Editorial Review of PD Artist

PD Artist 2 is a program for digital painters. The focus is on brushes, paint media, and special effects. PD Artist ($79) really tries to recreate a feeling of painting on canvas, paper, or any other surface you select, but what it's best at is creating organic and fluid digital art. Unfortunately, it's difficult to learn; you may find comparably-priced programs a better investment of your time.

With PD Artist, you work purely in raster (pixels); there are no preset shapes and forms to manipulate like in vector drawing programs like Adobe Illustrator ($599) or Serif DrawPlus ($99). You choose a brush and get to work.

PD Artist's Brush sets are thorough, and include non-brush tools like Airbrush, Pen, and Pencil, in addition to media such as Oils, Tempera, Pastels, and Watercolor. Just like raster painting program ArtRage Studio Pro ($80), and most other digital painting programs, the brushes aren't so realistic they don't allow you to watercolor over oil paint for example, but for the most part they create surprisingly good results. However, unlike ArtRage, setting the brush style is not intuitive in PD Artist.

The number of brush effects is unlimited, because you can make your own, much like in Adobe Illustrator. PD Artist includes a few hundred to get you started, including Smudge and Smear; Organic effects like grass, leaves, flowers, rocks, and sparkles; styles like Impressionist and dry brush; and odd additions like the brush that piles on photo-realistic rocks and one that paints beautiful wildflowers.

To help you with your painting, PD Artist also includes a multitude of transforming filters, such as Blur, Sharpen, Noise, Artistic, the interesting 3D perceptive and Lighting tools. There's a lot to learn. Unfortunately, just like with real painting, with PD Artist it's difficult for anyone to tell you step by step how to achieve a particular result: There are multiple ways of doing it. This makes it hard to learn PD Artist, even with prior experience using other painting programs. And with no searchable help in PD Artist you can get stuck, even if you are trying to work with one of the many tutorials found online.

If you're used to any other drawing or painting program, layers in PD Artist can be a little confusing to start. They work more like transparent overlays. You can store images and use a swap buffer feature--- essentially a replacement for saving multiple drafts---as if you're taking a fresh piece of paper. The upside of this is that you can go back to a previous snapshot of your work and also merge different images. It's like a combination of Adobe Photoshop's History and Illustrator's Layers, but it takes a while to get the hang of.

PD Artist doesn't have photo manipulation tools. You can open your photos most common image files and turn them into part of your artwork, but if you're interested in adding or removing parts of photographs to incorporate them into your art, you may want to try Paint.NET or RealWorld Paint, both free raster painting programs that are less brush-focused and easier to use.

In PD Artist I found it very difficult to recreate my artwork, an important step when you are learning how to use a program. When I was unhappy with my painting, I could follow the steps involved in creating it, but even keeping tool settings the same, I never got the same result twice. Maybe this is deliberate---like true painting---but I found it made PD Artist frustrating, and there's no work-around other than trying again and again to get the effect you're happy with.

I also had problems with PD Artist not responding while my Intel dual core processor practically melted down, even when doing something mundane like adjusting brush properties.

PD Artist 2 is powered by Project Dogwaffle version 6. Version 1.5 of the Project Dogwaffle software, originally created for Windows XP is still available for free, and installed and ran on both Windows 7 and Vista with no problems and no error messages … which is more than could be said for PD Artist. If you're not an expert in ActiveX controls or fixing things in the command line, you may get stuck before you even start painting with PD Artist.

PD Artist includes some interesting special effects, but if you want to learn to digitally paint, or even if you're a painter and can't afford costly supplies, PD Artist is frustratingly difficult to learn and achieve the effects you envision. Unless you're an avid Project Dogwaffle user, I'd suggest sticking with more intuitive painting programs like ArtRage Studio Pro or Paint.NET.

IMF Targeted in Sophisticated Cyber Attack

The International Monetary Fund has become the latest victim of a cyber attack believed to be carried out by hackers connected to a foreign government. The scope of the breach in the lender of last resort’s computer system is still unknown and the IMF has so far refused to release any details. But the New York Times, the first to break the story, talked to several senior officials who described it as serious.  The breach occurred “over the last several months,” before Dominique Strauss-Kahn quit after being charged with attempted rape. The IMF’s board was apparently told of the attack on Wednesday and now the FBI is helping to investigate.

