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AUGUST 2000
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Creative
Mac              |
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News:
Corel Releases Bryce 4.1 Update |
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News:
Sonic Brings DVDit! to Mac OS X |
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News:
Canon Brings Color to Wide-Format, High-Output
Devices |
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News:
SmartDisk Ships 120 GB FireWire Array |
News:
Adobe To Ship Photoshop 6, ImageReady 3 Next Month AUGUST
28—Adobe today announced it will ship Photoshop 6 some time in the next month.
Photoshop 6.0 offers dozens of new features, including integrated vector functionality,
improved Web workflow and a streamlined interface. The new version will also ship
with ImageReady 3.0, an upgrade to Adobe's graphics application designed for the
Web  |
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News:
Evergreen Ships 75 GB FireWire Drive |
| News:
Nikon To Ship 3.34 MP Coolpix AUGUST 28—Nikon today announced its new Coolpix 880, a 3.34 megapixel digital camera with a 2.5x (38 mm to 95 mm) Zoom-Nikkor lens. The camera is designed for simplicity, offering 11 different pre-programmed shooting modes, including: Fireworks, Copy (Whiteboard/Paper), Beach/Snow, Portrait, Party, Nighttime Portrait, Sunset, Landscape, Closeup, Nighttime Landscape and Backlight. |
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Seybold:
Imaging Technologies Announces Proofing System
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News:
Alien Skin To Upgrade Eye Candy |
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Olympus Debuts 4 Megapixel Digital SLR Camera AUGUST 25—Olympus today introduced two new digital cameras to its lineup, as well as a dye-sublimation printer designed for printing photographs. The first new camera, the Camedia E-10, is a 4 megapixel digital SLR still camera featuring new lens technology specifically designed to focus light evenly across the entire CCD surface. The attached 4x professional f2.0 to f2.4, 9 mm to 36 mm zoom lens (equivalent to 35 mm to 140 mm in 35 mm photography) is manufactured with Extra Dispersion (ED) Glass and features fully multicoated elements with dual aspherical glass elements to reduce chromatic aberrations. |
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News:
Flaming Pear Offers Essentials in the United
States |
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News:
Boris Offers Crossgrade for TitleDeko Users
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| News:
Flash 5 Ships AUGUST 24—Macromedia today announced it's shipping Flash 5, the latest version of its Web multimedia authoring tool. Flash 5 offers an enhanced user interface and tighter integration with other Macromedia applications, such as Generator and Freehand. In fact, the new version of Flash supports native Freehand files. |
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News:
Yamaha Ships 8x FireWire CD-RW |
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News:
Aurora Ships 24 FPS Igniter Film |
 News:
Fuji Ships 6 Megapixel SLRAUGUST 22—Fuji Photo Film USA today announced the availability of the FinePix S1 Pro Digital Camera, a professional single-lens reflex camera that uses Fuji's new Super CCD technology. Super CCD, which gathers more image information than conventional CCDs of the same sensor count, offers an increased signal to noise ratio, greater sensitivity and a wider dynamic range. |
| News:
No USB MIDI on the New Macs? AUGUST 21—Emagic, a developer of digital audio equipment and software, has reported problems with the new G4s equipped with USB MIDI interfaces, including combinations of its own Logic Audio and certain hardware. The company issued a written statement listing some problems with its own products, adding that hardware from other developers also sees problems on the new Macs. |
| News:
Creamware Releases PowerSampler for Macintosh AUGUST 21—German digital audio developer CreamWare has released PowerSampler 2.03, the first version of the hardware/software combo available for the Macintosh platform. PowerSampler is a sampling suite with a DSP-based hardware backbone residing on a single PCI card. CreamWare says the functionality is identical in the Windows and Mac versions. The new version offers 24-bit and 32-bit sampling. |
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News:
Native Instruments Adds Support for MOTU |
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Brief:
Sapphire Ships Star Nozzles for Painter Sapphire Star
Nozzles is available now for $20. For more information, visit http://www.sapphire-innovations.com. |
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Brief:
YARC Offers Free PostScript RIP for Epson Stylus Pro The Xtreme
is YARC's first downloadable RIP, using the USB firmware of the Macintosh to handle
many of the functions of the hardware printer accelerator card used in YARC's
EZ products. YARC supplies a proprietary USB to parallel interface cable. (The
