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OmniPage 16 Professional
Diskeeper 10
Zonealarm Pro
Adobe Photoshop CS2
CrossEyes
SpySweeper
PhotoshopCS
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PDF Converter by ScanSoft
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ZONEALARM PRO

Nearly all of us at one time or another have used ZoneAlarm as our firewall, defined in part by Webopedia as a system designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network. Firewalls are frequently used to prevent unauthorized Internet users from accessing private networks connected to the Internet, All messages entering or leaving pass through the firewall, which examines each message and blocks those that do not meet the specified security criteria. It's a safe assumption that most ZoneAlarm users believe the free version entirely adequate for their needs; but we felt compelled to take a closer look at the ZoneAlarm Pro. In so doing, we deviated from the usual "boilerplate" review and simply summarized our reviewers' more significant findings.

Ease of Installation. Generally, our Panel found installation to be simple and straightforward and the process takes the uninitiated through a simple setup procedure, even a tutorial if the user has not been acquainted with ZoneAlarm prior to its installation. Some reviewers noted that they dislike any program that forces a reboot following installation, as does ZoneAlarm.

Our Observations. Our Panel noted that ZoneAlarm Pro provides greater descriptions than the free version regarding those processes and programs that request permission to access networks or the Internet. Added are Spyware Protection and Privacy Controls, but some Panelists questioned whether these effectively identified questionable applications while at the same time seemingly having no awareness of trusted programs such as Microsoft applications and even ZoneAlarm itself (one Panelist reported that ZoneAlarm's Privacy Advisor blocked headers on ZoneLab's own Website).

One Panelist noted an extensive burn-in period where permission levels for multiple processes must be set. Others indicated the "learning period" was minimal. Another Panelist reported that ZoneAlarm Pro Version 6 contains far too much bloat and significantly interferes with system speed (zaclient and vsmon, components of ZoneAlarm, pushed his CPU usage to nearly 100%).

Another point was made that the novice might be intimidated with constant and confusing popups warning of DANGER, when in reality ZoneAlarm is reporting on a legitimate program. That said, the User's Guide is an excellent 320-page document that thoroughly covers all aspects of the program in detail. As if that were not an adequate aid, the user can join help forums at the Zone Labs Web site. Support appears to be quite responsive and timely.

The interface met with mixed reactions. One Panelist observed that the tabs and modules were clearly represented, and a graph is always visible to show incoming and outgoing traffic, along with an Internet lock, an instant disconnect (Stop), and a context-sensitive button to access the Help file. Another Panelist stated that the info icons dashboard at the top of the screen is just as baffling and counter-intuitive as ever, a "click-and-pray exercise."

Summary. The Panel generally agreed that ZoneAlarm, to maintain a competitive posture in the marketplace, has evolved from a very useful (and free) basic firewall to a suite of programs (adding anti-virus, anti-spyware, parental controls, cookie controls, and so on) that likely do not collectively warrant the $50 US price tag. A basic firewall can easily be set up without charge. The user can then make an informed decision as to what products he should add to his defense.. Perhaps ZoneAlarm Pro is the smart way to go; perhaps not. As always, it comes down to each individual's preferences and budget.

 ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS2   This is no wimpy upgrade. Digital photographers, video editors, and graphic and Web designers will all find all kinds of new goodies to feed their creative appetites. Most features are targeted toward professional photographers moving to an all-digital work flow, such as support for 32-bit High Dynamic Range (HDR) images, allowing you to merge multiple exposures of a single image into one composite image. Along with Camera Raw 3.0 support, which lets you edit and process multiple raw images simultaneously, there's new support for the Adobe-backed Digital Negative (DNG) standard, a new archival format for the raw files generated by digital cameras. The ability to manipulate multiple layers with ease is also a welcome improvement in Photoshop CS2. Adobe Version Cue 2.0, available with the full Creative Suite package, keeps track of alternative versions of images, even those produced by non-Adobe applications. Adobe ImageReady CS2 remains bundled as a separate application within Photoshop CS2, although there's more integration of the two products in the CS2 release.

