Once upon a time, one of my favorite Macintosh graphics programs was Deneba's Canvas. It was a clever little program that combined the painting functions of a raster program with the drawing features of a vector program. Since the days of that happy little Mac, the program became cross-platform and grew in size, capabilities, and price. Now, I'm happy to report that Deneba has released Canvas 7 Special Edition for people (like me) who need the image editing, Web functions, page layout, and other features found in the Professional version without the high price tag.
I installed the program on a Power Macintosh G3 computer with 128MB of RAM, but the SE version only grabbed 18MB and was content to work with other, more memory-hungry applications that were still active. Canvas 7 SE lets you work with four different types of documents: illustrations, publications, animations, and presentations. While some of these documents share common interface elements, specialized controls apply to specific graphic types.
The basic toolbox of my old Canvas is still there, albeit in a much more attractive and usable form. This is supplemented by a toolbar that contains the kinds of buttons and commands that a multifunction program like this requires. There are lots of palettes that, along with a docking bar, let you customize the interface to make it look and work the way you want. This new version includes SpriteEffects, allowing you to apply image-editing filters such as Blur, Add Noise, and Twirl to any object, including text and vector graphics. This means you can take a hard-edged graphic shadow and turn it into a more realistic soft-edged effect.
Graphics newbies will appreciate Wizard options (even in the Mac OS version) that guide you though setting up new documents. Working with the program's vector-drawing functions may intimidate new computer users, but taking the time to read the simple, well-illustrated Getting Started Guide will have you drawing in no time. Even if you have no drawing talent, you can combine your own efforts with the disc of clip art that Deneba bundles with the program along with 500 fonts for the typeface obsessed. Canvas 7 SE has page-layout and typography capabilities that make it a great desktop publishing tool for users who aren't planning to use it to design their next publication. And did I mention it has a spell checker?
Canvas 7 SE has image-editing capabilities, although Photoshop users will not be impressed. Nevertheless, you can do some cool stuff, such as applying a vector mask to a bitmapped image. Naturally, Canvas has Web publishing capabilities, and you can do simple functions like create Web buttons, along with previewing, storing, and placing them. There's even a Web Publishing wizard to get you started, along with the ability to view finished Web pages.
Canvas SE is a solid tool for budget-minded people who want to create graphics for print or the Web. In short, it lets you produce professional-looking results for a fraction of the cost of a professional program.
Deneba packages both in the same box, but thrifty computer users can download it for $85, instead of paying $99.95 retail.
