Microsoft's Acrylic.

Microsoft has released a test version of a new professional graphics tool code-named Acrylic.

The software is based on Expression, the graphics application Microsoft acquired with its 2003 purchase of Hong Kong company Creature House, the software giant said on its Web site.

Microsoft describes the software currently available as a 77MB free download as bringing together pixel-based painting and vector graphics features. These capabilities will put the product squarely in the market currently dominated by software maker Adobe Systems with its pixel-focused Photoshop and vector-driven Illustrator products.

Acrylic appears to support opening and exporting to Photoshop and Illustrator file formats, as well as other standard graphics formats. In addition, the application appears to be able to export to Adobe's Portable Document Format, or PDF.

The test software, or beta, also has a limited life; it will expire Oct. 1.

Microsoft has recommended relatively high system specifications for Acrylic, saying consumers should preferably run the software on an Intel Pentium 4 machine, with Windows XP Service Pack 2, 512MB of memory, 500MB of disk space and a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet supporting the WinTab interface.