Extreme 3D proves that the desktop can be a dynamic 3-D stage. It's a perfect complement to programs such as FreeHand and Director.
Two-dimensional shapes created with the spline-based tools can be extruded, lathed or skinned into 3-D objects. You can edit a 2-D profile even after it's been extruded, so you can apply intuitive 2-D illustration processes directly into the 3-D realm.
Extreme 3D can create time- and frame-based animations, with interactive key frame manipulation and Bˇzier spline motion paths. The program's animation capabilities are built around the Score window, which tracks every object in a 3-D world including parameters for lights, materials and cameras. It's a parallel concept to Macromedia Director's Score feature.
We were impressed by the program's ability to assign motion paths to individual points, an amazing amount of control for creating morphs. Although Extreme 3D doesn't support inverse kinematics, it offers flexible-forward kinematics. Links can be constructed around definable axes, allowing you to create effects typically seen in high-end workstations.
Extreme 3D's emphasis on animation and multimedia makes it perfect for use with both Director and Authorware.
Extreme 3D
Price: $699
Pros: True spline-based modeling and animation; easy transition from 2-D drawing
packages
Cons: Lacks a ray-tracing engine; steep learning curve for nonprofessionals
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95, NT
Macromedia
800-326-2128, 415-252-2000
WinMag Box Score 4.5
Harvard ChartXL 2.0's outstanding graphing flexibility and seemingly endless options let you analyze, preview and present graphic interpretations of data with more depth and clarity than you thought possible.
ChartXL makes it easy to associate data with a chart. You can import data from an Excel or Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, or link data in a spreadsheet to a ChartXL graph. You can enter your data directly in the program's spreadsheet.
Powerful commands enable you to develop statistical charts depicting linear, polynomial and cyclical trends, standard deviation and moving averages.
It's no slouch when it comes to good looks, either. If you want to spruce up the whole chart or just a part of it, a single dialog box gives you editing control over line style, location of an axis, its scale and labels, grid lines, number format, color mapping and special enhancements for 3-D charts.
Over 300 simple to complex graph types are available, many in 3-D. You can add, change or move text, pictures and other objects. The application is OLE 2.0 compliant and Microsoft Office 95-certified.
Harvard ChartXL 2.0
Price: $149; upgrade from version 1.0, Microsoft Office and Lotus 1-2-3, $79
Pros: Flexibility; options
Cons: Requires Win32s to run in Windows 3.x
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95, NT
Disk Space: 5MB (14MB recommended)
RAM: 4MB (8MB recommended)
Software Publishing Corp.
800-336-8360, 408-537-3000
WinMag Box Score 3.5
Improved templates, easier data assignment and a summation tool for numbers associated with objects are among the highlights of Visio 4.0. Also included are wizards for page layout, org charts and timelines.
Since its earliest versions, Visio's SmartShapes have facilitated adding text boxes, controlling the way a shape grows and adding connection points. This version also has a tool for creating curved shapes. Custom Properties now make it easier to attach data to a shape.
You can fragment shapes, use union to create a shape from two others, or create a shape based on the intersection of objects. Version 4.0's user-defined fixed grid maintains grid spacing when you zoom in or out. The program also has a spell checker and conversion filters for ABC FlowCharter and CorelFlow, and a feature that lets you create a layer that won't print.
Visio's abundant features and advanced operations make it ideal for sophisticated users.
Visio 4.0
Price: $149
Pros: Flexibility; wizards
Cons: Difficult to learn
Platforms: Windows 95, NT 3.51
RAM: 16MB
Visio Corp.
800-248-4746, 206-521-4500
WinMag Box Score 4
PageMaker 6.0 sidesteps the frame-based metaphor of its chief competitor, QuarkXPress, and retains its frame-free layout process.
The toolbox and palette positions are saved along with a document, but the interface lacks some of the customization features that you'd expect in a Windows 95 application. You'll find welcome features in the toolbox, including a polygon tool for drawing symmetrical polygons and stars, and a freehand magnifying tool.
Adobe has greatly enhanced PageMaker's color support with Kodak's Color Management System (KCMS) to help ensure color consistency between the screen and input and output devices. PageMaker offers several output enhancements. Color publishers will appreciate the automatic trapping controls, the ability to convert TIFF images to CMYK format for separations and support of HiFi color for six-color separations. Print options added to this version include a graphical settings display, the ability to proof facing pages and the option to save settings as reusable printer "styles."