Video producers will love Photoshop’s new ability to output the current document to a video monitor using a FireWire: preview graphics on a TV screen without having to save and import them into a video-editing program. Adobe has also fine-tuned Photoshop CS2’s Print With Preview dialog box, which clarifies some of the confounding colour-management options.

Camera RAW 3: Photoshop's continued improvements to Camera Raw from the days when it was a third party plug-in are outstanding. Camera Raw 3 still works as a plug-in, an approach that enables Adobe to release frequent updates that support new cameras. (3.1 update is already available at the time of this writing) You are now able to edit multiple RAW files simultaneously. A new Curves window has  been added for fine-tuning image tonality.  It works much like the Curves dialog box, and because raw images contain a great deal of highlight data, the Curve feature is particularly useful for bringing out highlight detail that might otherwise get discarded during the conversion process. Other improvements include new tools for straightening and cropping images. Camera Raw 3 also works within the new Bridge application, streamlining your workflow options.

Vanishing Point: Take a peek in the Filter Menu to find a new, solid addition to CS2 called Vanishing Point (Filter>Vanishing Point). Vanishing Point is a new filter that lets you define perspective planes on images, then clone, paint, and transform images according to that perspective plane. Turn on the healing options in its dialog box, and Photoshop adjusts the colour, texture, and lighting of elements as you move them. To have your type disappear into the distance, simply add a grid and lay in the type. Or add a grid, then use the clone tool to add a few more floors to a high-rise building or more trees to side of a street that disappears over the horizon.

Speaking of Filter Menu: There are some exciting new additions to the Filter Menu. Lens Correction (Filter>Distort>Lens Correction) eliminates chromatic aberrations or fringing that irritatingly occurs along high-contrast edges of photographs. We've always been able to reduce "noise" (Filter>Noise) but now we have an advanced option for finer noise reduction by working in individual red, blue or green channels. You are also able to select what kind of "blur" to remove with the new Smart Sharpen filter (Filter>Sharpen>Smart Sharpen).

Check out the additional Blur filters (Filter>Blur). Box Blur, Shape Blur and Surface Blur. Now you can simulate a shallow depth of field by softening backgrounds in pictures/portraits. You can control the amount of sharpening applied to highlights and shadows. Of the three new blur filters in Photoshop CS2, the fun one might be Surface Blur, which creates a diffused, soft-focus look. Used sparingly, it’s effective at removing noise and film grain. Used with creative abandon, it creates a dreamy mood for those wedding pictures.

Image Warp: You used to need an engineering degree to warp one image around another. With the addition of the Image Warp tool (Edit>Transform>Warp), graphic designers can do their warping and move on to the next assignment in no time. (Digital photographers might have fun with this feature as well.) Back in the old days, only text could be warped. Today, you can warp any object, layer or selection and if you don't want to be limited to the built-in presets, try the Custom Warp function.

Smart Objects: Have you ever resized an image smaller then decided it should be larger? You ended up with a fuzzy, pixellated mess. A great new addition to CS2 is the Smart Tool called Smart Objects (Layer>Smart Objects). Even though you resized smaller, you have the option to change your mind and resize larger with virtually no degradation since it is linked to the original which remains intact. One really cool feature of Smart Objects is that images can be updated in Illustrator and the changes will automatically be reflected in Photoshop. You can work with this layer in many of the same ways you can in an ordinary layer. Transform, rotate, and resize to your heart’s content and it will always retain its crisp vector qualities.

Spot Healing Brush: The invaluable healing brush now has a co-partner called the Spot Healing Brush (you'll find it in the same pull out menu as the Healing Brush in the Tool Box). Spot Healing Brush tool simplifies retouching by eliminating the need to first specify a source point. It samples the area around a flaw and repairs or completely eliminates the flaw by replacing it with those sampled pixels.

Red Eye Removal:
In the same pull out menu as the healing brushes, FINALLY -- we have a Red Eye tool. Select the tool, click the red eye and sit back and watch as it completely disappears. That's all there is to it. Just too kewl.

Layers: Align all your text layers by selecting all the layers in the Layers Palette then click the "alignment" icon at the bottom of the palette. Done.

