A lot of designers use only Photoshop and/or Illustrator. I always read the british Comnputer Arts mag. It's almost always on Adobes products. Never on Xara or Corel Draw. Why? It's because Adobe is "Industry Standard" in the photo and printing industry. Now, when they own Macromedia, Adobe will become the one and only monopoly graphic software GIANT.

There certainly are a lot of very good softwares that are made by other companys. Xara is one. Acrylic is another. I fell in love with Acrylic the very first time I used it three months ago. Her is a link to some of my Acrylic images: http://www.bildsajten.com/acrylic/A1.htm

I am teaching Art as a profession and is freelancing as gfx designer, mostly interactive Flash, using Macromedia Flash and Xara and sometimes Illustrator for printed works. It's a pity Acrylic does not have the Flash export like Xara's got. But Acrylic is still beta. There will some surprises in the final release in october, I've heard.

As a true "flat" designer (only 2D) I need to use just Acrylic for print or for the web. No more switching between two or three applications. Acrylic makes a great workflow!

Of course the Industry Standard softwares will remain Industry Standard softwares for a long time. But Microsoft can make a breakthrough with this application since it got such a lot of promises for the future...

If you are interested, pleas follow this link:
http://searchvb.techtarget.com/origi...116635,00.html