PageMaker 6.0 PC and Mac files are compatible. You can save documents in PageMaker 5.0 format for backward compatibility. The program's CD also includes Adobe Type Manager, PhotoCD utilities and samples, 220 Type 1 fonts, interactive training materials, Acrobat Distiller and a "light" version of Adobe Photoshop.
PageMaker 6.0 offers flexibility and ease of use that others can't match.
PageMaker 6.0
Price: $895; upgrade, $149
Pros: Flexibility, ease of use
Cons: Lacks design muscle of competitors
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95
Adobe Systems
800-42-ADOBE, 206-470-7000
WinMag Box Score 4
With Director 5's release, Macromedia has honed its multimedia software leader. Director previously supported only a single Cast window, and only then as an internal part of a Director file. Director 5, however, lets you save multiple Cast windows independently from a movie, all as external files. Further, these Cast windows can be linked to multiple movies.
Director's text-handling capabilities have improved from the earlier version. Director 5 offers full text-formatting capabilities, including paragraph alignment, leading, kerning and tabs. Fonts can be anti-aliased for displaying large type without unsightly jaggies. Formatted text remains live and editable, and this version lets you convert fonts to bitmaps.
An open architecture supports Photoshop-compliant plug-ins. These add to the versatility of Director's basic Paint module, letting you apply your favorite filters without leaving the program.
Director's Lingo scripting language was extensively overhauled in this version, mostly to comply with the multiple/external Cast window feature. The expanded Script window is a boon to nonprogrammers, since this version displays Lingo commands in the window alphabetically or grouped by category.
Macromedia Director 5
Price: $850
Pros: Power; text library features
Cons: Learning curve; price
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95, NT 3.51
Macromedia
800-326-2128, 415-252-2000
WinMag Box Score 4.5
CorelXARA-which runs under Windows 95, 3.x or NT-is blazingly fast and provides a unique set of drawing tools.
CorelXARA's graphics special effects are impressive. You can assign them to any object, including text, a solid color or gradient, bitmap or fractal fill.
The program is equally adept with bitmap graphics. An unlimited undo feature for endless experimentation; solid drawing tools; precision down to 1/1000 of a point; and drag-and-drop visual galleries for colors, lines, fills and fonts add up to one powerful drawing package.
It's easy to produce extremely realistic vector-based illustrations, complete with highlights, shadows, reflections, fog and other transparent or translucent elements.
Video for Windows tutorials is included on the CD-ROM. They introduce CorelXARA's "direct action" drawing tools, which let you make adjustments directly on screen, rather than through menus and dialog boxes.
CorelXARA 1.1
Price: $289
Pros: Anti-aliasing; special effects; performance; Internet graphics
Cons: No OLE 2.0 or color separation support
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95, NT
Disk Space: 8MB (CD-ROM required)
RAM: 8MB
Corel Corp.
800-772-6735, 613-728-3733
WinMag Box Score 4
Painter continues to go where no other software has gone before: This version allows artists to smear oil on cotton duck canvas or scribble waxy crayons onto a fine linen weave.
The incorporation of both vector and raster tools makes Painter an infinitely more powerful program. By employing any of Painter's object creation tools, you can draw vector-based objects on a PostScript layer and import Adobe Illustrator 5.0 files (or FreeHand files converted to Illustrator format); they'll remain fully editable, with an object layer hierarchy. One improvement over most drawing programs is that Painter's tools let you work with smooth, anti-aliased shapes, regardless of image resolution.
To advance in the Web design market, Painter 4 provides features that make it easy to output Painter images for Web-site publishing. Painter 4 lets you create Image Maps that can be assigned URLs, so that a single Painter file can contain multiple elements, each with a separate URL.
The Mosaic tool builds digital simulations of the intricate tiled patterns Byzantine artists once slaved to accomplish. You can vary the color, width, length and pressure of strokes for applying the tiles, as well as specify the grout width between tiles.
Fractal Design Painter 4
Price: $549
Pros: Tools
Cons: Tools can't substitute for artistic skill
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95, NT
Disk Space: 12MB
RAM: 8MB
Fractal Design Corp.
800-297-COOL, 408-688-5300
WinMag Box Score 4.5
ASAP WordPower 1.95 goes a long way toward automating the presentation process. Type your proposal into your word processor and click the ASAP button; the program instantly builds a default presentation. You can customize it by changing layouts, color schemes and designs from options in a tabbed list. Your changes are made throughout your presentation. ASAP automatically adjusts fonts and drawing elements when you add more type to a slide, preventing you from making conflicting choices.
