The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Canvas X Geoffrey Heard

A correspondent on Slashdot recently listed 29 vector graphics programs, opined he had covered the field, but had still missed my favourite — Canvas.

I was not surprised even though I use Canvas exclusively for all graphics myself as a DTP, advertising and marketing professional, and I know a number of other graphics/DTP and advertising/marketing professionals in Australia and overseas who do the same. Canvas also enjoys a significant market in a number of major corporations in the Americas.

Canvas is a Swiss army knife of graphics and DTP. It is a single program that does raster images, vector objects, and type, and freely mixes these functions in the one integrated work space, the typical graphics/DTP screen analogue of a sheet of paper on a pasteboard. There is a range of variations in work space and output modes covering illustration, DTP, animation, presentation and the Web.

If Canvas has these capabilities and a corporate market, how can the Slashdot correspondent have missed it? In a word — pricing. Canvas was (and is) under-priced, starving the marketing department of promotional funds. The low price has also fostered a credibility problem — who could believe a program that costs so little and claims so much could be truly professional?

First developed on Macintosh as a vector graphics competitor for MacDraw at the very beginning of the DTP revolution, Canvas was fully rewritten from the ground up and relaunched five versions and ten years ago as a full blown cross-platform, postscript, integrated illustration and publishing program.

The company which developed Canvas, Deneba in Florida, was taken over four years ago by ACD (ACDSee and other Windows graphic programs) in Vancouver. Since then, it is clearly Windows first and Mac second; the current Canvas X has two or three significant features available in Windows which are not available or not fully implemented for Mac users. In addition, Mac users report a level of instability which does not afflict Windows users.

Canvas is a unique all-rounder of a program that has significant strengths but also has some significant limitations. Whether it suits you depends on what you want to do. Let's walk through the current version, Canvas Pro X.

The Integrated Workspace

No other program in this field is as integrated as Canvas where you have one window open and you are doing all your work in that. The Corel suite was its nearest competitor for a long time and now Adobe's suite integration is providing an emerging challenge. Figure 1 shows the Canvas integration at work — introducing a photograph, editing it on the page, and using it to fill a headline in a DTP project. If the whole project is to be done in Canvas, then you just move on to the text and other elements at this point. If you are using Canvas as the graphic support for a dedicated DTP program such as InDesign or Quark, you would have a choice of exporting the composite as an EPS, PDF or Illustrator object or rendering it to raster and exporting it in TIFF, JPEG, PNG or Photoshop format.

The high level of integration is very important to Canvas users — it means they use this one program and interface all the time and get to know it very well so they can extract the maximum from it. Further, the level of integration helps offset limitations in some program modes.

Interface

Other graphics program users often call Canvas "quirky". This is partly because it deals with both vector and raster image functions on the same page using the same tools and partly because there are quirks — Canvas does some things in a different way. For the new user with no experience of DTP and graphics programs, it is no quirkier than any other graphics program. Canvas's interface has some very user-friendly features. The palette docking bar has been a trademark of Canvas for years and the new context sensitive "Properties Bar" is very effective. You select the text tool, and it becomes a near full service text palette set, select a photograph and it is a suite of photo editing tools and mini-menus, and so on.

Presets

In one sense, these are the opposite of the sophistication you expect in a professional program, but the Canvas presets are a godsend for busy professionals, providing instant access to a wide range of colour combinations, fills, blends, patterns, hatches, lines, neon lines, parallel lines, dashes, arrows and shapes. You can use a preset from the Presets palette as is or quickly edit it in the Attributes palette to suit your need. You can build your own presets and add them to your palette. In addition, there are the EasyShapes®; Figure 2 shows some of the possibilities.

Vector Graphics

Vector graphics is a Canvas strength. Until the last version of Adobe Illustrator, Canvas had a real edge on individual features. Today, Canvas has no match for Illustrator's new Live Tracing (hello, Streamline!) but Illustrator has no match for Canvas' multi page capability or its SpriteEffects, described in the manual thus: "Canvas' SpriteEffects technology lets you apply image filters and adjustments to vector objects, images, text, and grouped objects. You call still edit object paths, insert and delete text, as well as change inks and strokes".

