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MWNY 01: Software Roundup Part I

Macworld has brought a mob of new OS X applications. First up: Painter for OS X, whiteboard collaboration from Mimio, and an innovative animation package.

Macworld has brought a mob of new OS X applications. First up: Painter for OS X, whiteboard collaboration from Mimio, and an innovative animation package.

Mimio was on-hand demonstrating new drivers and software for OS X for its whiteboard capture product. The combination of Mimio’s hardware, which attaches to conventional whiteboards and markers, with new software for OS X allows printing, saving, exporting, and drag-and-drop of live content on a whiteboard. New to this release of the software is the ability to export directly to iMovie, without having to do a DV import. Code is done and the software will ship as a free upgrade September 1.

Corel has finished Painter 7, due to ship in August, with new features for OS 9 and Carbonization for native support of OS X, adding to OS X’s growing graphics capabilities. The original Painter creators have rejoined Corel to work on the update, which aside from being good news for X, introduces new features with names like “Watercolor” and “Liquid Ink”, expanding Painter’s already enormous physical paint-modeling features. Orders are being accepted now; US$499 list new or US$199 to upgrade from MetaCreations Painter v 5.5 and v6.

By the way, Corel has created a new label for creative software called “procreate”, so Painter has yet another brand name to add to its resume: this time it’ll ship as procreate Painter. Corel says procreate products “will be optimized for OS X” and will also include upcoming releases of KPT and KnockOut.

Toon Boom Technologies announced at Macworld the commercial release of Toon Boom Studio v1.0 for OS X, a 2D animation package with features like automatic lip sync, 3D scene planing, and rendering to Flash-compatible files. Non-digital 2D artists should be right at home with a rotating light table, “X” sheet visual representation of the work (not to be confused with OS X), and onion-skinning features. Toon Boom Studio is available for download for US$349 download, US$374 mail with manual, or US$99 for students. Toon Boom’s previous experience is with animation pros, including use in a Sugar Ray music video and a Bayer TV ad. We hope to offer a review of this unique package in the future.

By Jason O'Grady

Founded the PowerPage in 1995.