Toolbox

Reviews

Adobe After Effects 7.0 - Monday 13th March 2006After Effects is the workhorse of compositors, motion graphics artists, and animators. It doesn’t have the kudos of flashier, VFX-focused tools such as Combustion and Shake – but it’s still the best all-round tool for creatives working with motion media.

Apple MacBook Pro Dual Core 2GHz - Monday 6th March 2006Forget the Intel Core Duo processor the biggest stir in the MacUser office when the MacBook Pro arrived was caused by the built-in iSight camera and its accompanying application, PhotoBooth.

Extensis Suitcase Fusion - Monday 20th February 2006Extensis has been promising this release for a couple of years, and it’s finally arrived. It’s a merger of the company’s popular Suitcase X1 font manager, and the rival Font Reserve 3, which Extensis bought in 2003.

Preview: QuarkXPress 7.0 - Monday 13th February 2006QuarkXPress has had a rough ride of late. Adobe’s aggressive roll-out of DTP-rival InDesign, coupled with a relentless commitment to pile on advanced DTP features, has meant layout artists have been caught up in the InDesign hoopla. Switching to InDesign has become a case of not if, but when – even Digit has migrated.

Aperture - Monday 16th January 2006The huge attention and adulation given to Apple Aperture even before it shipped proves that Steve Jobs’ salesmanship is still fully operational. Aperture is a very fast image workflow utility that lets you preview, sort, tag, and adjust digital images in a systematic way.