Full of features that higher-priced titles boast, Beatware's e-Picture Pro packs plenty of power into its friendly price. Rich enough to hold its own next to 2-D imaging programs such as Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements, this application comes complete with a wealth of drawing and selection tools, effects, filters, and more. Blank templates allow you to quickly create a canvas for a banner, button, or video. You can import 2-D and 3-D graphics and even animation sequences, or create your own objects to bring to life. The image area supports layers, and you can independently manipulate every object and layer throughout an animation.
The animation process is straightforward. Objects can be moved, rotated, resized, faded, and otherwise changed over a period of time. You can tweak each frame to your liking, or set keyframes and allow the program to interpolate the frames in between. The powerful tweening tool (a familiar concept to Macromedia Flash users) lets you tweak the motion for a more (or less) natural appearance. You can export results as Flash animations, animated GIFs, and RealVideo or QuickTime movies. You can even export still images as common file types (JPEG, GIF, TIFF, etc.).
As powerful a program as it is, e-Picture Pro is hampered by some minor omissions. The biggest annoyance is the lack of in-program documentation; the manual is a mere 96 pages, and it's reproduced online in the form of an Acrobat file. Because e-Picture Pro was designed for both Mac and Windows, its interface makes a few sacrifices. The most notable is the near total lack of support for the right mouse button, which Windows users will find extremely frustrating. Hard-core animation buffs and professional Web designers will have their own qualms, including complaints over a lack of audio capabilities, a real-time preview mode, and a few other odds and ends that users of Flash or Adobe's After Effects may take for granted.
Overall, however, e-Picture Pro is a powerful and versatile Web animation tool with a commendable feature set for its price. --Joel Durhman Jr.