ASAP lets you work in outline or slide views. It doesn't offer a slide sorter, but you can drag and drop slides in outline view, quickly indenting or "outdenting" points as you sort. ASAP's preview mode is editable, too, and lets you insert graphics. This version has extra transition effects (depending on the design you choose), new layout/color scheme choices and faster operation. There's hardly any documentation, but you don't need much since the program's design encourages you to explore.
ASAP lacks multimedia and animation support found in higher-priced presentation packages. But it's head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to ease of use and productivity gains.
ASAP WordPower 1.95
Price: $99
Pros: Ease of use; designs; price
Cons: No multimedia support
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95, NT
Software Publishing Corp.
800-336-8360, 408-537-3000
WinMag Box Score 5
Easygoing yet sophisticated, Freelance Graphics 96 is the Fred Astaire of presentation software programs. This version epitomizes ease of use and exceptional power. Choose from among 30 presentation types with Freelance. Most of these alternatives are designed for serious business presentations. Select styles for your presentation slides, such as a one-chart slide, bulleted list or organization chart. The quality and variety of the templates is extremely rich.
Preview slides in other presentations and "borrow" them for inclusion in your current work by clicking or dragging and dropping the slides from a browser window. A diagramming tool includes more than 100 ready-made business diagrams.
You can control the color, font, size, alignment and style of text. You can also choose bullet attributes from the 42 predefined types and add animation effects. The program has a spell checker and a macro recorder/player; it supports LotusScript, the company's complex scripting language. You can flip and rotate objects, and group or ungroup them.
It's easy to add comments that look like sticky notes using your own text or predefined phrases. Freelance frames the text with your name and the date. Distribute presentations via e-mail with your comments or post them to a Notes database.
Freelance Graphics 96
Price: $355
Pros: Ease of use, power
Cons: Can't control animation paths for text
Platforms: Windows 95, NT 3.51
Lotus Development Corp.
800-343-5414, 617-577-8500
WinMag Box Score 3.5
Optimized for Windows 95 and Intel-based Windows NT 3.51 systems, Premiere 4.2 is a powerful video-editing program that permits input and output of a broad range of video, audio and graphics files. Besides what you'd expect from a 32-bit Win95 program-including right-mouse property inspection and long-filename support-this release offers welcome additional features.
The program can produce digital movies with a film resolution of 4096x4096, or build thumbnail 32x32 flicks that are light on storage space. Premiere supports background compiling and unattended batch processing, which allows you to work on other projects during processing.
This software demands a large equipment reserve: Adobe recommends a Pentium with at least 16MB of RAM, a CD-ROM drive, 500MB or more of free disk space and a 24-bit color-graphics card. Full installation takes about 12MB of disk space. However, even with the latest compression techniques, you may find yourself using far more disk space than anticipated.
Edits within Premier are nondestructive, so tweaking and fine-tuning experiments won't affect the original clips that you use to assemble a multimedia title. The software offers high-level features, such as support for CD-quality audio, SMPTE timecode and Edit Decision lists.
Whether you're creating a simple slide-show presentation, developing a multimedia title or editing a documentary, Premiere delivers a feature-rich environment for both hobbyist and video professional.
Adobe Premiere 4.2
Price: $795
Pros: Tools; price
Cons: Resource-intensive
Platforms: Windows 95, NT
Adobe Systems
800-642-3623, 408-536-6000
WinMag Box Score 4.5
Macromedia's xRes can mightily accelerate your high-resolution graphics tasks.
An image-editing program that makes use of proprietary task-organizing technology, xRes promises to speed a 500MB graphics file to 20MB performance levels. XRes applies selective and delayed processing techniques for common graphics operations. The program limits data selectively, letting you see only a manageable amount so that you can work in real time. When the program employs delayed processing, it stores operations on an editing list, then waits until all other operations are completed before processing the list.
A modest 28MB file can load on a Pentium 166 with 32MB of RAM in 30 seconds in Photoshop. Rotating the entire image 90 degrees without pausing in xRes is normal, but takes 2 minutes and 13 seconds for the same rotation in Photoshop.
XRes is not cheap at $389, but its edit acceleration makes it a good software-only alternative to installing more RAM in your PC.
xRes 2.0
Price: $389
Pros: Speeds image editing; software-only alternative to extra RAM
Cons: Expensive; less-useful tools than Photoshop
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95, NT
Disk Space:10MB
RAM: 8MB
Macromedia
800-326-2128, 415-252-2000
WinMag Box Score 4.5