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The Rise and Fall of Canvas for Mac
[Published Monday, May 21st]
Twenty years of history have officially come to an end, not with a bang but a whimper.
Deneba's drawing program Canvas got its start in 1987, and since that time has figured as a unique alternative, first to such simple drawing and painting programs as MacDraw and SuperPaint, then to more heavyweight applications such as Adobe Illustrator and even Photoshop. By general agreement of many nostalgic users, the program reached its height around 1992, with the lean, mean, feature-packed, easy-to-use version 3.5. There followed a long period of anticipation (also known as "vaporware") until, with a massive version jump and a complete rewrite, Canvas 5 for Mac and Windows emerged in late 1996, to howls of protest. The program felt like a massive and clumsy port; it was sluggish and badly implemented. One review described the new version as a Microsoftization of Canvas.
Canvas continued to evolve. Canvas 6, in 1999, was a distinct improvement over the previous version, but Canvas 7, in 2000, seemed to be adding random features, a victim of directionless bloat. Things muddled along until, in 2003, Deneba was acquired by ACD Systems, a Windows-only developer; and although new Mac versions continued to appear, they were costly and lacking in significant improvements. The program by this time was shaky and unreliable; meanwhile, ACD's advertising and emphasis seemed to concentrate on the other platform. Around 2005, following the much-scorned release of Canvas X, upgrades and bug fixes ceased entirely, and the lack of any transition to an Intel-native version focussed the spotlight more intensely than ever on the situation.
Finally, in response to a vociferous thread on their own forums, an ACD employee posted a message beginning as follows:
ACD Systems will release Canvas XI, Certified for Windows Vista, in early Fall 2007.
While we will not be incrementally releasing new versions of Canvas for the Mac platform, our R&D department is exploring opportunities to develop new cross-platform products that support and streamline our users' workflow.
And that, as the forum denizens immediately recognized, is that.
Resources
I still use canvas 8. Even though it has some small problems, maybe it needs some updates, I don't know. Canvas X doesn't get it for me. I see no future in upgrading, Canvas 8 is just fine for my Mini Mac. I like Canvas 8 for a lot of reasons, I checked CNV X out and it is a dud. CNV X runs really slow with OSX.4, I have to wait for action to take place. I called ADC about fraction rulers in English. I should have guessed they didn't understand what I was talking about, Can-Nooks. Being an engineer, I use the Decimal Inch which works with Fractional English rulers. Gee, I have no good reason why I am saying all this. CNV X isn't going to happen, I hate it now since CNV X update. I hate CNV 9 too! As long as CNV 8 still works in OSX, I will run CNV 8 and loving it. "APPLE KEEP CNV 8 ALIVE!" Will CNV 8 work with Mac Mini Mid-2007, 2G CPU's?
cclmums2
My guess is that Canvas development and support is a money pit, so something had to be cut. They cut the Mac development team. I have never tried to use Canvas on Windows, but I would think its the same interface. If they are just porting that to Vista, I doubt they will increase their overall market penetration into the Illustration business. I suspect Canvas is basically circling the drain.
I would not characterize Canvas as crap. There are no apps that I know of that can do what Canvas does for me. I think the interface could be improved, but I've gotten quite accustomed to it, and will stick with version 9 or 10 until something better comes along. Are there other apps that let you combine bitmapped and vector artwork so cleanly? That let you type in equations for dimensions? That will create a polygon from a text file full of coordinates?
My only hope is that the Mac platform grows enough to attract ACD's interest at some point in the future. Or that ACD get acquired by somebody more interested in the Mac platform.
I said the product is circling the drain. That means I suspect major development work is probably not in its future. Given the products current state, I believe the product has reached the end of its lifecycle.
I don't think the product is "crap" either. The "crap" comment came from a different person, not me.
Is it possible?
This would enable me to convert 14 years of canvas files (canvas 3.5.5) into a format that other graphics programs can read in the future.
I could implement in OS 9 or OS X using canvas 3.5.5 or Canvas 8.
This would be a great help to alot of people.
OK. So what do we now use that is NOT Windoze native ported over to the Mac maybe?
If I remember correctly, some of the versions of Canvas to PICT conversions rasterized the PICT at some really low rez (<72dpi?) so you ended up with a really ugly jaggedy blobby image, and all your objects were fused into a single blob. You may want to consider printing to PS or PDF, and seeing if the files can be worked on in Illustrator.
Steve Jobs could take Canvas and use it as the basis for "iDraw" {patent pending :-) ). Given Adobe's recent decision to drop Freehand, there are probably fine programmers available who would jump at the chance to create an Intel-Mac program to round out the "i-everything" line-up, and they have the experience to create something both unique and uniquely suited for the Mac today.
Just be sure to get the right to the Canvas forum too, so that the suggestions and thoughtful comments of long-time users can be considered for the final product. (Go, Steve, go!)
