Software Review: Microsoft Expression Studio 2 – Expression Blend 2 & Expression Design 2 - Page 2

• Animation – offers more control by working with the individual points of vector shapes to morph their appearance. You can use vertex animation on any path or object including clipping paths.

• Control Creation – will let you create user controls from design elements by converting existing XAML artwork at any stage in your design process.

• Font Embedding – in a WPF application,  it's easy. By taking your font file (you need make sure you have the appropriate licenses to use the fonts) you can embed all or part of any typeface that you need into your project.

• Import and Export – will let you import resources and canvases from Expression Design, import Silverlight 1 media player projects from Expression Encoder, and modify Expression Encoder templates

• Samples – of Silverlight 1 and product interoperability are now included with this latest version of Expression Blend.

Expression Design 2

Expression Design is Microsoft's professional illustration vector and raster graphic design tool that was based on Creature House Expression which was acquired by Microsoft in 2003. It contains export and slicing tools that will let you bring your art work to Expression Design and Expression Web and has flexible export options that let you target individual slices as separate formats including Silverlight and WPF canvas, HTML comp, XAML, PSD, and PDF.

You can target multiple formats such that you can export multiple formats at one time. You can place and align graphic elements using snap-to, grids, points, guides, and pixels. You can create buttons, backgrounds, and other image assets for use in authoring tools. It has vector drawing and editing tools to create artwork, and Live Effects, allows you to apply effects and filters to any vector or bitmapped object, all in a non-destructive and editable manor.

So what is new with Expression Design 2?

• Improved Workflow – has been significantly enhanced with regard to the ways that you can export your artwork into Expression Blend and Expression Web. This includes XAML and bitmap files.

• Targeting of Multiple Formats – will let you send individual slices to different formats including Silverlight and WPF canvas, WPF Resource dictionary, HTML comp, XAML, PSD, and PDF.

Article Author: T. Michael Testi

T. Michael Testi is software developer, a writer, and a photographer. He also blogs at PhotographyTodayNet and at All This and Everything Else.

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