Stylus Pro 3000 has a parallel input connector, not USB.) The Retail Pack is available
now for $299 or, for a limited time, $199 from YARC's online store. For more information,
visit http://www.yarc.com. |
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Brief:
Epson Lowers Price of PhotoPC The PhotoPC
800 achieves 1,600 x 1,200 pixel resolution. Epson's HyPict technology increases
the resolution to 1,984 x 1,488, or 2.95 megapixels. The camera includes an 8
MB CompactFlash card and three picture taking modes for customized shots—black
and white, macro and panoramic. It features a 1.8" LCD monitor, able to display
up to nine images at a time. In Quick Shot mode, users can take a picture approximately
every second. For more information, visit http://www.epson.com. |
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News:
ITC Ships ColorBlind 4.0 |
| News:
RedHawk Photo-Extracting Premiere Plugin in Beta AUGUST 17—RedHawk Vision Inc. today announced that it's started beta testing a new plugin for Adobe Premiere that lets users extract 35 mm quality images from digital video sources. The plugin, Video Pics, is being geared toward those who need to extract video content for use in marketing, advertising and trade show displays. It's expected to be available in October on the Macintosh platform. |
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Brief:
ElectricImage Puts Manuals Online For more information
or to download the manuals, visit http://www.electricimage.com. |
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News:
Sonnet Drops Prices on G4 Upgrades |
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Brief:
Re:Vision Ships Update to ReelSmart Motion Blur for After Effects RSMB 1.6 is
available now for Macintosh and Windows for $89.95. For more information, visit
http://www.revisionfx.com. |
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Brief:
Umax Ships Direct to Web Scanners For more information,
visit http://www.umax.com. |
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Brief:
Digital Voodoo Qualifies VideoRaid RT and VideoRack RTX For more information, visit http://www.digitalvoodoo.net or http://www.medea.com. |
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News:
Panasonic Intros Two New DV Camcorders |
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News:
ConceptDraw Gets Update to 1.5.2 |
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ALAP To Ship ImagePort Update, Adds Adjustment Layer Support AUGUST 15—A Lowly Apprentice Productions Inc. announced two new plugins for Adobe InDesign and an update for a QuarkXPress plugin. The plugin for Quark, ImagePort, will be updated to version 1.1 late this month. ImagePort is an XTension that allows native Photoshop files to be imported directly into QuarkXPress, including layers and channels. |
Review/News:
Media 100 Ships Remote Field Editor AUGUST
14—Since last year,
Media 100 has been shipping one of the handiest pieces of digital video gear yet,
the Remote Field Editor (RFE). Now, the Marlboro, Massachusetts company has improved
the popular turnkey unit ($24,995), slimming it down by ten pounds and adding
some great new features along with a new aluminum case. Buoyed by the fact that
they were able to sell every unit they made for the past year, Media 100 saw an
urgent need for these tiny broadcast-quality editors and improved upon the already-successful
concept. |
| News:
Adobe Ships GoLive 5.0 AUGUST 14—Adobe stared shipping GoLive 5.0 today, its Web authoring package. The new version offers tighter integration with Adobe's other products, such as Photoshop and LiveMotion, and can import Photoshop images as HTML, according to Adobe. The new version also includes a QuickTime editor, Flash support, a JavaScript SDK and debugger and support for Flash, Real Networks G2, Scalable Vector Graphics and WebObjects 4.5. |
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Adobe Keeps Tabs on Macromedia |
| MCE To Ship Bigger
Drives for PowerBook Expansion Bay AUGUST 9—Mac Components Engineered announced today two new hard drives designed for the media expansion bays in Apple's current PowerBook lineup. The Xcaret Pro-99 Media Bay Hard Drive is designed for the currently shipping 500 MHz and 400 MHz Apple PowerBook, as well as the previous generation 400 MHz and 333 MHz Apple PowerBook G3. |
| Margi Connects PowerBooks
to Cinema Displays AUGUST 8—Margi Systems today announced the Display-to-Go Card for PowerBooks. The Type II CardBus PC Card fits into the PC Card slot of G3 PowerBooks to provide connectivity for Apple's DVI-based Cinema displays—both the 15" and the 22" models. It comes with adapters for DVI or VGA displays. |
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Felt Tip Releases Sound Studio 1.4 |
| Binary Arts Releases
Digital Art Brush 2 for Lightwave AUGUST 4—Binary Arts has announced it's released Digital Art Brush 2 for NewTek Lightwave versions 5.6 and 6. The new version combines Digital Art Brush with ParticleType, the company's particle replacement system for Lightwave. ParticleType includes different types of particles, including simple shapes and an image type.
