*** From the Archives ***

This article is from August 28, 2001, and is no longer current.

Expression 2: Natural Media the Vector Way

Images and Text
Creature House appears to have put much thought into the new interface, which incorporates some innovative and convenient improvements. For example, instead of the usual spin bars or inaccurate sliders for changing numerical values, there are little meters that look like mileage gauges. Numbers may be entered by double-clicking on the meter or by pulling the mouse up or down over the desired numerical place and the decimal point may be moved with the mouse as well. This may not sound like a big deal, but if you are changing the value from 6 to 600, this method is much faster than spin bars.
Like other graphics programs, the interface relies heavily on dockable palettes. There’s an optional area on the left side of the display where you can park palettes, but I found this setup occupied too much of the display. If you are using a stylus, you’ll appreciate the ability to rotate the working page to any angle, and animators will love the document flipping feature: Use the square bracket keys ([ and ]) to quickly page through a stack of windows.
The new bitmap tools are welcome additions, but don’t expect an embarrassment of riches here: There are two basic brushes — soft round and pixel (basically a pencil) — plus an eraser. The Paint Style palette provides adjustments for hardness, spacing, opacity, and size plus a Draw on Mask button for protecting parts of the bitmap from editing. There’s a really cool built-in tracing function for converting bitmaps to vector paths and a warp feature for distorting the bitmap (the warp feature can also be applied to vectors). The program supports Photoshop plug-ins, too. I found these features most useful for creating interesting strokes, although the inclusion of plug-in support and adjustments for coloration, brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, and lightness is convenient for on-the-fly image adjustment.


The Paint Style palette for bitmap editing provides a few brushes.

Text support is very good as well. You can bind text to a path or fill objects with text, as well as adjust alignment, leading, and scaling. Unfortunately, there’s not much flexibility in text bound to a path. For example, you can’t offset the text from the path. However, because text objects are simply special instances of vector paths, all operations and attributes can be applied to text itself.


Expression 2 includes extensive support for text, including the ability to apply strokes to text.

Ins and Outs
Although Expression doesn’t emphasize the Web, version 2 supports Flash export. The Flash Setting palette has buttons for assigning both motion and color effects to each of three user interaction states: normal, over, and click. What’s unique in Expression is that you can animate a multi-stroke (a stroke that has several variations, sort of like Painter’s Image Hose). When you export such a stroke to Flash, the animation goes along with it — the shape parameter will vary with time.
Expression’s native format isn’t supported outside the program, but there are extensive new export (and import) filters, including AICB (Adobe Illustrator on the Clipboard), so you can cut and paste to any other program that supports this clipboard. Illustrations may be exported to Illustrator 3, 5, and 7; PostScript EPS; Flash; and popular bitmap formats, including PSD. Other import formats include Windows Metafile and popular bitmap formats. And, of course, items may be transferred via the AICB clipboard.
Creature House also included many small but useful enhancements in version 2, including positionable crop marks; a non-editable onion skin layer for tracing; convenient color management; and an eyedropper that can pick up true object color or the color actually shown on the display after application of attributes such as transparency. The more you dig around in this program, the richer it seems to get. And digging around in it firsthand won’t cost you anything but some modem time: You can download the program for 30-day tryout at Creature House’s Web site.
The Natural
Expression 2 is vector illustration carried to the ultimate, and it makes the competition look a little wan by comparison. It’s a steal at $149, and if you own version 1, you can upgrade for $99. This reviewer would go so far as to label this a must-buy tool for the graphic designers and illustrators in the crowd.
Would I recommend Expression 2 as a general-purpose vector illustration program? Yes. Would I recommend it over the competition? That depends on what features are most important to you. Each of the competing programs has its own strength — Illustrator’s Adobe-ware compatibility and text tools, CorelDRAW’s interactive drawing features, FreeHand’s Flash export. Expression’s forte is the ability to work with vector-based natural media. Even if you can’t wean yourself from your current illustration app, you should easily get your money’s worth out of this innovative program if you like its vector-based natural-media approach .


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