Graphics News Review

There is a great article about the history of FreeHand on TexasDesign.com.

PhotoProto is designed to speed the creation of device user interfaces with Photoshop. From in-dash car displays and mobile phones to medical devices and tactical navy ship displays, just about everything has a display on it of some kind, with the graphics more often than not being created in Photoshop. However, a problem typically faced by designers is that the services of programmers or multimedia authoring experts are needed to turn the static drawings into working prototypes.

With PhotoProto, artists arrange and name the layers in their Photoshop artwork to identify these elements—a layer can be named “button” so the images can be pressed like a button (an approach used by the SiteGrinder plugin to generate Web sites). Then from within Photoshop, PhotoProto creates a working, interactive prototype that can be independently run on a Mac or PC, allowing the user to push buttons, navigate screens, scroll lists and perform similar interactive functions. PhotoProto can also create an XML file and PNG images that can be passed on to others within the workflow, for incorporation within other software production tools.

Altia claims PhotoProto 1.05 is twenty times faster than previous versions when creating GUIs from Photoshop files employing hundreds of layers.

PhotoProto for Mac and Windows can be purchased at www.altia.com/products_photoproto.php for $495. A downloadable trial version is also available.

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced new print driver software that enables users of Microsoft® Windows® Vista™ to take advantage of high quality PostScript printers. With Adobe® PostScript® Driver for Office/Windows Vista, customers can use their existing PostScript printers while obtaining higher quality print output from Microsoft Office applications. The driver is expected to ship to Adobe OEM printing partners in July 2007. OEM partners will be able to offer the driver directly to their customers and bundle it with devices.

The driver delivers higher quality print output for Office files with transparency and gradients than printing the same files using the standard PostScript driver bundled with Windows. OEM printer manufacturers can support the new Vista print path without making any changes to their devices. Implementing and customizing the driver requires minimal effort since it leverages existing PPDs (PostScript Printer Description) files, user interfaces and custom OEM code. Read more