November 9, 2006 - ArtRage Free version 2.2 Released!

Ambient Design has released an update to the Free version of ArtRage, their award-winning natural painting software. ArtRage 2.2 Free version is available for Windows XP/2K and Vista users, and a Universal Binary is available for Mac OSX users for both Intel and PowerPC. ArtRage 2.2 Free version has been released in English, French, and German language versions.

ArtRage 2.2 Free adds many new features and improvements. Here are some of the most important changes:

• Mac OS X Universal Binary: ArtRage 2.2 Free for OS X is now a Universal binary for PPC and Intel Macs. It will run on OS X version 10.3.9 or higher.
• Felt Pen Options: All the settings for the pen tool have been made available. With control over pen softness and wetness, and the ability to use the Art Pen option for opaque lighter colors the pen tool becomes a powerful artistic tool.
• Magnified Precise Cursor: The precise cursor has an option to be bigger and more visible.
• Color Sampler options: The Color Sampler tool can sample paint with lighting applied or the pure colour of the paint.
• TabletPC Numeric Entry: When entering handwritten numbers into text-entry boxes using the TabletPC input panel, the handwriting is more likely to be recognized as numerics, rather than alphabetic characters.
• PTG File Thumbnails: Your painting files are now given thumbnails in your OS. On Windows, a Shell extension (downloadable separately) gives thumbnails of ArtRage paintings inside Windows Explorer when the view mode is ‘Thumbnails’. On MacOSX a custom icon displays the painting contents in the file browsers.
• Many other features, updates and bug-fixes!

To download ArtRage 2.2 Free Edition: Go to the ArtRage Downloads Page. (http://www.ambientdesign.com/artragedown.html). From there, you can download the Free Version directly.

ArtRage 2.2 Free version is still entirely free with no adware, no spyware, no malware of any sort. ArtRage 2.2 Free has no time limitations or any other limitations on works produced with it. ArtRage 2.2 Free version has a subset of the features of ArtRage 2.2 Full version with some features of the Full version disabled.

The following features are only available in the Full version of ArtRage 2.2:

• Layers with Blend Modes: All 23 Photoshop CS2 layer blend modes are available in layered ArtRage paintings.
• Layered PSD import/export: To help work seamlessly with other applications, ArtRage 2 Full version supports PSD import and export with layer blend modes intact. Layer transparency and visibility is supported as well as copying, moving, and merging layers.
• Additional tools: A precision Airbrush tool with tilt support for graphics tablets, Paint roller tool for blocking in large areas, Paint tube tool which works well in conjunction with the palette knife. Glitter tool gives interesting textured areas to paintings. Additional tool settings: Some tool settings are only available in the Full version of ArtRage 2.
• Metallic paints: All tools can use metallic colours for richer effects and sparkly bits in the glitter.
• Custom Color pickers and color swatches: ArtRage 2 Full version allows artists to save sets of frequently used colours, and to define their own color pickers.
• Reference Images: You can pin as many reference images to the canvas as you like to help get details right in your paintings. The contents of reference images can be scaled and panned around to focus on areas of detail in larger references.
• More control over Canvas texture and color: With the ability to load custom canvas grains, change the roughness, add a metallic sheen to the surface, and affect the transparency of the canvas, there is much more room for artistic expression with the painting surface.
• Painting resizing and rescaling: Paintings can be resized with a high-quality scale, or the canvas can be enlarged or shrunk around the painting.
• More things than you can shake a stick at: I didn’t want to make the list too long - there are plenty of other features in the Full version to make it worth the price.

ArtRage 2.2 Full version is available to purchase for only US$19.95 from http://www.artrage.com/artragepurchase.html

About ArtRage.

ArtRage is a computer painting package designed to provide a natural and easy to use environment for producing art on your computer. By providing realistic tools such as oil paints and pencils, and simulating the real world dynamics of those media, ArtRage allows any user to play around with paint without the expense and mess of its real world counterpart. By providing Tracing tools, ArtRage lets any level of user produce paintings based on photographs or other existing images.

ArtRage 1 was released as a free product in 2004 and went on to win a number of online awards, followed by the first place in Microsoft’s ‘Does Your App Think In Ink’ contest for Tablet PC applications (2004).

ArtRage 2 introduces a wide range of new features and technology improvements that allow everyone from amateur hobbyists to professional artists to get deeper in to the process of painting, without losing the ease of use, sense of realism, and friendly feel that made ArtRage 1 successful.

About Ambient Design Ltd.

Ambient Design is a New Zealand based software development company specialising in the design and development of creative applications and interfaces. The company was founded on a strong graphical basis after Andy Bearsley and Matt Fox-Wilson left MetaCreations Corp in January 2000, but has grown since then to encompass a wide range of technologies.

Ambient was founded with the intention of creating a strong engineering company that would provide an output for some of the talent available in New Zealand. Since our founding we have worked for a wide range of international companies providing complete software engineering services from design to implementation.

Contact Details.

You can contact Ambient Design by post at the following address:

87 Bethells Road
Waitakere
Auckland 1008
New Zealand

Or you can fax us at: +64 (9) 810-8459.
Or email us at: matt@ambientdesign.com