has no real competitors isn’t just being phoned in. Against the on-going daytime drama of “Apple vs. Flash,” Photoshop is still just a great program and CS5 is a worthwhile update for a broad cross-section of users. My complaints are about minor issues—things like the low-res preview in HDR Merge Pro or window layering with AIR filters—can be addressed in a x.1 update without really slowing people down in the meantime. Nine thumbs up.
Pros
- Stable and fast 64-bit release on OS X
- Local tone-mapping works very well
- HDR image-based lights for 3D rendering
- Wet media brushes with 3D preview
- Puppet Warp
- 3D type and path features with Repoussé
- Content-Aware Fill and Heal tools are exceptional
- New lens distortion correction with publicly updatable database
- Improved 3D texturing/mesh handling
- Finally has capable masking tools
- Camera RAW 6 and its much-improved noise reduction
Cons
- Low-res HDR Merge Pro preview is very limiting
- Ghost suppression in HDR Merge Pro has problems
- 3D workflows still very finicky
- Still has very weak OpenEXR format handling
- Lack of good multithreading for many slow operations
The Verdict
- After being thrown yet another Apple platform curveball, Adobe produces another compelling Photoshop release
More details in the 8-page review at ars technica.
Photoshop CS5 Extended Student & Teacher Edition is available at an educational discount price of $198 from Creation Engine.
Photoshop CS5 Extended Nonprofit/Education Edition is available at an educational discount price of $298 from Creation Engine.
Link via CNN.com
Photoshop has several outstanding new features — it’s probably worth the price of the upgrade just for the new Content Aware Fill tool, the 64-bit boost and the improvements to Camera RAW — but what really sells this release is amount of time it promises to save you.
Among our favorites workflow improvements: You can now adjust the opacity and fill percentages on multiple layers simultaneously; the Save for Web dialog is available in 16-bit mode (and handles downsizing to 8-bit automatically); and Photoshop has the ability to save layer styles as a default behavior that even persists across sessions.
Adobe has done an impressive job of focusing not just on the whiz-bang features, but on how photographers, designers and digital artists spend their time using Photoshop, and how making small changes can speed up their workflows.
Photoshop CS5 Extended Student & Teacher Edition is available at an educational discount price of $198 from Creation Engine.
Photoshop CS5 Extended Nonprofit/Education Edition is available at an educational discount price of $298 from Creation Engine.
Link via Lifehacker
If you’ve got the time to invest, Google’s SketchUp definitely pays you back with precision and customization. In SketchUp, you won’t run into something, like a custom-hung shelf, that’s hard to replicate in ready-to-roll, web-based tools.
- Strengths: It’s got many of the same 3D and solid object design powers as the commercial software used by engineers, but the interface is relatively easier to learn and get around. If you enjoy mousing your way though Google Earth, you can probably learn SketchUp’s controls without too much pain. Our feature on planning improvements in 3D with SketchUp provides a basic tutorial.
- Weaknesses: Unless you’re a perfectionist willing to take pictures of your paint, fabrics, and other designs and colors, SketchUp’s visual cues are going to be a rough draft. Even if you do have digital pictures galore as a reference, figuring out how to stretch them across SketchUp’s surfaces isn’t exactly intuitive.
- Best suited for: Physical projects needing a fairly accurate 3D view, and where color/design play a second-hand role.
Google SketchUp 7 is free.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 is available at a student discount price of $49.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 is free for instructors.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 Lab licenses are available at a school discount price of $15.
Link via Gizmodo
The Wacom Intuos4 was quite a leap from the Intuos3. It doubled the pressure sensitive levels, and it added multifunction Touch Ring trackpad, on-screen radial menus, and eight user-definable buttons with OLED tags—called ExpressKeys—in a thin, ultralight 2.2-pound package. The Wacom Intuos4 Wireless has all those characteristics, and they work equally as well over the Bluetooth connection.
With a sightly smaller working surface than the Medium model—8 x 5 inches versus the 8.8 x 5.5 inches of the cable-bound model—the wireless tablet is a pure joy to use. The 2048 levels of pressure sensitiveness, requiring only 1 gram of pressure to start painting vs the 10 grams of the previous version, offer the best real drawing simulation of any of the tablets I’ve ever tried. It feels like the real thing, with the slightest touch transferred to the screen as if it was real media. The brushstrokes are as smooth and precise as the real thing, and the tablet never misses a single beat, no matter how fast I try to move its very comfortable stylus—which comes with different tips for different surface feedback.
Intuos4 Wireless Tablet Medium is available from Creation Engine for $375.
Link via VizWorld.com
ASGVIS has now officially released the new VRay for Sketchup for both Mac & PC’s, including new support for ambient occlusion, IES lights, and improved parsing times. This is also the first official version that runs natively in the Mac OSX environment.
Here’s what our beta testers are saying about the new V-Ray for SketchUp:
“Amazingly fast! Instead of rendering one image per night I’m cooking five in one day. Great work ASGVIS, rendering on Mac is smooth. I’m sure my interiors will benefit from the new features as IES!” – Johannes Roevens
“The addition of Ambient Occlusion in V-Ray for SketchUp adds a new level of realism for architectural visualizations, making the details and shadows in interiors “pop” and creating an instant convincing dirt effect to exterior surfaces.” – Jackson Barkess
V-Ray for SketchUp is available from Creation Engine at an educational discount price of $229.
Link via Techworld.com
Creating 3D models can be baffling for beginners. Like any family of applications, from word processors to image editors, 3D modelling tools have their own shared features, toolsets and formats that must be learned first.
That’s why Google Sketchup is such a superb introduction to 3D. It’s about as simple as 3D can be made, comes with a massive catalogue of ready-made models, and the documentation is comprehensive. Oh, and the standard version is free.
Google SketchUp 7 is free.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 is available at a student discount price of $49.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 is free for instructors.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 Lab licenses are available at a school discount price of $15.
