Download Expression Design 5 Today!
Microsoft has update Expression Design for 2011 with some great new features including:
Importing Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) files
Expression Design Preview adds support for importing EPS files. To import EPS files, on the File menu, click Import Encapsulated Postscript File.
Making multiple selections in the Layers panel
Expression Design Preview adds the ability to quickly select a range of layers in the Layers panel, as well as a range of groups and objects, by pressing SHIFT and clicking in the panel to select a range, or by pressing CTRL and clicking in the panel to select non-contiguous layers. This feature functions in the same way as the multiple feature selection functions in Windows Explorer.
We have been waiting for this update for sometime… These features were well worth the wait. There have been many design folks who mistakenly compare Expression design to Adobe Photoshop. It was never intended to be Photoshop or even compete with it. Expression Design is a pure vector art program (not a bitmap editor program like Photoshop).
Why is Expression Design a vector art instead of bitmap ? Mostly because Expression Blend turns every bitmap (including those from Photoshop) into vectors and it was originally designed this way to work with Expression Blend (pre-Adobe Photoshop import days) .
Because art folks over the years have mistakenly compared Expression Blend to Flash and Expression Studio. to the Adobe Creative Suite (which functionality wise there is a great deal of overlap) it’s never gained a lot of supporters outside of the Blend/XAML community..
Expression Blend is a vector art program (vector as in Inkscape or Corel Draw or Xara) but probably not as functional as something like Adobe Illustrator it’s probably goo enough for most projects you’d do, it has long been complained at by many phone mostly Photoshop aficionados who never seem to get the distinction and differences.
One of the key features reviewers really liked about the original Creature House Expression product was it’s ability to do "skeletal strokes”. This was a feature that at the time was very unique an quite a differentiator between it and other competing products.
Quoting Creative Mac:
“Skeletal strokes allow you, essentially, to use a bitmap or vector image or animation as a stroke. These strokes are laid on top of paths, so, when you alter a path, the stroke images are altered along with them. Now, this isn't unique in and of itself. A variety of vector illustration tools, such as Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Fireworks, allow you to overlay textures and custom shapes over a path. But what is unique is the way expression handles these image "overlays" (for lack of a better term). Rather than simply repeating a fixed bitmap image, the program twists and stretches it along the path is it would in a raster-based drawing program, but with the advantage of the edit ability of vectors. “
The Origins of Expression Design (Why designers should take it more seriously!)
According to Wikipedia:
“Creature House Expression was a vector graphics editor initially developed by Creature House in Hong Kong, then Ray Dream, then Fractal Design Corporation and later MetaCreations as a companion to then-Fractal Design/MetaCreations Painter. At the time, Creature House was an independent Hong Kong software studio. Expression tried to duplicate Painter's UI as close as possible and was available for Mac OS and Windows.
Some time after Fractal Design and MetaTools merged into MetaCreations, a public company, management decided to thin out the product portfolio and focus on a more specific audience. Expression ended up back with Creature House who released two versions of the software under their own brand name, Expression 2 and Expression 3.
Eventually, Microsoft purchased Creature House and continued development under the code name Acrylic. In 2007, the original Expression application became part of Microsoft's Expression Studio suite of applications, rebranded and rewritten in WPF as Microsoft Expression Design. Windows XP and Vista versions are available, although Mac OS X support has officially been discontinued.”
This latest version is a very capable package and this new preview shows that Microsoft isn’t ditching this software even after Expression Blend received Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator import capability. It’s a great tool with a perfect price point in-between something high end like Adobe’s Creative Suite and more low-end and even free packages.
Interestingly enough you can’t say that Expression Design hasn’t made a big impact on the design world today because even the freely available Inkscape now has a XAML import export feature..
Expression Design 5 Feature Requests while this is in Preview
HTML 5 Tooling Portability
I was hoping this version of Expression Design 5 would finally support SVG import/export (and it still might this is just a preview) only time will tell.. Are you reading this Microsoft ?
SVG has become important again with the advent of HTML 5, and having a tool like Expression Design to help us make portability to and from HTML 5 tooling a lot easier would be very welcome at this point.. The free Inkscape software supports XAML import and export although it doesn’t have all of the cool tooling that I mentioned above. For now I am using it and Expression Design both together to make that portability happen in hopes that Microsoft has a surprise for us in store for these feature needs.
MIA Creature House Expression 3 Features that are Missing…
These screen shots say it all from the original Creature House Expression 3..
Adobe Flash graphic export (SWF) – We all know we end up converting graphics files all of the time. why not just let us have this feature back in Expression Design. This would make things a lot simpler. We all have to co-exist anyway.. Flash isn’t going away and neither is Silverlight it’s time Microsoft to bring this back..
EPS - Thanks for the import why not let us export too…
PDF- Why must I go through the extra step of getting these into a windows metafile then into Office PowerPoint (or some other method) to export to PDF ?? Microsoft Office suite has had this (and XPS support) as an option for years.. Why not Expression Design..
Anyway those are my top “asks” for Expression Design to make it a much more usable product for us all.. This wouldn’t require a major codebase shift at all.. What do you think ? I think I have been asking for some of this for three versions at least.. (EDITOR: SMILE)
If you are interested let the folks at Microsoft know… Download the Expression Design 5 preview today, I know you’ll like it.. Then go report any issues and additional feature suggestions at: https://connect.microsoft.com/expression?wa=wsignin1.0
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Inkscape Beginner Tip: If you are trying out Inkscape and want to use it’s XAML export feature remember to do the following before export:
- go to EDIT and then SELECT ALL IN ALL LAYERS.
- UNGROUP in the OBJECT menu repeatedly until no further ungrouping is possible
- Now do your export.
This is necessary so that everything shows up in the final export as it should otherwise you CAN have strange results on occasion.