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| TripleD Tools Releases
Free Power Particles for Electric Image AUGUST 4—TripleD Tools has started offering Power Particles 2.0 Basic as a free download for Electric Image. The company says it will soon release Power Particles 2.0 Pro as well. The basic is not a demo but a fully functioning extension. |
| Brief:
Voodoo5 Ships Today AUGUST 3—3dfx today announced that its Voodoo5 5500 PCI graphics card is immediately available for $299.99. The Voodoo5 5500 PCI includes two VSA-100 graphics processing chips, 64 MB of graphics memory, 128-bit 2D/3D/video accelerator, a 350 MHz RAMDAC that supports resolutions up to 2,048 x 1,536 pixels and a 3D core that supports T-Buffer digital cinematic effects, 32-bit color rendering, stencil support, DXTC and FXT1 texture compression and 2,048 x 2,048 texture map support. Voodoo5 5500 PCI achieves a 667 Megapixels per second fill rate running at 166 MHz core and memory clocks. Software drivers include support for DirectX, Glide and OpenGL. For more information on the Voodoo5 card, please see our articles archive from July here, including a first look/review from the Macworld Expo. Or visit http://www.3dfx.com. |
| Olympus Announces Sub-$500
2.11 Megapixel Camera AUGUST 1—Olympus today announced its new D-490 digital still camera, a 2.11 megapixel model that comes in at less than $500. The camera, based on the D-460 Zoom, comes with a 3x optical zoom lens packed into a 9.5 ounce body measuring 5" x 2.6" x 2.1". It's the first of Olympus' D-series cameras to come with QuickTime capture capabilities. |
 Fuji
Announces 4.3 Megapixel Camera for Less Than $1,000AUGUST 1—Fuji Photo Film today announced a new camera in its line of FinePix digital still cameras. The new FinePix 4900 Zoom is the first in Fuji's camera lineup with a 4.3 megapixel resolution and an expected selling price of less than $1,000. The new camera is geared toward high-end consumers and photo enthusiasts. |
| Kodak Ships DC3400
Digital Camera AUGUST 1— Kodak today announced the latest adition to its DC line of digital still cameras. The DC 3400 is among only two cameras on the market now offering 2 megapixels of resolution for less than $500. The camera offers a 2x optical zoom (38 mm to 76 mm) and a 3x digital zoom. |
| DSound Releases Mac
VST Version of Stomp'n FX Filters JULY 31 —Windows audio software developer DSound has brought over one of its effects sets to the Macintosh. Stomp'n FX Volume 1 is a collection of pedal emulators (with interfaces to match) consisting of Chorus, Flanger, Autowah, Compressor, Noise Gate and EQ. |
| Panopticum Ships FX
1.0 for After Effects JULY 31—Panopticum today announced it's shipping Panopticum FX 1.0, a set of plugins for After Effects on the Mac. It includes filters from four previously released sets of plugins, including Fire 2.5, which was just released itself last week. The new package includes AnimaText 1.1, a tool for creating text effects; Fire 2.5, which creates combustion effects; Lens Pro 2, a set of tools for creating lens effects; and Tools 1.1, which includes eight filters. |
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Toshiba Offers Rebate on 3 Megapixel Camera JULY 31—Toshiba today announced that it's offering a $100 mail-in rebate on its PDR-M70 digital camera. The camera, which has a 3 megapixel resolution, will now sell for $799 with the rebate. It includes a built-in speaker and microphone for recording and playing back up to 60 minutes of digital audio. It also has an AVI function for capturing up to five minutes of video at 15 frames per second with audio on the SmartMedia card. It also comes with USB connectivity. For more information, visit http://www.toshiba.com. —Dave Nagel |
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Aurora
Capture Cards Bundled with Organic FX
JULY 28—Aurora Video Systems has started bundling Pixelan's Organic FX with its Igniter Mac-only video capture board. In addition, Aurora's Fuse board will be bundled with Organic FX Lite. Organic FX is a set of more than 250 fluids, bursts, erosions, ruptures, climatics, vapors, strokes, washes and live textures that visually evolve during the effect. Organic FX are derived from natural forms, rather than algorithms, a process that's supposed to create more natural effects. OrganicFX Lite includes 50 of the Organic FX effects. |
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Echo Fire Adds Digital Voodoo Support
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| FilmLogic Plugs in
to Final Cut Pro JULY 27—Focal Point Software today announced the latest beta build of its FilmLogic 3.0 software. The new version, 3.0b1, now supports Final Cut Pro, while previous versions supported only Media 100 and Adobe Premiere. FilmLogic is a software application designed for filmmakers who are shooting 35 mm or 16 mm film and want to edit electronically while finishing on film, working with non-linear editing systems to track all the elements that go into the making of the final film. A bit like an extended electronic codebook, it follows the relationship between the original camera negative, the transferred video tapes and the captured clips in the editing system. |
Appian Promises Mac
AGX Dual-Monitor Cards by Year's End JULY
26—Appian Graphics, a manufacturer of multiple-display graphics cards, today
announced that it's started manufacturing its own graphics chip—the Appian
AGX, a high-end graphics processor with support for multiple monitors running
at 1,600 x 1,200 at 75 Hz each, all on a single chip. The company earlier this
year entered the Mac multiple-display graphics market with the Jeronimo 2000 Mac.
