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Review by Nathan Andersen:

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1USGWHPP0FC37 I’ve been playing with Anime Studio Debut in my free time for about a week now (on a Mac, though this package includes installation discs for both mac and windows), and I’m a complete beginner. I’m pretty happy with what I’ve been able to do after just one week. Anime Studio Debut is a lot of fun, and is a very sophisticated and flexible program. It’s very easy to get started animating simple things, but for more complicated designs it can be fairly time intensive. This video, for example, that I created in order to practice my animation skills, took several hours to create. (I posted this in October, which is why I made it Halloween-themed. I’m not always inclined to the macabre!)

The program is focused around creating characters whose design is flexible enough that they can be molded and shaped in a number of scenarios. That means that, even though it took me a long time to create this short video, more than half of that time went into creating the skeleton and now that I’ve created him I can pose him any way I like. To create a character you first draw the outlines of the various components of its shape (legs, head, chest, etc.) and fill them in as you like. Then, you can put “bones” into these elements to form an invisible “skeleton” (not like the visible skeleton you see in my video – that guy has invisible bones within his visible bones!). Then, to move it about you just select a bone manipulator tool with your cursor and then you can rotate the bones around whatever joint you’ve established for them and whatever parts of the body are “bound” to that bone move with it.

Once you have characters, backgrounds and objects drawn (each one established as a different “layer” of your final image), you can animate a scene. How it works is that you create all your characters and all the elements of a scene in different layers, and then, on the time line, you can have them interact. How you do that is very simple: there is a timeline that is comprised of 24 unique frames per second of animation, and you can set each character or object however you like on frame one and then, maybe, at frame 12 and the computer then creates a smooth path for that object between frames 1 and 12, and it will traverse that path in the first half second of the animation. Whatever frames result from your direct manipulation become “keyframes” and the computer interpolates results between them. For the skeleton’s mouth I had to set “keyframes” nearly every other frame (i.e. every 1/12 of a second – I know there’s a way to do this more easily, but I couldn’t figure out how to use the free lip sync software that they recommend in the instructions). For most other things I found I only had to place elements every half second or so (for the moon and the clouds it was every half minute or so).

I like that you can animate each layer separately – here I set up the clouds and the moon and the pumpkin first, and then I molded the movements of the skeleton around those. I animated the mouth very last – and even though it’s not very precise that took a lot of time to do – once all of the other movements were in place.

I really like this program – it’s a lot of fun even though it can be very time consuming. One thing I found while working on this project is that it really needs to have some time saver features built in. For example, I found that while animating I was constantly switching between tools: I’d click on one tool and then make a minor modification then another tool and the back and forth was a real pain. I expect there are ways to assign tools to keys on the keyboard but I wish there was some way I could jump between “recently used” tools with a mouse click, so I don’t have to move my hands from the mouse to the keyboard and back again or move the mouse back and forth between the drawing and the toolbar so often. There were other minor frustrations I had, where things weren’t quite as intuitive as I’d have liked. Some of that is just a matter of getting to know the program, but it is worth knowing that while this is very easy to start out with, once you try and do anything semi-complicated, there is a learning curve. Still, it’s a very flexible program – and, while the animation I created to illustrate it is pretty amateurish, I’ve seen enough to know that with time and effort this has the power to create very cool and exciting 2-d animations (and can even simulate some 3-d type effects).

While this is ideal for the aspiring cartoonist, this would be great for any creative and intelligent kids – and I know my older kids (11 and 13) were fascinated by it and will get a lot of use from it. Rather than let them watch cartoons, tell them to make cartoons. It’ll take time but that time will be used creatively and productively and will be rewarding, and they will be forced to learn about attention to detail (because the computer doesn’t know anything you don’t tell it). Highly recommended for geeks like me and kids of all ages.

Review by William W. Davis:

QUICK SUMMARY: A richly-featured, low-cost program is a great introduction into animation, but the program doesn’t do much to help new users learn the craft of 2-D animation.

