What is the official goal for Expression Design?
I would love to see it as a serious competitor to Adobe Illustrator and support standard formats like EPS so I could design vector graphics and sell on vectorstock.com and sites like that as well as use it to do commercial illustration/publication design.
My fear is that Expression Design only exists to fill the gap where WPF and Sliverlight apps need a vector designer that outputs XAML and that competition with products like Adobe Illustrator are merely a side effect of being a vector design tool. All of the marketing at
http://www.microsoft.com/expression seems to indication it is just a companion to generate XAML for blend, so I think my fears are well founded:
Quoted from the website:
"
Expand Your Portfolio - Expression Design is the perfect companion to Expression Blend. Quickly build sophisticated vector assets then seamlessly transfer them via XAML to your Expression Blend projects.
Designed for Creativity - Unleash your creativity with innovative vector drawing tools and non-destructive effects that you can apply to either vector or imported bitmapped images. Apply both hard-edged and organic strokes while maintaining the flexibility of vector paths. Expression Design has been built from the ground up for designers by designers.
Your Vision, Uncompromised - Create assets knowing that their fidelity will be maintained throughout the entire designer-developer workflow. From Expression Design through Expression Blend to Visual Studio, graphics, user interface elements and design assets move seamlessly from your initial concepts to the finished product. Your original vision, fully realized.
"
Essentially, I would like to avoid purchasingly Adobe Illustrator if MS ED plans to compete in that space. However, if this is not the goal, I will probably buy Illustrator and do all my publication design there and just use MS ED when I need to create XAML output.
Can a PM shed any light on what MS's goal and purpose for ED is?
Question to Expression Design PM's