OPINION • SEPTEMBER 5 , 2000
Roundup: The Best of Seybold
Pickins were slim, but a few tasty morsels hit the spot

by David Nagel
Executive Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com

This year's Seybold convention in San Francisco proved to be one of the more enjoyable Web expos I've attended. Which is odd, of course, seeing as its a publishing show.

Nevertheless, the topic on the lips of anyone who could rally a small crowd to his or her booth was the repurposing of content for the coming convergence—whatever that means. (I think it has something to do with scamming investors.)

As opined elsewhere, nary a mention was to be heard of print publishing, except by a few printer manufacturers and color management vendors. But even some of them tried to pitch me on e-services or end to end solutions of one sort or another, apparently ashamed that they had actual products for sale.

Still, as I scoured the halls of the Moscone center, trying to pick up review copies of the latest and greatest for the Mac while dodging the e-commerce pep squads that filled the aisles, I did come across some pretty fancy wares that deserve mention. And so I offer you Creative Mac's humble list of the best that Seybold SF had to offer this year—applications, plugins and hardware. All of the choices here are based on rigorous scientific analysis, and the results are beyond question, so no nasty letters, please.

Best Applications

Best Image Editor
Adobe Photoshop 6
http://www.adobe.com
Hmm. Imagine that. Apparently there's this little program called Photoshop. Have you heard of it? Well, this program is now in its sixth major release, and I think this thing just might catch on. The new version adds lots of new features (including some vector functionality) and gets a slight interface tweak to make certain features more accessible. It also includes the next major release of ImageReady and a timed (but otherwise fully functional) demo of GoLive 5. In the past, I think, there have been questions about the value of some Photoshop upgrades. Not so this time. Photoshop 6 is a must have. Layer management has improved dramatically. Support for vector graphics has brought about a whole new way of thinking about alpha channels. Text can now be added and edited directly on the canvas. Notations can be added anywhere in a document. Primitive shapes (including rounded rectangles) can be drawn and edited with ease. An ImageReady-esque Style palette has been added for multi-layer, drag and drop styles. And there are lots of new workflow enhancements. You can read more about Photoshop 6 here.

Best Graphics Program
Synthetik Studio Artist 1.5
http://www.synthetik.com
Studio Artist 1.5 was introduced a bit earlier this year. Nevertheless, I'm giving this Mac-only app an award for best graphics program at Seybold just because I like to say good things about it. It's the only graphics program on the market that can do it all—image creation, image manipulation, video rotoscoping, morphing, warping and more. What's more, it does it beautifully, with an unlimited amount of natural media, tons of presets and functionality up the wazoo. If you're a graphic artist, you need this program. (Incidentally, we'll be doing a full review of 1.5 soon. Until then, check out our review of 1.1 here. See a rotoscoping example here. And check out some tutorials here, here and here. We also have a user forum here.)

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