I selected Anime Studio Debut mostly for my kids’ sake (teen and pre-teen). Since earlier this year, they’ve all enjoyed using a digital camera and Windows Movie Maker to create movies, especially Lego-based movies using Lego-built characters, vehicles and movie sets. Anime Studio seemed like something they’d enjoy using. Okay, and I’ll admit I was intrigued, too.

In reality, I think the program offers a lot of value for the money, but the implementation for a “Debut” program — one where no prior knowledge of animation is required or expected — left a lot to be desired. Although the makers offer a very thorough tutorial to help new users explore the program, I found it to be tiresome switching back-and-forth between the PDF-based, 41-page tutorial document and the actual program. I prefer the more elegant way of learning a new program where the program itself uses wizards to hand-hold me through the learning process. For instance, when I learned Sony Vegas Movie Studio earlier this year, its wizards got me using a program that is certainly no less complicated than Anime Studio, and perhaps is more so. Whereas I continue to enjoy learning how to use Vegas, my enthusiasm for Anime Studio waned quickly.

My older, pre-teen daughter and I were both frustrated at the lack of context-sensitive help or menus in Anime Studio. I like programs that let me right-click anywhere I happen to be, and a context-sensitive menu pops up with appropriate suggestions for what I’m doing at that moment.

I will credit Anime Studio Debut as being a “fun” program. My pre-teen daughter especially has enjoyed manipulating the template characters that come with this program, giving herself and her siblings a lot to laugh at. My daughter hasn’t tried using the Users’ Guide to learn the program — her learning so far has been by trial-and-error. If the authors of this program could see my daughter interacting with their program, they could see why a PDF Users’ Guide tutorial isn’t what’s needed for this “Debut” program.

I am concerned that Anime Studio crashed a LOT while we’ve used the program on an otherwise stable Vista laptop computer. If you install this program, I suggest monitoring the Reliability Monitor (in Vista and Windows 7) to see how reliable your computer currently is, and again how reliable it is after you’ve installed and begun using Anime Studio Debut. (To find the Reliability Monitor, click the Start button, then type “Reliability” in the Start Search textbox to find the monitor).

SUMMARY: I think Anime Studio Debut offers a lot of value for the money. I’ve spent nearly as much money on stupid kids’ games that weren’t nearly so interesting to play with. The functionality of this program is pretty deep. Where the program comes up short is not on the functionality it has, but in how new users must go about learning how to use those functions. For a “Debut” program, there is a lot that can be done to make learning Anime Studio Debut easier to do.

Review by J.D.:

For my purposes, Audio Studio is a really nice editing program. I do not use it to create my own music, but only to edit existing music files. My husband is a drama teacher, so we’re often mixing and splicing music to get the right amount of time for a certain piece. I also edit curse words out of lyrics so that his students can listen to a musical without warranting a parental advisory. For this, Audio Studio 9 is very user friendly and includes all the tools to do so, if you’re creative.

My only beef is the bogus claim that its “Vocal Eraser” can erase vocals and create a karaoke track. NOT AT ALL TRUE! Every music file I have tried, you can still hear the lyrics very clearly. They may be more faint, but they are far from removed. You cannot use the vocal eraser to create a background track, nor to remove curse words. But, other than that, it Audio Studio performs as advertised.

Review by DJ Exquiz:

For years I’ve used different audio editors from Steinberg’s Wavelab, to Cool Edit Pro (now owned by Adobe), to Soundforge’s current only real rival Audacity (which is free), which I still currently have on PC. I still choose Soundforge (like Willie Hutch sang), and here’s why: There is no other affordable audio editing program that has the ease and workflow of Sound Forge.

There are the high end programs and plug ins like TDM Waves, but unless you are running a multi-plantinum artist recording studio you most likely don’t need a program like this, and wouldn’t get any mileage out of it if you did have it. Soundforge is a good place to hone your audio editing skills. Alot of people always think they have to use the most full blown and expensive versions of audio, music, and video programs, but a good program won’t make up for a lack of skills.

