Bliss Paint allows even a novice user to create intense pulsing waves of shape and color. At the heart of this tasty software lies an inventive and fascinating color synthesizer. Much like an old analog audio synth, users choose between sine waves and triangle waves, different oscillators, speeds and (in this case) colors--which are then spread across the screen using any of the wack distributors. In this manner, engaging psychedelic light paintings are evolved. Manipulations can be preprogram med or modified in realtime via keyboard strokes, audio input trigger or MIDI synchronization. The results can be saved to QuickTime format, output to a video signal (given additional hardware to do so) or saved for later display with the Bliss Saver screen saver utility. Bliss Saver 2.0 also includes MIDI and sound manipulation options, allowing for easier playback during live audio visual music sessions.

Mindmelding. (R)Evolutionary. Cheap. Fun. Innovative. There are also some add-on modules that are quite dyn-o-mite, and an equally excellent website through which you can share your creation with the rest of the worldwide Bliss Paint community. The online instructions are exhaustive and easy-to-use, so anybody can get started almost immediately designing trippy computer visuals.

My suggestion for future releases would be to add a fourth category of tools for transition or morphing. Several effects, like mirroring, take a couple seconds to redraw--which can be a fun effect, but an immediate update would be nice. Also, everything is drawn with hard lines and every change happens with shapes that have hard lines. It would be most excellent to be able to morph from one shape into another, via dissolves, actual morphing technology, cellular autonoma-styled transitions, etc.

Nonetheless, this is still one of the most exciting software packages to grace my desktop in years. Of all the current releases in psychedelic kaleidoscopic software, this is by far the most powerful and expressionistick. --S.A.

System requirements: 256-color video, System 6.0.7 or later. Price: Bliss Paint $79.95; Bliss Saver $49.95.

(This review first appeared, in a slightly different form, in Reign of Toads #4.)