When we took a look at it back in April, we thought Jasc's work-in-progress, Trajectory Pro, looked promising (see story). Well, this latest public release shows that it still is, for two reasons:

First, the object/vector drawing tool market is ripe for a "right-priced" but serious illustration product. And, Jasc has proven with PaintShop Pro that it isn't afraid to compete against the graphics heavyweights at a lightweight price.

Secondly, Jasc is doing the development out in the open by basing the product on SVG, an emerging vendor-neutral graphics standard, and aggressively soliciting customer feedback on the free, beta releases.

The latest beta version (v0.3) demonstrates the ability to apply SVG filter effects to individual objects. Since these effects are completely editable and reversible, you can experiment with special effects on an object-by-object basis without painting yourself into a corner, so to speak.

No word yet on an eventual release date, but we can hope that an initial version is released this Fall.

Copyright © 2006 Stephen Jones All rights reserved.