That said I currently use Sound Forge Studio with a suite of Sony plug-ins, and some Focusrite Saffire audio plug-ins (which are very good). It should be noted also that Sound Forge Studio 9 has more features than many of the older versions of Sound Forge Pro (which are probably floating around the internet, not recommended). The Vinyl Recording (once you tweek the settings) feature is great, it can use VST and Direct X plug-ins, and it works hand in hand with the other suite of Sony Creative programs (Vegas Studio 9 Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro Pack, Acid MusicACID Music Studio 7) which I own.

I’ve had no problems with installation on both a laptop and desktop, and have mixed and edited my own recordings, converted non-copy protected songs I purchased to MP3s with my own mix settings, and have converted a small part of my vinyl catalog to digital. If someone is having installation problems they should make sure they uninstall all older versions of Sound Forge, especially the old Sonic Foundry versions, that may help…

Sound Forge vs. Audacity

Audacity is a great program and if money is an issue this a good place to start using auditor software, being that its free. There are alot of third party plug-ins available for Audacity, however, for me Audacity does not have the speed and workflow of Sound Forge, and there are many tasks in Sound Forge that are done in one mouse click, that would take multiple clicks in Audacity, it also does not natively support as many file formats as Sound Forge, such as windows media audio, which is a downside for me.

Overall, people may have their pro and cons, and yes the Sony registration can be a bit annoying, but in terms of ease of use and reliability Sound Forge studio has been great.

As a last point, it does take some audio know how to get the most out of SF hence the four stars, you may have to select either Microsoft Sound Mapper (if you don’t have a high end soundcard), or use the ASIO drivers (at least under Windows XP) under preferences to get the most out your sound playback. Enjoy…..

Also recommended Steinberg Cubase Essential 4 – Personal Music Production – Windows Macintosh, Ableton Live 7 LE – Windows and Macintosh, Focusrite Saffire LE 6 In/8 Out Version 2 Firewire Audio Interface

Review by Joanna Daneman:

Ok, let’s start with the top question: Do you or I really need another upgrade of Photoshop Elements? Is it vastly different than (6.0 or 7.0) and should this be my digital photo editing and organizing software of choice? I will cover the main points of the changes from Version 6.0 and 7.0 in this review. I have also reviewed Photoshop Premiere Elements 8 which is the video editor, and comes as a package option with Photoshop Elements 8.

Photoshop Elements has two components– an editor, where you do your digital picture manipulation, and a file organizer or album where you store and retrieve your images. The interface for the editor is the same whether or not you use Mac or Windows, so if you are switching from one OS (say, MAC’s at school, Windows at home) you will be very comfortable with Photoshop Elements. Where the systems differ, however, is in the file organizer and this is understandable; the Organizer function involves organizing and retrieving files, so this is going to be different depending on your computer operating system.

Since I don’t have access to a MAC, and since I don’t know much about them, I’m going to be reviewing the Windows version only from here on in this review. For your information, I’m currently using Windows Vista 64 Home Premium Edition.

My computer system used for this test is an HP Pavilion with an AMD Athlon 64X2 2.70 Dual Core CPU 5200+. I have 4 GB of RAM. The Video card is NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 wtih 128 MB of video memory. This is an on-board video card (on the motherboard) and if you are doing heavy image work, and video, you might want a separate, more capable video card.

Minimum PC Requirements:

Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7

1.6GHz or faster processor

1GB RAM (MINIMUM means MINIMUM; you really will need 2GB of ram to be comfy)

2GB available hard disk space

Microsoft DirectX 9

Color monitor with 16-bit color video card

Internet Access for online features and help

One immediate, small but great change from Version 7.0 is that when the software is initially booted up, the Welcome Screen is rearranged; on the left side: simple buttons EDIT or ORGANIZE. On the right, access to tutorials and underneath, info on your Photoshop online account (space available, links to your personal URL and online organizer.) Version 7.0 had tab buttons along the top of the welcome screen and was visually more confusing. THIS IS A GREAT IMPROVEMENT. THANK YOU.

