Beatware e-Picture Pro 2.0

Blank templates allow you to quickly create a canvas for a banner, button, or video. You can import 2-D and 3-D graphics and even animation sequences, or create your own objects to bring to life. The image area supports layers, and you can independently manipulate every object and layer throughout an animation.

The animation process is straightforward. Objects can be moved, rotated, resized, faded, and otherwise changed over a period of time. You can tweak each frame to your liking, or set keyframes and allow the program to interpolate the frames in between. The powerful tweening tool (a familiar concept to Macromedia Flash users) lets you tweak the motion for a more (or less) natural appearance. You can export results as Flash animations, animated GIFs, and RealVideo or QuickTime movies. You can even export still images as common file types (JPEG, GIF, TIFF, etc.).

As powerful a program as it is, e-Picture Pro is hampered by some minor omissions. The biggest annoyance is the lack of in-program documentation; the manual is a mere 96 pages, and it's reproduced online in the form of an Acrobat file. Because e-Picture Pro was designed for both Mac and Windows, its interface makes a few sacrifices. The most notable is the near total lack of support for the right mouse button, which Windows users will find extremely frustrating. Hard-core animation buffs and professional Web designers will have their own qualms, including complaints over a lack of audio capabilities, a real-time preview mode, and a few other odds and ends that users of Flash or Adobe's After Effects may take for granted.

Overall, however, e-Picture Pro is a powerful and versatile Web animation tool with a commendable feature set for its price. --Joel Durhman Jr.

Amazon.com Product Description
e-Picture Pro produces powerful 2-D and 3-D animations for the Web. Enhance the visual appeal of your Web site with the power of 3-D animation. e-Picture Pro doesn't take months to master. Produce Flash animations with 3-D text, 3-D models, filters, and effects the first day. e-Picture Pro saves valuable production time by letting you leverage your 2-D graphics from programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. e-Picture Pro even maintains layers. If you want to combine 2-D with 3-D, e-Picture Pro allows you to import your 3D Studio Max and LightWave models while retaining their animation properties. As you create your animation, make as many changes as you need no matter how many filters or effects have been applied.

e-Picture Pro lets you spend more time creating instead of re-creating. It employs the concept of tweening to cut animation development time in half by manipulating only key frames rather than erasing and regenerating dozens of frames. Simply set the properties in the first frame, do the same for the last frame, and watch e-Picture Pro take care of all the frames in-between. As you become more adept, you can use e-Picture Pro's tweening wizard to fine-tune your animations to add the subtle attributes that make an animation look truly realistic.

Professional Web designers will appreciate e-Picture Pro's ability to reduce file size with image slicing. You can also add interactivity to buttons or menus by adding JavaScript events such as rollovers. If you are into Hollywood-style special effects, e-Picture Pro composites video and does chroma keying, also known as blue screening. Perhaps the most valuable feature of e-Picture Pro is its ability to export video in every industry-standard format, including Flash (SWF), QuickTime, Windows Media, and RealVideo. You can import a QuickTime movie and convert it into Flash. Explore e-Picture Pro's almost unlimited import and export options. e-Picture Pro is also a powerful companion to all major industry-site development software, including Flash, Dreamweaver, GoLive, and FrontPage.