Digital Arts Group

August is Vacation Month for Digital Arts Group

DAG Annual Picnic

Thursday, July 12, 6:30 p.m.

Take a break from the routine and meet up at Kevin House's residence on Thursday, July 12, for fun and food on the deck. This is a potluck so bring your own meat to grill, beverage, and dish to share. Don't forget the lawn chair. Paper plates and utensils will be supplied by DAG.

Location: 515 Hillside, West Des Moines. It is near Valley Junction just west of 5th St.

No RSVP required.

Please note that due to the Independence Day Holiday, the picnic will be the SECOND Thursday of the month.

See you there!

SoftSkies

Those familiar with media players such as iTunes are probably aware of SoundSpectrum's excellent G-Force visual plug-in, which is, in this reviewer's opinion, one of the very best ways to fill your screen with delightful dancing visuals that change as your music plays. Now SoundSpectrum offers SoftSkies, an intriguing new way to have stunning digitally-generated cloudscapes mutate on screen in response to your music.

Installation is easy and controls are accessible via the slash/question mark key as it runs. SoftSkies comes pre-configured for stunning visual displays, but the depth of customization available is quite impressive. In addition to choosing between blue sky, sunset and storm sky-only views, you can display the music-instigated clouds in images of scenic castles, Swiss structures, or Utah landscapes (and the most advanced user can create their own "living images" as well). Colorcalm offers many different sky color variations, including Sweet, Tangy, Serene and Spiritual. Vivid and pastel color themes are also built-in, and you can choose to Shuffle (randomize) any of the options within each section. Favorite combinations can be saved and recalled. Settings can be modified to change full screen resolution, your audio input source, frame rate, how the clouds grow and lighting and wind changes with the music. The ambitious user can even create their own skies with the Skies Designer with an astounding set of options to control such things as colors, cloud warping and threshold factors, wind turbulence, cloud accumulation rate and maximum cloud vapor level. Wow! Scripting can even be used to control the appearance and behavior dynamically. But don't let the customization options scare you off--you don't have to investigate the depths to get stunning visual effects.

A free trial version is available for download at http://www.soundspectrum.com/softskies. The $20 Gold edition adds many more cloud effects and Living Images, displays album art and track titles, lets you design and add your own cloud behaviors and adds V-Bar, which lets you watch SoftSkies while working in other programs. The $30 Platinum edition sweetens the pot with the capability to use it as a screen saver, supports players on multiple operating systems and includes a Standalone that works with any sound source supported by your computer, including line-in or microphone input. Upgrades to higher-level versions are available. And there's extensive online documentation and support.

SoftSkies requires Mac OS X 10.3 or 10.4 with a G4 or greater processor, and it's Universal Binary for Intel processor Macs as well. For Windows 2000 or XP is required.

SoftSkies is very intuitive and easy to use, and the patent-pending cloud animation is gorgeous and fascinating. It is indeed a very welcome addition to the arsenal of visual enhancements for your computer environment.