What is Deneba Canvas 7.0.2?

Deneba has positioned Canvas as an all-purpose graphics and publishing tool — ready to take on any page layout, vector illustration, bitmap editing, or Web publishing project. The problem with multi-function packages is that they’re often much weaker than the sum of their parts. Canvas 7 avoids this pitfall by introducing enough performance enhancements, features, and brand-new Web publishing capabihties to satisfy graphic artists who want to do it all.

We took Canvas through a grueling test drive, designing a Web site and promotional flyer without ever leaving the app. We created the art as vector graphics, converted them to GIFs, wrote copy, sliced images, and exported the entire project as a six-page site. For print, we took the site’s first page, used our vector art to create higher-resolution imagery, and output a sharp-looking flyer on a color laser printer with high WYSIWYG fidelity.

The results impressed us. As a bitmap editor, Canvas delivers a lot of the same functionality as Adobe Photoshop — from support for alpha-channel masks and blending, to setting white and black levels. You can also set transparency levels and apply Photoshop-like filters to vector art, which remains editable. Canvas 7 is also a strong vector art tool, offering total control over Bézier curves with new Auto Curve, Reshape, and Push functions. After creating the art, use Canvas as a pagelayout program, with multiple masters, column guides, text wrap, linked column flows, headers and footers, and text on curves.

The quality of its bitmap, vector, and layout tools alone would justify a high rating, but Canvas 7 has added Web-publishing features that really push it over the top. Once you’ve built a page, a simple export command can output it as HTML, compressing and saving graphics for the Web in an image directory. The HTML isn’t up to the standard of a handcoded page, but it easily matches the output from Macromedia’s Dreamweaver or Adobe’s Golive. Like Adobe’s ImageReady and Macromedia’s Fireworks, Canvas offers a four-up preview window to control format and compression settings for Web graphics — and goes one step further, adding full FTP support.

Sprite Layers, introduced in Canvas 6, has matured significantiy. Roughly analogous to Layer Masks in Photoshop 5.5, it combines standard layer functionality and robust transparency controls. The completely new Sprite Effects technology offers nondestructive editing of bitmaps, vector art, and type on an object level. Even after you’ve applied a sequence of Photoshop-style filters and distortions like Motion Blur and Emboss to a line of type, you can edit it and retain the added effects.

Canvas has undergone a dramatic interface improvement, putting the vast majority of its daunting range of tools into a tabbed bar that offers instant access to brush palettes and view commands. You can pull the tabs to position palettes for convenience, then simply send them back to the bar when you’re done.

Deneba has transformed Canvas 7 from a simple suite of tools into a high-quality production environment. If you’re already using Quark, Photoshop, and Illustrator, you won’t want to switch. However, if you’re looking for software to handle brochure or flyer layout, flat-file Web development, bitmap editing, and vector illustration. Canvas 7 does almost everything the venerable desktop trio will do, for a quarter of the price.

Sanchez, Rick. (March 2000). Canvas 7. MacAddict. (pg. 49).

Download Deneba Canvas 7.0.2 for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 8.5

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver