1891 Charles Moore reviewing a piece of Microsoft software? Well, my general antipathy toward M$ notwithstanding, I'm always prepared to give credit where credit is due, and in the case of Microsoft Expression 3, not a whole lot development credit is due to Microsoft, although I'll give them full marks for offering an application this powerful as freeware. At least I think that's its status. A notice on the Expression 3 site reads:

"As a service to the many loyal users of Expression, a free download version is available to existing users of the product for either Microsoft Windows or Mac OS. Follow Windows or Macintosh download link below to complete the registration survey and download the software."

I wasn't an existing user of the product, but that seemed no impediment to downloading. Entering my Hotmail address and password got me to the registration site where one must fill out a form before proceeding to the download. However, MacUpdate proved a whole lot less hassle. There, I just had to click the download link, and the download started � all 57.7 MB of it.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14792

VersionTracker likewise initiated the download without any forms to fill in:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13211

So what is Microsoft Expression? It's a vector-based drawing and illustration app. that endeavors to bring you the best of both worlds -- the richness of pixel-based painting software and the convenience and editability of vector graphics.

Sound too good to be true? Well, as I understand it, Expression is not really a Microsoft application, but one M$ acquired when it bought Creature House, a Hong Kong company, which had at one time sold Expression to Fractal Design (which was later absorbed by Corel), and then re-acquired by Creature House.

The first hurdle, at least for dial-up users like me, is getting that humongous Expression 3 file downloaded. It's bigger than the OS X incremental version updates.

However, once you have it down, installing and launching Expression is simple. Unstuff the file and drag the entire �Expression 3� folder into your Applications folder or, if you have the CD version, copy the installation from the CD to your hard drive and you're done.

To run Expression 3, go the �Expression 3� folder, double-click the �E3� icon (or �E3X� icon on Mac OS X) to launch the application. The program takes a long time to start up, but it's no worse than, say, Photoshop Elements.

The vast majority of time I've spent in Mac OS graphics programs over the past dozen years has been in bitmap or "paint" applications, and my experience with vector-type "draw" programs has been minimal and sporadic, so I was curious to see what Expression could do that might interest me, especially since it was reputed to blur the distinction between paint and draw programs considerably while retaining the advantage of being able to resize to your heart's content without losing any detail because you are working with vectors and not pixels

Built on Creature House�s proprietary graphics engine and cross-platform framework, Expression 3 is an object-based drawing application. All brush trails, painted areas, lines, curves and text are recorded analytically as high-precision mathematical lines and curves. Graphics and software using this approach are generally referred to as vector-graphics or vector-based, so named because of historical reasons rather than being an accurate description of the approach, which actually involves more than linear vectors.

In contrast to this object-based and analytical approach, paint applications like Photoshop record pictures in unstructured arrays of pixels, and possibly layers of them. Such applications are generally referred to as being pixel-based or bitmap-based.

Vector-based applications (Illustrator and Freehand, and the Draw module of AppleWorks are examples), offer superior editability and resolution independent graphics as their main advantages. However, as you create more and more graphical objects in a picture document, its structural complexity and hence the computational demand on the computer increases. Pixel-based paint applications, on the other hand, are generally resolution dependent. This can be a disadvantage, because pictures displayed in output devices whose resolution is higher than the resolution at which the pictures were created will appear "bitmappy" or "blocky." A further disadvantage is that one usually cannot edit the brush strokes that are drawn on bitmap-based pictures, except at the pixel level. Nonetheless, in terms of complexity, bitmap pictures always remain the same, regardless of the look of the images and the length of time spent working and re-working them. For reasons noted, vector-based drawing applications have often been used mainly for design work, where precise curves, crisp edges and smoothly shaded areas of colors are often requirements. On the other hand, photo touch-up and organic paint effects are usually in the realm of pixel-based applications.

However, Expression, which introduced to vector graphics the "Skeletal Strokes" technology and full transparency, blurs the distinction by introducing real-time soft-edged and embossed fills, �live� paper textures, watercolor effects, and other "paint" features in a vector based application.

A skeletal stroke is simply a stylish brush stroke of arbitrary form � it could be a natural-looking dab of paint that resembles the brush trail left by a bristle brush, or a surrealistically stretched centipede with as many pairs of legs as is allowed by the length of your brush trail. Skeletal strokes can take any shape and form, and have many variations that you can control. Skeletal strokes performs controlled deformation of certain pre-recorded graphics along a user-specified skeleton, also referred to as a path. Vector-graphics brush strokes similar to skeletal strokes have been implemented in other drawing applications, but Expression introduced this concept.

