May 09 - 02:50pm EDT   Autodesk has released the 2009 edition of SketchBook Pro, its painting and illustration program, designed for users of tablets and tablet PCs. The new application is compatible with Mac OS X Leopard, and boasts new support for Adobe Photoshop, allowing users to import PSD files for detailed drawing. Appropriately, SketchBook layers now support general locking and transparency locking, and the active layer is highlighted with an orange outline, which also sports interface controls such as a thumbnail view. [full story]

May 09 - 10:35am EDT   Softpress has released the first major update to Freeway 5, its WYSIWYG web design tool. The base application distinguishes itself with features such as CSS menus, and Google and script.aculo.us Actions; new in v5.1 is the ability to publish a feed from a page, using the RSS Feed Action. Designers can now also import SVG vector graphics, whether for conversion to JPEG, GIF or PNG, or simply as a pass-through to a finished page. [full story]

May 07 - 09:40pm EDT   Developer Pieter Omvlee on Wednesday unveiled DrawIt 3.5, a sizeable update to his simplified vector drawing and image editing application. The update adds several new features, including support for Boolean operators – such as union, subtraction, exclusive, and intersect – a new text-to-vector tool, and support for a vector ghost-mode for quick drawing. The ghost-mode allows users with a dedicated graphics card to speed up editing of vector images. Omvlee is selling DrawIt 3.5 from his website for $45. [full story]

May 07 - 04:35pm EDT   Adobe has updated the beta website for Photoshop Express, its online, lightweight version of its standard image editing software. New to Express is support for Flickr, the popular photo-sharing site; this complements earlier support for Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa, and lets users pull photos from Flickr accounts, edit them, and re-upload them. This can be done entirely without leaving the Express interface. [full story]

May 07 - 10:30am EDT   Like Thought has released Opacity 1.1, which it calls a "major update" to its illustration application. The software is exclusively used to design images for websites and desktop software, such as launch icons. It relies on both Quartz and Core Animation technology, and has vector, layer, and filtering tools. New in v1.1 is support for SVG, which allows vector illustration for the web. [full story]

May 06 - 07:30pm EDT   Divine Fiat on Monday announced Grunge, a new alternative Keynote presentation theme for Apple's presentation software. The theme includes the font "Base 02" for an edgy feel to written text, while pictures sit in an oval cutout. Dark lines radiate from the center of almost every slide, and the set includes 40 master slides, providing a wide array of options. Divine Fiat is currently selling Grunge for $30, and it is available from the company's website. [full story]

May 01 - 07:00pm EDT   DAZ 3D has released DAZ Hexagon 2.5, the newest version of its popular 3D polygonal and subdivision modeling software. The new release offers a sculpted primitive tool allowing users to model and import 3D objects into Second Life, enhanced UV-mapping and freehand brush modeling, and ambient occlusion. The tool's freehand brush modeling capabilities provide displacement brushes to refine 3D models by smoothing, pinching, and inflating the geometry and adding high-resolution details. A complete UV-mapping module including UV-Unwrap enables 3D artists to easily apply UV-maps on 3D objects. New 3D paint tools allows users to choose from a large choice of predefined textures ... [full story]

May 01 - 04:20pm EDT   Jumsoft on Thursday unveiled Keynote Jam, a collection of 56 high quality 3D rendered images ideal for use in Apple's Keynote presentation software. The collection includes a number of colorful icons, such as checkmarks, a globe, several Apple-inspired designs, as well as a plethora of other symbols, tools, and shapes. Jumsoft also claims the icons work with Microsoft Powerpoint and graphics applications, and are available for free from the company's website. [full story]

April 30 - 03:15pm EDT   Tumult has posted an update to HyperEdit, its central piece of software. The program is described as a "lightweight" editor of HTML and PHP code, with a particular emphasis on live preview; instead of having to manually refresh a browser, users can watch code change in a side panel as they continue to type. The app uses the same rendering engine as Safari, and any lines violating W3C standards are underlined in red. [full story]

April 30 - 09:45am EDT   AKVIS has released the seventh version of Sketch, one of its foremost rendering tools. Operating either as a stand-alone or a plug-in, the software converts photos into either sketches or watercolors, in color or black-and-white; results can be tweaked for more precise effects. Version 7.0 adds a variety of new post-effects, such as rotational blur, or blending of the final illustration with the original photo. [full story]