Reuters talks to a security expert who says the attack “was clearly designed to infiltrate the IMF with the intention of gaining sensitive ‘insider privileged information.’” Another expert says the hackers tried to install software that would give a government a “digital insider presence” on the IMF network that could give it access to sensitive, potentially market-moving data. It seems the code used in the attack was specifically developed for the IMF system. There is lots of information within the IMF that could be of interest to hackers, from detailed data about European bailout programs to confidential reports on countries that could be in economic trouble and even records of negotiations with international leaders. 

Experts are particularly concerned about the IMF incident because it is the latest in a string of sophisticated attacks against large organizations, amounting to a stark reminder of how vulnerable sensitive computer systems are to hackers. The Washington Post notes this is the third recent attack against a major financial institution and points to “a pattern of cyber-espionage against key economic policymaking institutions” in recent years that some experts believe involves China. “Canada’s Treasury Board and Finance Ministry were targeted in January, and France’s Finance Ministry was hacked in December,” points out the Post. Over the past three months, Google, Sony, Lockheed Martin and Citigroup have all reported being the victims of cyber attacks, notes Bloomberg.

VW electronic research lab moved to Silicon Valley

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the ERL represents the entire Volkswagen Group in applied research and development with a mission to develop innovations and technologies for future generations of cars. They also find ways to transfer technologies from other industries into the automotive realm. The lab develops design and technical solutions to assist safe, convenient and intelligent interaction between the driver and vehicle information.

The ERL is a dedicated think tank for Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini and Volkswagen, focused on creating smarter cars and identifying new technologies. The Silicon Valley location allows the VW Group to work directly with the world's leading high-tech companies, start-ups and universities to develop applications for their vehicles.

The lab recently moved from Palo Alto to the current Belmont location, its third office in Silicon Valley, in order to support consistent growth since its 1998 founding. At the opening, the ERL hosted a Tech Day, involving demonstrations that provided a glimpse into the latest in automotive technology.

VW Group of America president and CEO Jonathan Browning was joined at the event by key officials including: U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, Belmont Mayor Coralin Feierbach; and Rob Csongor, Vice president of Corporate Marketing for NVidia.

Also in attendance were professors from several institutions including the University of California, Berkley; the University of Southern California; the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute; the University of California, San Diego; Stanford University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

"The Electronics Research Laboratory is another example of Volkswagen Group of America's investment in the U.S.," Browning said, adding that Volkswagen Group has made a significant multi-million dollar investment in the new facility. "The commitment of the ERL teams to automotive innovation will benefit drivers through safer, more eco-friendly driving experiences, prompted by the technological heartbeat of Silicon Valley. I am excited to help showcase the next generation of mobility today."

New Tech Demos
Human Machine Interface: recent efforts by the Human-Machine Interface team at the Electronics Research Lab have focused on designing innovative vehicle cockpits for Volkswagen Group's vehicles. Among the features are touchscreen/touchpad and display innovations creating a user experience allowing the driver to keep their eyes on the road as they interact with other features. Applications providing a wide array of communication, information and entertainment to rear-seat passengers are also part of the mix.

Infotainment Platforms: This team is developing systems that learn individual driving styles, preferences and schedules to provide personalized feedback about driving performance, desired points of interest and destinations, as well as recommendations for trip efficiency. This tool assist drivers in planning routes to avoid stressful driving, reserve parking spaces ahead of time and minimize dangerous driving situations.

Infotainment Applications: Building on the success of the Google Earth-based navigation system launched first in the new Audi A8 and the all-new Audi A7, the IA team adds Google Voice Local Search and Google Street View to the online navigation experience.

Driver Assistance Systems: The DAS team is collaborating with Silicon Valley-based visual computing technologies company NVidia to create next-generation vision processing applications for powerful emergency assistance systems. The team is also working with Oracle to develop Java-based tools for increasingly complex software architectures. The team has partnered with Virginia Tech and Stanford University to continue co-development of advanced driver assistance systems.

"These types of innovations clearly show that our researchers are among the best and brightest tackling the problems of mobility today," said ERL Executive Director Burkhard Huhnke. "Our partnerships with universities, organizations and companies like NVIDIA, Google and Oracle are helping us focus on smarter, safer driving and next-generation technologies."