VERDICT The new interface and PDF and AIR export see Fireworks CS4 fully integrated into the Creative Suite.

VERDICT More power for 3D users, but little for anyone else.

Photoshop Extended was the surprise introduction and, in many ways, star of the CS3 premium suites with its eye-popping introduction of 3D and video layers and a worthy new role in scientific image analysis. It’s a hard act to follow so how has Adobe extended Photoshop Extended?

Adobe Photoshop / Extended CS4 review

RECOMMENDED

VERDICT An excellent release that reworks Photoshop’s core colour correction capabilities making them even more productive and powerful.

Adobe Photoshop is universally recognized as the most powerful photo-editor available, but Adobe isn’t resting on its laurels. With Photoshop CS4, Adobe is determined to make the best even better.

VERDICT A rethought interface, new auto painting capabilities and excellent price make Painter Essentials a real creative star.
Corel’s flagship Painter application is unmatched for its ability to mimic traditional artistic media such as watercolours and oil paints – but no-one could claim that it makes the process simple. This is where the cut-down Painter Essentials comes in, promising to make the core of this creative power accessible to everyone.

VERDICT: Plenty of core new power for the digital camera user – but Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is still playing catch-up.

Over its long history Paint Shop Pro has built up a great deal of bitmap editing power, but it has also come to seem dated and increasingly out of tune with the times...

RECOMMENDED

VERDICT: A new interface, smart albums, guided editing and photo merging but comparatively little to boost core efficiency.

Organizing and enhancing thousands of digital photographs is a time-consuming task and the digital camera owner needs dedicated help to make the process as productive and enjoyable as possible...

Tom Arah shows you the best way to bring some texture into your design work.

Long-term readers will know that I am a big fan and keen advocate of the use of seamless bitmap textures. Such textures play an essential role in the production of 3D work, as we saw again last month, but they can also prove just as useful within 2D bitmap and vector environments...

Tom Arah explores the ways in which 3D modelling and bitmap editing can be creatively fused.

The end quality of 3D output depends largely on the application’s handling of materials and, more often than not, this involves mapping imported bitmaps to your objects’ surfaces...

VERDICT: Piranesi gets the major overhaul of interface and tools that its extraordinary creative power deserves.

Piranesi stands out from all other bitmap editors because it is able to handle material and depth information as well as colour; it might sound a relatively small difference but it unleashes a massive amount of 3D painting power...

Microsoft pulls off an extraordinary feat reinventing desktop application design, but it's only the taste of things to come regarding the web.

For years now there has been talk of Microsoft’s determination to move into the design software territory normally associated with Adobe. Now, with the launch of the Expression Studio suite, the talk is over – so how does it shape up?