Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer - Free trial

It is a new combination vector/bitmap hybrid from our friends at Microsoft that is meant to compete with Photoshop and Illustrator. Get it as a free trial now--



http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/graphic_designer/default.mspx

I've been using Photoshop since 2.0 and I really doubt I'm going to switch but it looks like an interesting product so far. The menus are rough but I like some of the flexibility of the layers going between bitmap/vector and how it naturally keeps a clean version of the bitmap while applying changes on top of it.

Also, the smart select tool seems pretty slick but I'm not sure how well it will work for things that need a very high quality matte/alpha channel.

 

they had bought expression from "creature house" dunno.. a couple years ago? i loved you could use ink, water colors, etc and everything was in vectors, i hoped Macromedia added something like this in Flash, but they haven't so far, duh, still a nice product

 

Best attempt by microsoft yet. Will be tough to break people away from photoshop though. color picker needs hex values lik PS has. cant select a color and determine it's hex number

 

I posted a thread on comments for their compnion to the graphic editor: expressions web designer. I believe these are all beta so maybe thay'll see this

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=1180356