A big change from Version 6.0 is the workspace, which is now dark gray in color (I actually don’t like this–the gray is depressing, but I understand visually it is far less distracting and lets you focus on your editing job.) The workspace is now adjustable. However, if you are a change-o-phobic or just habit-bound, you can return the settings to look and feel like previous versions, for example, the fixed-window workspace of Version 6.0 can be retrieved in the Application Frame in the preferences window. There are other big changes, mainly the organizer, the online content, the personal online space and some editing tools; more about these further on in this review.

In addition to the change to the Welcome Screen, there are changes to the interface where you access your tools. The palettes have been renamed as “panels” so I got confused a bit again. I’ve been using Palettes for years with editing software; palettes of filters, layers, colors. So, now, they are PANELS, and you can do this right in the panel itself at the bottom. This is also a significant change from Version 6.0 (7.0 does have it.) The big change to 7.0 however, is that the layer controls are now their own panel below the Layers panel. The old dialog boxes are being replaced by these drop-down panels.

Getting down to brass tacks; the biggest change from 6.0 to either version 7.0 or now 8.0 by far, is the Organizer. Not only is there an automatic “organize my images for me” feature, but there is an optional online storage feature that has many uses. The main change from 7.0 to 8.0 has to do with an improved ability to add key word tags and to manage your media. If media management is an issue for you, this upgrade will be worth your while.

Another big change in Version 8.0: do you open multiple files at a single session? (I often download a photo session from say, a parade or one event.) Beforehand, you’d have to go to the file list in “Open Files” and pick which ones or all the ones you want, and try to scroll through them at the bottom to find the photo you want. Now you can open multiple files and use tabs to switch between them. This is huge. If you don’t like point-and-click, you can employ a keyboard shortcut of Command-~ (tilde) to page through the open files.

The main change to Version 8.0 is the Organizer. When you boot up the software and have those choices, Edit or Organize, initially you are asked to set up an online account at Photoshop.com. You don’t HAVE to do this. And you are then asked if you want to organize your photos, and this is the real advantage; the system combs through your hard drive and pulls up your images, and organizes them (like Picasa and other organizing programs) into a set of albums. The last six months are available with a single click, or you can organize by other means.

If you key-word tag your photos when saving them, and use the Smart Tags (everything from photo quality (good, bad, over, underexposed, face, etc) to event tags, you can create albums and quickly export them to DVD,CD, online albums, or hard drive. If you do a lot of image work and don’t want your main hard drive cluttered with images, or if you want to back up your images onto an external drive, this is very handy. The organizer is one major reason to move from 6.0 to 8.0. Organizing a large number of photographs is made seamless and easy with the organizer that appeared in Version 7.0. I didnt think Id need it, but I do need it and I use it. In fact, I need to get better at using the tag feature. This is very good for the increasingly difficult task of finding and retrieving older photos.

You get 2GB free storage online at Adobe Photoshop.com’s site, so if you sign up (as is suggested in the Welcome Screen), you can have an offsite, online backup. If 2GB is not enough storage for you, you can pay for Plus membership. Plus Membership starts at around twenty bucks (at this time) and you can go from 20GBmb (about 4 hours of video storage) to 40, 100, 250 or 500GB of storage, with prices rising accordingly. There are other perks such as advanced tutorials, and some bonus art and video effects, but the main reason for upgrading from free is to obtain much more online storage. I used some of the themes for the slide show and there are a few included, so the temptation is very strong to spring for the extra twenty bucks, get the ten-fold increase in storage (easy to fill it up) as well as the larger selection of themes. If you use Premiere, the adjunct video editing, you get increased storage for videos, and movie theme materials for “instant movies.” I will be reviewing Premiere 8.0 separately, but you can see that if you intend to use the complete image-plus-video package, you probably will want a Plus membership. I was surprised to find out (me, the minimalist) that I did also want the upgrade. Film buffs and Youtube fanatics will want the extra storage; video takes a lot of space, and you are permitted to upload a video of up to 2GB with basic membership.

