The Year's Best Multimedia Software

By David Em

December 1, 2005

(The Year's Best Multimedia Software :  Page 1 of 1 )

Ten years ago, it was possible to produce video, photography, and audio projects on desktops--but it wasn't fun. Hardware was expensive. Operating Systems were anemic. Device drivers were flaky. So was the software

Times have changed. This year we saw releases of powerful, stable multimedia applications that run on almost every new computer sold. And there's been enormous industry consolidation, spearheaded by giants such as Adobe and Autodesk. Here are the best software tools I saw this year for artists, animators, videographers, and photographers.

Digital Photography

Adobe's $599 Photoshop is the undisputed gold standard for digital imaging and photography. Every professional photographer and designer in the world who's made the jump to digital (and there are precious few who haven't) owns a copy. Photoshop's also used extensively in the 3D animation, film, and video post-production worlds, to such an extent that programs like Alias (soon to be Autodesk) Maya 7 and Adobe's After Effects feature internal links to Photoshop.

This year Adobe released Photoshop CS2 (aka v.9), a worthy upgrade that adds new image manipulation and warping features, RAW camera and 32-bit-per-channel High Dynamic Range (HDR) file workflows, nondestructive transformations, and direct output to a video monitor.

On the downside, Photoshop's interface, complete with its undockable toolbar, is showing its age. Adobe also faces competition for the first time in this space from Apple, whose brand new $499 Aperture is a potentially competitive image editing program. Nevertheless, Photoshop CS2 remains the photo imaging program against which all others must be measured.

2D Animation

Despite Disney's having deep-sixed their traditional hand-drawn cel animation division in favor of 3D computer-generated films, 2D animation is enjoying a renaissance thanks to interactive web-based Flash animations, which are ubiquitous.

For sheer power, nothing beats Macromedia's $699 BYTE.com > BYTE Media Lab > 2005