bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Like a good wine, some things get better with age. But ageing well is a rarity with software. Most developers are content to add just enough new features to justify an upgrade fee, and if the application is more difficult to use, well, that's how it goes.

Canvas 9, however, which started shipping a few weeks ago, is a good example of how something can mature well within a single upgrade.

Eary versions of Canvas struggled to find an identity and the versions that followed tried to be all things to all people.

Canvas started to mature and evolve as a technical illustration tool with Version 7.

Now that it has found its place, it has blasted forward at full speed to become the ultimate contender in this arena.

Version 9, now under the ACD Systems brand, is the embodiment of Canvas as the wise and mature professional technical illustrator.

First and foremost, the developers have blended Canvas' many features (image editing, vector illustration, page layout, Web graphics and presentations) into an uncluttered interface.

They call this 'Smart Toolbox' because it automatically displays the tools and options that you are likely to use next.

They have also eliminated the tiny triangle tool expanders, those microscopic triangles within each tool icon that indicated when other similar tools were hidden within. In Canvas 9, when you click on a tool icon, a second tool bar appears automatically with choices for similar tools. This makes it delightful to use compared with the methods used by other companies.

The next notable improvement is its new scale and accuracy. Canvas now has 64-bit precision vector accuracy, matching the more advanced CAD applications. And, incredibly, it can create documents of more than six million square kilometres in size!

As handy as this is for billboard creators, it was the main feature requested of the developers by map makers.

That brings us to Canvas' next most significant change.

In addition to the Pro version, Canvas now comes in two specialised versions - Scientific Imaging and GIS Mapping.

The Scientific Imaging Edition includes tools to measure, analyse and export digital images with up to 32-bits of floating point data per channel. (This feature allows Canvas to work with extremely large numbers with incredible accuracy.)

As a result, medical, biotech and research professionals can apply scientific and binary filters to images acquired by imaging equipment such as x-rays, satellite cameras and so on.

The Scientific Imaging Edition has two new tools for image analysis - the Image Data Viewer and the precision Image Measurement Tool, both of which evaluate complex pixel values and image properties accurately, and utilise the image formats used within these fields.

The other specialised version is the GIS Mapping Edition, which has direct support for the import and manipulation of geographic co-ordinate data. It includes a GIS Positioning Manager, and the ability to handle the exotic file formats that many cartographers need.

The fields that will welcome this edition are oil and resource exploration, city planning, cartography, trans-portation manage-ment, forest and wildlife management, demo-graphic analysis and visual-isation, law enforcement, the military and others.

The professional version has more than 100 new features.

My favourites are: Unlimited Zoom (you can actually zoom in or out 114,000 per cent); automatic call-out boxes, or text balloons that point to and describe items in your drawing; a two billion-object limit per document, auto dimensioning for CAD-type drawings; the Page Cropping Tool (handy for illustrating bits of complex drawings; a one-step photo crop, scale and resolution tool; and the New Attributes Manager, which is fast and precise.

Canvas is the only graphics application that this can be said about.

It is a one-stop palette for lines, fills and textures with a load of symbols, gradients and patterns.

Finally, the feature Speaker Notes means that if you do a presentation with dual monitors, you can now have the presentation on one screen and your notes on another.

All in all, Canvas (www.deneba.com, US$349.95 for the download, US$399.95 plus shipping for the boxed edition) feels like an entirely new application with a snap, precision and sophistication not found in any other desktop graphics application.

Canvas, like a good wine, is ageing well.

E-mail Dave Horrigan at horrigan@electriciti.com with your Mac queries



Upgrade blasts Canvas to top place among illustrator tools