In version 7.0, Adobe introduced a much-improved Photomerge funtion. I use this function a lot to make composite photos as well as panoramas and other interesting landscape creations and group photos. I was not happy with the previous Photomerge in versions 6.0 and prior, but I used it a lot as a shortcut to cut-and-paste multiple images to make a composite. Version 8.0 improves Photomerge and adds a very interesting and useful feature: you can combine several exposures to create the “perfect” digital exposure. Take one shot with flash and one without. (Yes, the no-flash shot is too dark; the flash shot is sometimes washed-out or the shadows look funny.) Using PhotomMerge Exposure, you can get a new, improved “best-of-both-worlds” photograph. Here’s my take: if you have Version 7.0 and you do a lot of photography, this is worth the upgrade alone.

Two new editing tools, Recompose and Smart Brush, tools also are slick ways to merge and fix photos with a lot less fiddling around, or by using some smarts built into the software. For example, you can reformat a wide photograph, remove a lot of blank space and recompose it to have the figures closer together, but not distorted. I used to do this by a very involved cut-and-paste procedure, copying figures I wanted to move and covering over unsightly elements like road signs or utility poles; this is a lot faster though I still need to do some clever editing myself if a pole appears “growing” out of the top of a subject’s head (a huge photographic boo-boo) or if there is some goofy kid mooning you or mugging a funny face in the background of the shot (I shouldn’t be telling you this, but a fun way to ruin someone’s vacation photograph is to sneak into the background as they compose their award-winning photo of the Eifel Tower or Mount Rushmore and cross your eyes and stick out your tongue. Kind of a human version of that intruding squirrel of internet fame.) Using Recompose, you can remove these offensive things more easily.

There are templates to make cards, calendars, frames and other artwork. I am not into that kind of thing, but it’s there for those of you who do scrapbooking, especially digital scrapbooking or who make your own birthday cards or Christmas newsletters. I used the slideshow template and I loved it. I wanted more…but the themes as I mentioned previously, are limited in the basic, included online edition. You have to spring for Plus membership to expand those selections of themes.

No major changes to the filters. Pretty much the same as Version 6.0, with the changes to controlling the interface as I mentioned before. The biggest change to filters is in the smart brushes for photographs. I have been using the filters a great deal ever since Elements was introduced, to pre-compose paintings from my digital photos. They seem pretty much the same as in earlier versions though the adjustments are now easier to manipulate in the Filter Gallery.

This question comes up all the time: is 8.0 FASTER??? I didn’t notice any difference loading 8.0 and 7.0. Definitely, versions 7.0 and 8.0 are much faster to load than 6.0, at least with my computer.

Re tutorials, manuals and help; as usual, help is online content though a pamphlet on Getting Started comes with the box of software. In addition to the online content for help, there is a “Tips and Tricks” hyperlink in the Welcome Screen (lower right). This takes you online to a web page with tutorials. The tutorials include what’s new in Version 8.0, various help for video editing (this will be covered in my review of Premiere Version 8.0.) You can search for other tutorials, and even submit your own. Tutorials have a rating on the right (one to five stars.) When you click on a particular tutorial, you will see the author, a way to favorite it for future reference, and on the right, you can add your own rating of it.

Summary:

Version 8.0 has a few great new improvements over Version 7.0. It is not vastly different than 7.0 but the Recompose, PhotomMerge Exposure and some of the adjustments to the panels are advanced enough to make this a significant improvement if you like to do digital photography. It is quite different from Version 6.0 so if you have not upgraded and these features appeal to you, I think it would be well worth it to get the improved organizer and the improved tools.

