Archive notice: This article was originally published on June 16, 2005. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
As a program for professional graphic designers, Microsoft’s Acrylic (codename) is aimed at exactly the target group that has until now worked with Adobe Photoshop – the long-standing de facto standard in this segment.
According to Microsoft, the application is intended for illustration, painting and graphic design in the areas of print, web, video and interative media. Acrylic is intended to include functions from the areas of pixel or vector graphics, but also to be suitable for image editing in the photographic field. The program is not a completely new development but, according to information from US media, is based on Expression 3 from Creature House – a company that Microsoft acquired in 2003. To be competitive at all, it can reportedly open and export Photoshop and Illustrator files.
Acrylic is available only as a Windows XP version. The group specifies a Pentium 4 processor, 512 MBytes of RAM, Service Pack 2, 500 MBytes of hard-disk space and a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet with WinTab support as the system requirements.
The application is available as a free download (see address below) and is time-limited: It can be tested until October 1, 2005, as part of the beta programme.
With its graphics program, Microsoft is increasing the pressure on Adobe, one of whose most important applications is Photoshop. Microsoft had only recently announced Metro, an alternative to Adobe’s globally established PDF format. Whether Acrylic can establish itself will also depend on system support: So far, it is apparently planned only as a Windows version; information about a version for Apple’s Mac OS X is still outstanding.
Further Links:
- Microsoft “Acrylic”: Website and Download
