What is Deneba Canvas 5.x?

Let’s waste no time: Deneba has launched a major coup with Canvas 5.0. The one-and-a-half number leap from version 3.5 sounds like a marketing ploy to bring Deneba’s flagship product in line with the version numbers of its competitors, but the bump-up is fully justified. Canvas 5.0 is a complete rewrite, with a totally overhauled and much-improved interface that gives it the combined capabilities of draw, bitmap, page layout, and presentation programs.

You’ll see the difference as soon as you start to create a new document. Canvas asks if you want to make an illustration, a layout, or a slide presentation. Each type of document has its own interface metaphor and special tools. Illustration mode presents a standard blank page and pasteboard. Page layout mode gives you an Adobe PageMaker-style workspace; Presentation mode will have Microsoft PowerPoint users feeling right at home, down to the slide widgets along the bottom. No other illustration application does this, but it only makes sense; the ability to work on your entire desktop publication document in one program is a major step forward.

As an illustration tool, Canvas is on a par with Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia FreeHand (at least the versions current as of this writing—6.0 and 5.5, respectively), and edges them out in some areas. Chief among the superior features is Canvas’s advanced handling of bitmaps. With just a click on the brush icon in the main tool palette, you can tear off an entire set of paint and image-processing tools, all of which will be familiar to Adobe Photoshop users. Canvas imports every kind of bitmap image you’ve ever heard of, including Photoshop 3 files (layers are flattened on import, however). There’s full support for alpha channels, masks, and Photoshop filters.

If technical illustration is your groove, you’ll appreciate Canvas’s auto-dimensioning feature, which measures selected objects and applies standard, arrow-headed dimension lines. This is common in computer-aided design programs but rare in drawing applications — Illustrator has nothing like it. Canvas also boasts advanced Fill and Stroke tools. Any stroke can be filled with a color, gradient, or pattern (FreeHand 7 promises more sophisticated gradient capabilities — when it ships).

Artists may get the most mileage out of Canvas’s style sheets. The program lets you specify text styles, of course, but you can also create styles for all object properties. You can place a styled object in several places in a document, then make changes in the source object or Style dialog box to change all of them. This is an immense timesaver.

A minor irritation: Canvas requires you to double-click an object to select it for editing and then double-click again to finish the edit. Most people are used to clicking once to select for editing, which is standard Mac interface practice. It may take you a while to get the hang of this new and nonstandard (not to mention nonintuitive) method, especially if you switch back and forth among Canvas and other programs.

A not-so-minor irritation: Canvas 5.0 is none too stable. The program is finicky to install (be sure to check out <http://www.deneba.com> for updates) and has several known extension conflicts, including one with QuickDraw 3D. One particular problem is with the Extrude function, which brought my Mac down every time I tried to apply it. Deneba promises to ship a bug-fix release that should be available by the time you read this.

Another missing feature is a vector-based plug-in API so that third parties can develop drawing add-ons for Canvas. Deneba should at least make Canvas compatible with Adobe’s or Macromedia’s vector plug-in architecture so that it can use the many plug-ins available for Illustrator and FreeHand. Further, Canvas may not be the best choice for Web authors; unlike most of the major graphics programs shipping or soon to ship. Canvas currently cannot output HTML directly.

Can Canvas 5 woo away artists long accustomed to Illustrator and FreeHand? In taking on Adobe and Macromedia, Deneba has its work cut out. Many professional graphic artists will probably decide not to make the switch, but if you need the wide range of capabilities Canvas 5 offers and aren’t wed to one of the competitors, my advice is to give it a try. For a street price of around $400, you’ll get 80 percent of the functionality of four desktop publishing applications that together cost approximately $1,700. Overall, Canvas takes top honors as the best all-purpose illustration and layout tool for the Mac — and the best value.

Anzovin, Steven. (January 1997). Canvas 5.0. MacAddict. (pgs. 62-63).

Download Deneba Canvas 5.x for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.0

Compatibility notes

Minimum Requirements

• MC68020 processor
• 16 MB RAM
• 20 MB hard disk available
• CD-ROM drive
• System 7.0

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II