With Skeletal Strokes, the transparency of bitmap strokes with an alpha channel can vary along the brush trail, based on the pressure of the stylus or according to a variable width profile.

The richness and realistic appearance of the strokes you create are enhanced by tools like the Freehand Pen tool and Bezier Pen tool, the B-Spline tool and Polyline/Arc tool. You can lay down strokes on your virtual drawing surface and make as many changes and revisions to them as you like. With a pressure sensitive tablet, you can draw in a natural way, with the strokes responding to your hand�s articulations. Bitmap images can also be defined as skeletal strokes . The transparency of bitmap strokes with an alpha channel can vary along the brush trail, based on the pressure of the stylus or according to a variable width profile.

Scraping and color lifting are drawing techniques for creating subtle effects by revealing the underlying colors below painted areas. Expression 3 provides general support for this kind of effects, using the Eraser mode. The Eraser mode can be applied to any graphics object, yet allows the editability of the scraping paths and strokes to be maintained.

Expression 3 is complex and powerful software, with a somewhat overwhelming number of commands, palettes and controls, but fortunately (for me at least) the basic drawing model is simple, and it's not necessary to know every detail and function in order to begin creating pictures.

In object-based drawing applications like Expression 3 or Adobe Illustrator, every single picture component, from a simple curve to an area painted with a color gradation, is an individual component recorded in some form of abstract digital representation. In Expression, the most commonly used basic picture component is the path, which is an abstract shape defined by a sequence of straight lines or curve segments. Annotations that accompany a path are called paint style attributes.

Drawing and painting in bitmap-based painting software encourages building up shapes and shading by overlaying numerous brush strokes. This approach can be used in Expression 3, but is less economical and efficient than using a path to define an area to be shaded or filled, then specifying paint style attributes for final rendering in that area.

An Expression picture is a structured document storing a hierarchy of graphics objects created by the user. Each object has a unique stacking order in the object hierarchy. You can optionally create sub-structures like groups and layers among objects.

An Expression document is a self-contained picture file. Any resources used in the picture, e.g., patterns, gradients, strokes, paper textures etc., are recorded in a resource section in the document. This makes it possible for picture documents to be carried to another, different system and to still be opened correctly.

Expression 3 will, periodically save the document currently being worked on to disk in a less self-contained format known as rescue files. In the case of a system failure or program error, the contents of the rescue files will be re-opened on re-starting Expression. The idea of the rescue file is to provide a quick way to back up your unfinished picture. A rescue file does not have a resource section recording all the resources used in the original file, and bitmap image data is not saved; just place-holder frames for bitmap images.

Expression�s various features are available from floating palettes, each dedicated to a different set of tasks. To choose colors and gradients, you use the Paint Style palette, and to see the layer and object structure, you use the Object List palette. Palettes in general show information about objects currently selected, and let you make changes to them. If you select a path and then choose a stroke from the Strokes palette, the stroke will be applied to the path at once. The stroke will also be shown in the Paint Style palette�s Stroke Preview, which is updated whenever certain stroke related attributes are changed.
Palettes can be placed anywhere.

Blending modes specify how colors in a graphics object should be mixed with the background. Drawing in different blending modes creates unusual changes that are difficult to achieve though simple transparency. Blending modes can be applied to any graphics object using the Blending Mode popup button in the Paint Style palette.

Paths are the basic graphics primitive in Expression. A path is just an abstract shape description. When we refer to a path object, we are actually referring to the graphics object with a shape defined by a path, and with various paint style attributes attached to specify how the path is to be rendered. Many other graphics objects are actually made up of path objects. For example, the complex appearance of a vector-based skeletal stroke is composed of many paths, the strokes of which may in turn have been made up of other finer paths. A path is made up of a sequence of curved and straight segments, and can be made up of different kinds of curves for different drawing and editing needs.

The curves used in Expression are Bezier curves and B-splines. The Bezier curve describes a shape by the positions of its control points (the nodes) and the condition of the tangents at each node. For Bezier paths, there is a pair of tangent handles at each node for controlling the curvature and curve continuity at that node.

The B-spline curve is a smooth curve. The kind of B-spline used in Expression is called uniform B-spline, with second order continuity, i.e., not only does the curve have a continuous tangent vector, but the rate of change of the tangent vectors is also continuous. Therefore B-splines are generally much smoother in appearance than Bezier curves. The shape of a B-spline curve is described by the positions of its control points, called nodes, which, Bezier and B-spline paths.

A path by itself is only an abstract geometrical description. To make a path interesting, or visible at all, a set of paint style attributes must be applied to it. The paint style attributes describe how the interior of a path should be filled, what kind of line or stroke should be rendered along the path, as well as other more detailed path rendering settings, like joint type, dash pattern etc. The basic paint style attributes for a path are the stroke and fill attributes, which are displayed.