Fonts: Photoshop finally added a WYSIWYG feature in its font list. You can now see what the typeface LOOKS like before selecting it. Very helpful for those of us who have a few hundred (thousand?) fonts to choose from and a short memory.

Special effects filters:
Get some interesting results by experimenting with nearly 100 special effects filters (Filter>Filter Gallery). Easily preview and apply more than one filter at a time from the Filter Gallery.

Web Animations:
Create GIF animations directly within Photoshop CS2 by using the new Animations palette (Window>Animation) and layer palette animation options.

Batch Renaming:
Yes, Batch Renaming has been in previous versions, but there was a restriction. When renaming, you were changing the name of your originals. Now you have a choice to make a copy of those originals and save them into a different folder. Only the copies will have the new name. Your originals remain untouched.

Unlock Link Layers with one Click:
You used to have to unlink 10 different layers before you could move one of them. Now, you can unlink all the layers linked to your current layer, by simply Control-clicking on the Link icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette.

Tile Vertically:
Sweet. You can now review two photos side-by-side. No more shuffling images back and forth and up and down. If you have three photos open, the third one is placed in plain view as well beside photos one and two if there's screen space, or underneath if there's not. (Window>Arrange>Tile Vertically)

A New Shortcut:
Finally! A built-in keyboard shortcut for Image Size and Canvas Size. The very thing we use every time we open Adobe, Image Size, never had a shortcut. The Image Size shortcut is Mac: Option-Command-I (PC: Alt-Control-I). For Canvas Size, Mac: Option-Command-C (PC: Alt-Control-C). It's these important little time-savers that count the most.

Flatten Images:
Flatten your layers (or merge up or merge down) right from the Layers Palette. Mac: Control-click and PC: Right-click on any layer in the actual Layers Palette and from the pop-up menu that appears, choose Flatten image.

The New Bridge: We've saved the best for last; the revamped File Browser, renamed simply, The Bridge, so called due its ability to integrate across all Creative Suite applications. If you need to find an Illustrator graphic file you’ll find it, and more, in The Bridge. The Bridge is an independent application and can be opened as such, without having to wait while the full Adobe program opens. (That's not to say that you can't open The Bridge within Adobe or in reverse, open Adobe within The Bridge). You no longer have to shuffle around all the Adobe bits an pieces and windows and palettes in order to have enough screen space to view your images. The Bridge allows ingenious image organizing, tagging, rating and search capabilities. With the new Collections option, you can now assemble a "collection" of images into one place for easy access. The Bridge has three built-in views that can be accessed with the click of a button: thumbnail view, filmstrip view, and details view. Thumbnails can be scaled up or down with a slider bar, a perfect way to inspect the little details in an image without actually opening the image.

Because the Bridge can be used in all of the Creative Suite applications, you can leave it running at all times. When it gets in the way, reduce it to compact view. (Press Command-Return (PC: Control-Enter) and the Bridge reduces down to the size of a floating palette. (Press the same shortcut to return to full size.) Use ultra compact mode if you want The Bridge to be handy, but take up hardly any space at all.

The Adobe Photoshop CS2 upgrade has made an already invaluable piece of photo editing software even better.

CrossEyes  Microsoft Word is a great word processor, but most of us don’t have the time to learn the complicated formatting that takes place behind the scenes in our documents. Even worse, we don’t have the motivation, inclination and, maybe even, as I suspect in my instance, intelligence, to figure out what’s wrong when the fix takes more than a click or two. I, for one, have spent what seemed like hours to correct my work, and then just gave up and retyped the document, hoping the glitch wouldn’t happen a second time. Often, it did.

Enter CrossEyes, a handy application that attaches itself to Word. With a click on the CrossEyes icon near the top of your Word screen, a new window opens in the lower half of the screen to display your document with all the format details shown. A double click on any format item, conveniently colour-coded to show its category of information, pulls down a Word dialogue box and you can make changes from there. You can plunge into characters, paragraphs, style formatting, section properties, objects (such as pictures and text boxes), table cell addresses, and field codes. CrossEyes makes examining headers, footers, footnotes, endnotes, sections, all like child’s play.