Raster Images

Canvas is weaker in raster images, being about equivalent to Photoshop 4 (you can use Photoshop 4 compatible plug-ins, which includes many of the newest ones) so in raster, Canvas is best described as "commercial". It will do most jobs, but not necessarily with the ease of the latest Photoshop at one end of the scale or of Photoshop Elements at the other end.

Nevertheless, Canvas X has some interesting image editing features of its own including the extension of some of the distortion effects from the vector mode to raster which makes it a snap to correct converging verticals and lens distortion, and Image Warp which allows you to set up a point-to-point wrap of a raster image to a vector image.

Canvas' list of import/export filters does not include RAW import.

DTP

Paradoxically, Canvas is both strong and weak in DTP. Strong for shorter, graphics-heavy publications (say to 12-16 pages) where its integrated work space offers obvious advantages with the vector and raster graphics capabilities being augmented by many of the standards of dedicated DTP programs — multi page files, master pages, master items, facing pages, paragraph and text styles, text wrap, threading of text boxes, and so on. But the implementation is comparatively clumsy, so that for longer work and text-heavy work, InDesign, Quark, PageMaker, etc., would be preferred, with Canvas relegated to the role of graphics support.

PDF

The acceptability of output to third parties is always a question with a lesser known program. Canvas has excellent PDF output — you can save a multi page document, a single page or selected items on a page as PDF, and produce PDF interactive forms.

Web

For the Web, Canvas is essentially a graphics/DTP program saving to HTML and suffers from the same disadvantage as all such programs —you can't open an existing site (even one generated by Canvas) for maintenance. That aside, perhaps 80 percent of sites you see on the Web could have been built in Canvas and if you are a Canvas user, building a site is very quick and efficient (refer to Figure 3). In addition to the regular features, Canvas has some nice Web orientated tools: pixel drawing mode, excellent gif and jpeg, animated gif, SWF (Flash) export, a neat button maker, image slicer and links. The HTML Tables option cannot handle text wrap around graphics but the CSS2 option can, and you can add graphic backgrounds by altering just two lines of CSS2 code in a word processor.

You wouldn't buy Canvas for its Web capability, but it is a nice bonus. For heavier lifting, launch your dedicated program such as GoLive or DreamWeaver.

Presentations

Like the Web facility, this mode is a variation of the DTP tools with a clutch of presentation elements added such as automatic slide change, start from slide #, and so on. Another neat facility for Canvas users, but you wouldn't buy Canvas for this feature alone.

Sequences, Scripting, Comments & Mark-Up

I haven't used these tools myself, being a sole worker with a varied output, so I can't comment on them beyond saying they are there and some very big corporate clients use Canvas. If you were doing a lot of repetitive work, the sequencing and scripting capability would be a boon, of course, and Comments and Mark-up are vital for files moving among team members.

Specialist Versions
With Canvas X, ACD improved its two specialist versions introduced with Canvas 9, Scientific Imaging and GIS for map makers and others. These versions include specialist modules and take advantage of the high level of precision Canvas has always offered technical users. Users of both specialist versions report that Canvas X is now a significant tool in both these fields.

Price and Availability

Canvas enjoys a significant price advantage over its better known competitors. The boxed version is available through Pica Australia http://www.pica.com.au for $499 (actually cheaper than buying the box direct on the net), which includes a swag of URW fonts and some clip art.

Alternatively, you can do a 50 MB download from ACD Systems of America http://www.acdamerica.com paying US$350, or if you prefer US$400 for the main licence and a second, "home" licence.

Education and multi seat options are available.

The nearest competitor on price is the CorelDRAW 12 suite, at $650. Illustrator CS2 costs $810 on its own, the Adobe Creative Suite Standard is $1400 (without Web capability), while the Creative Suite Premium is $1800.

About the Author
Geoffrey Heard is a business writer, marketing consultant and publisher, a regular PC Update contributor and a happy Canvas user.

Note: Illustrations with this article were created on a Macintosh; the Windows windows, palettes, etc. are identical except for appearance.

Reprinted from the September 2006 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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