Expression allows arbitrary photorealistic lighting effects to be applied to embossed shapes using a technique known as reflection mapping. This technique uses a sampled image, called a reflection map or an environment map, which has recorded the appearance of a surface at all normal directions under a particular lighting environment. This technique is commonly used in 3D computer graphics and the film industry to give the most photorealistic lighting effects.

The Paint Style palette is divided into two main sections. The upper section is for setting the stroke type and fill type. The lower section displays the controls for the stroke type or the fill type, depending on the current palette focus.

The Attributes palette displays and controls the more specialized attributes, some of which apply only to skeletal strokes, like shape parameter (for multi-view strokes), stroke shear, stroke mode and the �Break At Joints� option. Two other attributes, dash pattern and stroke joint, apply to all kinds of strokes, whereas stroke cap is for basic and gradient strokes only.

Multi-view strokes are strokes defined from a number of variations (the views) of the definition picture, and can take the appearance of one of the in-between shapes. The exact in-between shape of a multi-view stroke that is taken in a path object is specified in the shape parameter attribute.

When you create skeletal strokes, they are added to the list of existing strokes in the Strokes palette, ready to be applied to paths. When you open an Illustrator file with art brushes, they can also be converted to skeletal strokes. These skeletal strokes are not added to the Strokes palette unless you define them in Expression. Stroke definitions can be organized into stroke folders for easy access, using controls in the Strokes palette.

When you define or edit vector strokes, a stroke window opens to show the stroke and the stroke definition box � reference frame for the stroke.

Expression supports bitmaps with transparency and you can define bitmap strokes from bitmaps. Photoshop and compatible filters can also be applied to bitmaps. The bitmap brush setting area in the Paint Style palette lets you choose brush settings for painting colors or masks on bitmaps. Brushes for painting bitmaps can vary in size, hardness, spacing, opacity, and color. The width and opacity of bitmap trails can also be controlled by the pressure levels from the stylus.

Colors, gradients, and patterns can be created, copied to and from objects, and copied between objects and the Paint Style palette. Some stroke and fill attributes can also be saved in the Item List palette for later use.

Custom colors are colors with names, and in Expression, you can create your own custom colors in RGB or CMYK values. When you create custom colors or open picture files containing custom colors, these custom colors will be added to the list of existing custom colors in the Paint Style palette, ready to be applied to paths. All operations on custom colors can be performed in the Paint Style palette.

The only major functional flaw or bug I encountered in Expression is that the program refuses to open graphic documents such as JPEG, PICT, PDF, or TIFF, etc., that have been created in other documents. Ditto for pasting content from such documents into Expression documents via the Clipboard. Both functions work fine with documents created by Expression itself, but I struggled with trying to make "foreign" documents and Clipboard data work, and pored over the manual for guidance, but alas to no avail. This issue seriously limits Expression's practical usefulness.

Incidentally, the Expression manual, in PDF format, is excellent and thorough in explaining the program's functions and how they work. I've cribbed from it liberally in this review.

Expression pictures can be exported to the Flash format relatively faithfully, but without some of the more sophisticated features like blending modes, embossed/soft-edged fill, paper textures and fully colored bitmap strokes.

Expression documents can be saved in the native format, copied to other applications through the clipboard, exported to other vector and bitmap formats, and as output to a printer.

Expression documents are saved in the Expression file format, which uses the file extension of �.xpr.� You can choose to save Expression files in binary or text format, and include a thumbnail image with size of up to 64x64 pixels if you want. For crash recovery purposes, Expression saves modified documents periodically into rescue files. These rescue files are also saved in Expression�s native file format. They are automatically removed as soon as the document has been properly saved or closed.

In summary, Expression is a powerful and capable high-end vector graphics program with some innivative and unique qualities, and the price is certainly right. On the downside, using it will involve scaling a fairly steep learning curve, and the "foreign file" incompatibility bug is frustrating. Future development and compatibility updates are also a question mark.

System requirements:
Mac OS 9.0 or later, CarbonLib.
System Requirements Macintosh Systems:
� PowerPC-based Macintosh system supporting thousands or millions of colors.
� Mac OS version 8.6 or later, with a minimum of 64MB free application memory, with ColorSync 2.6.1 or later installed.
� Mac OS X version 10.1 or later, with a minimum of 128MB memory.
� Mouse and/or digitizer tablet supporting the WACOM tablet software interface.

For more information, visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/

Download at
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14792
or
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13211


Charles W. Moore

Tags: Reviews ï Graphics/Design ï MooresViews ï

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