Recommendation: If you are on 6.0 or earlier versions and your PC meets the minimum requirements, do upgrade to 8.0. If you are on Version 7.0 and employ the media organization, upgrade to 8.0

Joanna Daneman

Review by Martin:

I’ve used Photoshop since Version 5 and currently use CS4. I’ve also been using Elements for maybe 5 years or more. For everyday family and landscape pix, Elements has been my editor of choice. But then Picasa came along and I found that I could do maybe 60 per cent of my photo handling more easily and quickly in Picasa, particularly since version 3. And the price is right. I nevertheless paid the bucks for Elements 8 because Picasa has its limits; when you need to apply operations to selected parts of a photo, you need Elements or the full PS. But Elements also has its limits: when you need to work on a lot of photos, it’s a pain. Here’s my first impressions.

The first thing you see when you bring up Elements 8 is a dialog with a choice between Organize and Edit. Wrong, wrong, wrong. When I have a batch of photos to process, Organize is Edit, and Edit is Organize. I need to switch back and forth between editing and organizing dozens of times and it needs to happen like in the blink of an eye. That’s where Picasa shines — one integrated edit-and-organize program, back and forth cleanly with a click. In Elements 8, if you start with Organize and pick a photo you want to edit, you have to wait a good l-o-n-g time (on a 2GB memory system running Windows RC7) for the editor to load in the background. And if when the editor finally comes up you decide the photo isn’t worth editing, and you want to go back to Organizer and look at the next one, it locks the image on you with a red bar, “Edit in Progress.” I’m still trying to figure out a way to unlock it. When you’re in edit mode, your other pictures show in a horizontal bar at the bottom of the screen. Switching between Organize and Edit, even after the editor finally loads in memory, is not as clean and smooth as in Picasa3.

On the good side, there is one view in Organizer (hard to find — you need to click on Fix without selecting an item from the dropdown) where you can select multiple photos and apply basic fixes to the set, such as levels and sharpen. That’s an advance over Picasa and represents the kind of blending of editing and organizing that will get me to stick with a program. If that hybrid workspace were the sweet spot of the program I’d rate it as well worth the money. Unfortunately when you need to move up from the few basic fixes, you’re back in the lo-o-n-g “loading editor workspace” wait.

Apart from the substandard integration of editing and organizing — the very core of what a volume photo handling tool needs to do — the Elements editor remains the very useful and productive single-image editor that it has been for years, and it’s improved. There’s a new “recompose” tool that Stalin’s darkroom people would have loved back in the day for editing Trotsky out of those Red Square group portraits; now anyone can do it easily. There’s a blend tool that superimposes two badly lit shots to create one good one; I haven’t tried it. The crop tool is improved with optional aspect ratio choices. There’s a new “cookie cutter” tool that lets you cut out, for example, heart-shaped segments of a photo. The action of the zoom tool has been upgraded to zoom to the point where you click, a welcome improvement. The spot healing tool continues to improve for fixing zits on faces. Speaking of faces, 8 has the “face recognition” tool-du-jour that shows me what a face is in case I can’t figure it out myself. For example, 8’s Analytics told me that a tight macro of a bin of beans was a “long shot with one face.” The Analytics tool is pretty useless; if any part of a photo is in focus, even a tree in the background, it’ll tell you the whole pic is in focus even though the faces in the foreground are a foggy blur.

Given my unhappiness with the integration of Edit and Organize, I’m probably not going to turn my disk full of 23,000 images over to the Elements Organizer tool; it’ll stay in Picasa3. The online backup I already have. I’ll dump the Organizer and just use Elements 8 as the intermediate-advanced single image editing tool that it’s been for years. As that, it’s improved and for projects where I don’t need the full CS4 capabilities, it’s a good tool and, I guess, worth the money. Two cheers. Maybe Elements 9 will do the edit-organize integration as well as Picasa3, or maybe Picasa4 will become as good an editor as Elements. We’ll see.