And, as it turns out, they plan to follow it up with cards powered by the AGX
for the Mac this year. |
| Cinema 4D XL Gets Free
Update to 6.1 JULY 26—Maxon Computer has announced a new update to Cinema 4D XL, its high-end 3D modeling, rendering and animation package. The new version is immediately available for free download to registered users (with addenda to documentation). Maxon's calling 6.1 a major update to Cinema 4D XL 6, which was introduced three months ago. New features include a different plugin architecture (along with a new software development kit), new interface schemes and improved use of camera tracking data. |
| Review/First
Look: Voodoo5 5500 JULY 26—As I was on my way to my last scheduled interview at Macworld, I was mentally composing the lead paragraph of my show wrap-up story, and it was going to go something like this: "While many companies offered interesting products, all of them combined were overshadowed by Apple's announcements of standard multiprocessing CPUs, the G4 Cube and a new mouse." That's what I was thinking, anyway, until I saw the pictures coming from the two new display cards from 3dfx Interactive, the Voodoo 5 4500 and 5500. I've been doing Mac graphics professionally for more than a decade, most of that in video, and I have to tell you, I've never seen anything like this before. |
| Focus:
The Future of Form•Z—Seven Questions with Founder Chris Yessios
JULY 26—Last month Auto•des•sys, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, announced a major change in in the way it will market Form•Z, the company's flagship product and the modeler that helped make desktop 3D a commercial reality back at the time of its launch in 1991. Now, of course, rendering applications ship with increasingly powerful modelers of their own, all wrapped up in a tight, integrated package. On the other hand, Form•Z continues to challenge other developers with innovative new features that keep the program at the vanguard of modeling and making Form•Z an integral part of many a desktop artist's repertoire of tools. |
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Formac Brings 3Dlabs Graphics Chips to the Mac
with New ProFormance Board
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| Mac Swift3D Set for
September Launch JULY 25—Following months of anticipation, Electric Rain today finally announced a Macintosh port of its Swift3D software, but users will still have to wait until September to get their hands on it. Swift3D is a piece of software that allows users to create and work with vector 3D objects that can be animated and placed into Flash files. |
| Flash To Get Major
Overhaul in Version 5 JULY 24—Macromedia says it's giving Flash a major overhaul, including a whole new interface, for the new version due out in September, with a Flash 5 player scheduled for an August release. The company says the new interface in Flash is the first implementation of a standard interface that will appear in all Macromedia authoring products. Tools will also be consistent across all of Macromedia's authoring line (including a new Bezier pen tool), as will menu organization and keyboard shortcuts. (Flash 5 will also have customizable shortcuts.) |
| Curious Labs Sets Fourth
Quarter for Relaunch of Poser JULY 24—Curious Labs says it will ship version 4.0.3 of Poser beginning in the fourth quarter. Curious Labs was cofounded by some of the original developers of Poser from Fractal Design and MetaCreations, which began unloading its catalog of software titles earlier this year in favor of pursuing Web technologies. |
 Boris
FX Announces Boris RED2JULY 24—Boris FX today announced Boris RED2, a resolution-independent 3D compositing and title-effects plug-in suite for nonlinear editing systems on the Mac. Boris RED2 adds such new features as export to Macromedia Flash, rotoscoping and vector-animated paint tools, bringing resolution-independent vector graphics and Web distribution to NLE systems. |
| The Foundry Ships Tinderbox
1 for AE JULY 24—The Foundry, a software developer based in London, has started shipping Tinderbox 1, a set of 20 filters for Adobe After Effects. It includes blurs, effects and tools for working with mattes, including one called T_Dilate, which allows compositors to grow or erode matte edges at the subpixel level. The company says it designed the package for speed and consistency to to aid in workflow, and, to this end, the filters share a common interface, with 11 major parameters shared across all 20 plugins. |
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News:
Olympus C-2100 Debuts