Skip to main content

Microsoft writes a tutorial on Adobe Photoshop

launched a preview version of an illustration and graphic design tool codenamed Acrylic, and is offering it as a free download.

It is quite evident that Microsoft Acrylic is aimed at grabbing the market share from Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator (Adobe CS2) and even Freehand that Adobe picked up when it acquired Macromedia. The move follows last month's announcement of Microsoft Metro, a tool that threatens to compete with Adobe's Acrobat and PDF format.

Microsoft Acrylic is able to both open and export to Adobe's Photoshop PSD and Acrobat PDF formats, so it is clear that Microsoft intends to offer Acrylic as an alternative to Photoshop, likely at a lower cost. But what surprised me the most was this tutorial on Microsoft website - Actions automate repetitive Photoshop tasks. Here Microsoft explains in detail how to automate repetitive tasks through batch processes on a large number of images.

Why would a company write a tutorial on their main website about a competing product? Is Microsoft internally using Photoshop for all their designs ? This is a very recent tutorial though there is no mention of anywhere ? Looks like a copyright violation too.

Or does Microsoft plan to offer Acrylic for free as they did with Microsoft Photostory. Adobe is definitely not worried at the moment. Adobe's Creative Suite 2, a bundle of its top design and publishing applications, showed strong sales in its first quarter of release and will likely gain momentum in the coming months as international versions ship, Smith Barney analyst Tom Berquist said in a research note.

Popular posts from this blog

How to Download Contacts from Facebook To Outlook Address Book

Facebook users are not too pleased with the "walled garden" approach of Facebook. The reason is simple - while you can easily import your Outlook address book and GMail contacts into Facebook, the reverse path is closed. There's no "official" way to export your Facebook friends email addresses or contact phone numbers out as a CSV file so that you can sync the contacts data with Outlook, GMail or your BlackBerry. Some third-party Facebook hacks like "Facebook Sync" (for Mac) and "Facebook Downloader" (for Windows) did allow you to download your Facebook friends' names, emails, mobile phone number and profile photo to the desktop but they were quickly removed for violation of Facebook Terms of Use. How to Download Contacts from Facebook There are still some options to take Friends data outside the walls of Facebook wall. Facebook offers the Takeout option allowing you to download all Facebook data locally to the disk (include

Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts for Power Users

All features in Mozilla Firefox browser are accessible through the use of the keyboard. You can use shortcut keys to view and save Web pages, search the web, open new webpages, work with bookmarks, or find text on the current webpage. Some of the most common keyboard shortcuts in Mozilla Firefox are Ctrl+N (to open a new Firefox window), Ctrl+T (to open a new tab), Ctrl+F4 (to close the current tab) and Ctrl+S to save the current webpage. Mozilla Firefox supports many more powerful keyboard shortcuts. For instance, by pressing a simple key combination, you can manually delete autocomplete entries from the Firefox location bar or Web forms. I am sharing a list of my favorite Mozilla Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts that make web browsing with Firefox even more fun . And you also save your precious time as navigating through several layers of Firefox Toolbar menus is no longer necessary. 1. Web Search Ctrl+K moves the cursor to the Search Bar. You can then type in the terms you wish to fin

Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is a popular tech blog by  Amit Agarwal . Our popular Google Scripts include  Gmail Mail Merge  (send personalized emails with Gmail ),  Document Studio (generate PDFs from Google Forms ) and   File Upload Forms ( receive files  in Google Drive). Also see  Reverse Image Mobile Search , Online Speech Recognition and Website Screenshots , the most useful websites on the Internet.