Particularly noteworthy is something we don’t see much these days. It’s called “support” and CrossEyes not only puts a clear demo on line, they tell me they provide every customer with an online conference where they demonstrate and train the new user. That’s a lot more than we consumers expect these days for $49.95.

Now, having said all that, I got more than my fair share of support because, for some strange reason, CrossEyes wouldn’t respond when I pointed and clicked at any of the format codes. Because my problem was unique in their experiences, the folks at Levit & James (producers of CrossEyes) took me under their wings and arranged a couple of online screen-sharing sessions. My machine with Windows XP home operating system is a powerful-enough beast but I need to explain here that, with all the review work I do and all the applications running amok in my registry, there is a natural tendency for some new programs to meet with resistance. Such apparently is CrossEyes and the best “guestimate” offered is that other installed applications may have set up some system-wide mouse hooking that was misrouting CrossEyes’ commands. I tested this on an older machine, Windows 98 OS, without the suspect programs installed, and CrossEyes performed flawlessly.

That leaves the user with a couple of options. Install CrossEyes as a free 15-day trial, and if it works fine, just disregard the previous paragraph and consider my problem as truly unique. If CrossEyes doesn’t work for you, and you really truly want to keep it, you can go on a hunt for the conflicting program and uninstall it. I really don’t like to choose between two good programs and wish there were some way to make them peacefully coexist. But, remember, I already commented about my intelligence.

Spy Sweeper  Spyware, adware, scumware -- call it what you want, it seems to be one of the more prevalent problems we are experiencing with our computers today. The stuff isn't as potentially damaging to our systems as is a virus, Trojan, or worm, but it's every bit as aggravating and slows our systems to a crawl as it tracks and even reports our surfing habits to its hosts. If for no other reason, privacy issues and the fact that we want to keep a clean and lean machine dictate that we need some software to regularly perform housekeeping chores and rid our computers of this stuff that invariably is implanted clandestinely seemingly everywhere we travel on the Web.

I know there are several software packages that do this, in various degrees of efficiency. I set out to find one that will run transparently in the background at whatever frequency I designate because I'm not the sharpest blade in the drawer and often forget to perform routine maintenance.

I want a spyware cleaner that will maintain current definitions, much like the live updates that I have become accustomed to with Norton's antivirus protection. After all, any program that will do what it's designed to do may very well be obsolete just weeks after purchase without some system of update. And, I don't want the updating process to be a real hassle. The software should do the work and not expect me to devote a lot of time to it.

If I want to intervene, I reserve the right to do just that, and I want to be able to tell this spyware cleaner what cookies to always remove, and which ones to keep.

Everybody knows (I've told them enough) how I detest user manuals and I'm particularly fond of programs that have a clean, understandable, easy-to-use interface that doesn't require a lot of head-scratching to jump in and use.

And, probably of greatest importance to me, I want that software to always be on the job and continuously monitor changes to Internet Explorer, Windows system and host files, and changes to my startup programs. I want the program to alert me when something doesn't look right. There are a lot of bad guys out there aiming for my system (OK, maybe not, maybe I'm just paranoid). Whether it's true or not, I don't want my first line of defense to sleep, because the baddies don't.

I think I've found just the program to do all that. It's Webroot's Spy Sweeper and it sells for $29.95 with a one-year subscription. Installation was a breeze in less than one minute and I was asked if I wanted to update definitions, which it did cleanly in just seconds. My first intensive sweep of a hard drive containing about 10 gb of data took about 27 minutes but this didn't seem to be excessive, particularly as I used my computer for other tasks while Spy Sweeper did its thing. Using its 27,191 current spyware fingerprints, it subjected my drive to an inspection of 2,096 memory items, 12,553 registry items, and a check of 76,235 files and folders, finding 55 spyware and 91 traces. In the next step, it quickly removed and quarantined all that stuff it found. I then used another common software, Adaware, to see how well it did. Adaware removed 2 additional items found. . I believe no one software will keep a system totally devoid of spyware/adware, and so I will probably use both Spy Sweeper and Adaware, and maybe even others as well.