I created a lot of greeting cards in Canvas across the years. I am salvaging them by copying and pasting the graphics and text into Pages. It's a little klutzy because of Pages interface, but so far it works for me. More extensive layered projects would be a whole different animal I suspect.
Many, many years ago I went to a print shop, rented an hour on a Mac, and spent that hour playing with Freehand and Illustrator to see which would be the better buy. Aldus Freehand one the ease-of-use battle hands down, and I've been using it ever since. When Adobe bought Macromedia, I didn't regret any of their other decisions--the choices were obvious in which software to keep and which to go. But Freehand vs. Illustrator was a much closer match, and I knew that in the end the decision would be political.
With Canvas and Freehand gone, there's really nothing left to push Illustrator to new heights. For years upgrades were a ***-for-tat feature battle, with the artists winning the benefits of the competition. No more.
We've gone through the same demise story with the companies that bought Webstar: 4D, who did try to build an OS X product, but too many bugs likely exhausted whatever strategy they had --- then Kerio who bought the package only to allegedly milk the registered owner list for marketing their own product while permitting Webstar to die. Together, they represent the horror and pain ACD may have experienced, and now have experienced upon their remaining customer base.
It is sad -- it is also evolution. Lackluster management decisions are opportunities for other companies. Perhaps Omni, or Apple, or some other firm will see this niche market and capitalized. We do hope so -- at the right price point.
I like the idea of Omni developing a Canvas replacement. They already have a substantial code base to build on, and substantial expertise and (obviously) commitment to the Mac platform. Even better would be a collaboration between Omni and LemkeSoft, using the latter's expertise in format conversion.
The one must-have feature I used in Canvas was scaled rulers. Since I do a lot of modeling work, the ability to define and print drawings in 1/87 scale (Model Railroad HO scale), I'll keep Canvas around until there's a viable replacement (bugs and all)
dave
This is sad and disappointing. Canvas is unique, so if only it could be bug-fixed, so it would be stable and reliable, it would be a great product today.
Has there ever been something that could crack open and convert standard Canvas files to something usable by any non-Deneba/ACD software? I've tried GraphicConverter and MacLinkPlus to no avail. (I've had more luck converting my SuperPaint files!)
Maybe ACD could give Canvas away for free for awhile, the way WordPerfect did when it was dropping its Mac line?
I also have some older Canvas files that the latest version does not open, or even recognize. And I can't extract any of the graphics from those files with any known utility.
All comments regarding poor vision and planning for Canvas are absolutely on the button. I am a geologist, and for many years Canvas was the de facto utilty for making maps and other graphics. It had enough CAD-like tools for accurate work but also provided a good Mac experience. Then they buried a good program in useless functionality that other applications did much better.
This is like losing an old friend, but I stopped updating several versions in the past. It was clear once a primarily PeeCee company acquired Canvas.
oh my GOD, it was so frustrating, because despite its obvious under-the-hood power, the interface was reminiscent of AutoCAD (and those who have used AutoCAD and run screaming know of what I speak), and it completely destroyed my system's color profiles during installation to a more Windows/office color laser friendly profile. I had to do a complete reinstall just to get the system to show me my reds correctly again.
just a shame.
Dropping the Mac platform is the first step in a death march for Canvas
- by plugsnpixels May 22, 2007 12:10 PM PDT
>This is a reply to a previous comment by Harry--2008
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (29 Comments)I first came upon Canvas when version 5 was being promoted, about 11 years ago. As an Adobe user, I thought the concept of an integrated app was revolutionary! Turns out it still is, with no one else to this day melding their apps together into one seamless unit (I don't define "suites" as seamless--I consider that setup a broken workflow).
I spent about 5 years evangelizing Canvas with a free ezine and website (www.plugsandpixels.com/canvangelist). I've since moved on to other things, but despite having other resources at my disposal, I still choose to use Canvas X to create my newer ezines and web graphics, in conjunction with Photoshop.
Even in its precarious state of unfinished development and poor marketing, Canvas is still the best choice for overall graphics creation, especially for students learning such apps for the first time. And many pros like it too and won't use anything else. Searching for a Canvas replacement is a sad venture, because nothing else does everything it does (for instance, image editing right on a document's page, applying Photoshop plug-ins and other filters to any object, including vectors, etc. ? all the while maintaining a smooth, unbroken workflow).
The sad thing is, Canvas has so much promise if only it would be maintained and improved to reach its original potential as a true killer app. Current owner ACD is probably not the best place for Canvas to be tended, though they are promising further development of the next Windows version. Then again, Microsoft continued development of Creature House's cool Expression after they acquired it, and look how that turned out (not well). So we shall see!
So long as Canvas X still runs on new hardware and under newer Mac OS's, we will continue to use it, or maybe keep an older dedicated system around.