My second experiment a week later was to run Adaware first, and it found 16 objects in 51,332 adware objects scanned. Without removing these, I ran Spy Sweeper, this time with 27,406 spyware fingerprints loaded, and it inspected 1,852 memory items, 12,662 registry items, and 86,283 file/folders, to find 14 spyware and 16 traces. Interestingly, in my initial sweep one week earlier, Spy Sweeper did its thing in 27 minutes; this time it took 37 minutes. Both times were somewhat lengthier than Adaware's at about 12 minutes; however, these times don't mean a whole lot because either program is capable of running in the background without much effect on resources while I go onto other things.

Spyware gets my vote for the nicer user interface over its competitors; but, as I said, I will probably continue to use at least a couple of different cookie munchers on a regular basis.
 

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS  The new Photoshop CS has so many major new features that it's difficult to know where to start.  Previous versions of Photoshop could read 16-bit files but this new version has the next-generation 16-bit Camera Raw converter built right into the program for photographers using high-end digital cameras.

The new VERSION CUE allows you to rank projects and files so as to avoid the type of confusion that occurs when there are multiple designers working and modifying the same files.

Highlight/Shadow correction -- control over the detail in both the darkest and lightest areas of an image.

Match Colour -- makes the colour balance in one image match the colour balance in another.

Text on a path and text within a shape -- align text along any path you draw with Pen or Shape tools (EASY!!).

Photomerge -- creates seamless panoramas from multiple image files.

Crop and Straighten -- crops and straightens scans that have multiple images scanned at the same time, copying the results into individual document files.

Color Replacement tool -- a new addition to the Healing Brush tool group (great for red eye!).

Preview the effects of one filter or a combination of many filters on an image to show their effect BEFORE they're applied to an image.  A new filter has been added that outputs a photo-realistic, post-production, depth-of-field effect called the Lens Blur filter.  Photo Filters set (hidden on the Image > Adjustments menu, not on the filters menu) include all the standard over-the-lens filters used in conventional photography.

Layer Comps saves variations of a design to a separate palette.  Comps can be saved along with the master file, output as individual images or as a multi-page PDF file.  The layers palette now has the ability to nest layer sets within layer sets up to five layers deep.

The new Interactive Histogram Palette (in colour) now instantly reflects any image adjustment as you make it.

The addition of a file browser to a previous version of Photoshop was a boon, but wait till you experience the Upgraded File Browser which includes support for flags, keywords and editable metadata; batch processing without opening the images directly; adjustable thumbnail sizes; an adjustable interface; the ability to choose whether to view raster and/or vector-based documents; an enhanced Preview pane; and the ability to toggle the File Browser to full-screen mode.

GENERAL NEW FEATURES: export layers as documents; customizable keyboard shortcuts; new history log records every modification made to an image in the exact sequence in which it's done then save either as part of the file's metadata or if you want to save the history log for your own personal use, save to an external file; create multi-page PDF presentations directly from Photoshop files; for those of us who have to search through our computers for a nifty Photoshop tip we picked up, now with the Customizable Help, type your tips into any HTML editor and then save them to the additional How To folder that installs with Photoshop CS to have them appear at the bottom of the Help menu.

The bundled ImageReady has some new features as well including the ability to export to the Flash format and export individual layers as .swf files which can then be imported into Macromedia's Flash authoring environment as Flash layers. It preserves exported text and vector objects as Flash text and vectors, though it can also preserve the appearance of files by rasterizing. It also generates HTML files for Flash exports.

For data-driven graphics, ImageReady CS can import data from a spreadsheet or tab-delimited text file as well as various options such as outputting one image or set of slices from each data set and the ability to add dynamic text through variables for ImageReady .swf output.

Finally, ImageReady also receives a general interface overhaul geared more toward its original purpose, the creation of Web graphics. Smart Guides for easier positioning of small objects, (for example, buttons); the ability to select, manipulate and group multiple objects; creates nested object groups up to five levels deep; executes commands over multiple layers; and modifies multiple text objects simultaneously.