Canvas 5

As you'd expect with a drawing package, Canvas can create advanced design effects like text on a path, but it can also handle longer sections of text. These are managed through text blocks, which are created by dragging on screen with the text tool rather than clicking.

The created text now has the best of both worlds: it can be treated either as a word wrapping, DTP-style text block or as a graphical object. For instance, dragging on a corner handle resizes the text block, with line lengths changing accordingly. Dragging on a corner handle while holding down , however, automatically and interactively changes the size of the font.

It's impressive that this kind of handling is possible at all - but more importantly, it's practical. Most drawing programs slow right down when dealing with more than a paragraph or so of text. Canvas certainly slows - and once crashed - but the response remains acceptable even when handling advanced typographic features like kerning and text wrap.

What really takes Canvas into DTP territory is its handling of multiple page documents with multiple columns. To access this facility, the user must specify that they're producing a publication when they create the file. This allows new pages to be added, rather than layers or slides. It also enables the user to set up margins/columns and headers/footers on individual or master pages. Imported text can't be made to flow within these columns automatically, but the same effect can be achieved by creating linked text blocks.

However, many of Canvas' text formatting features (such as managing styles) are awkward, and many others (like the ability to apply bullets or ruling lines automatically) are absent, so dedicated DTP rivals needn't lose any sleep. On the other hand, the control offered is impressive for a drawing program, and Canvas could be the ideal solution for many short and design-intensive publications such as brochures and adverts. There are two serious limitations, though: it lacks a Word DOC import filter and an built-in story editor, which means that all text changes must be made directly on the layout.

Advanced bitmap control

Canvas offers comprehensive control over bitmaps. Drawing and paint programs have previously kept themselves to themselves, but the boundaries are blurring. Canvas allows any of its objects to be rendered as a bitmap - grayscale, RGB or even CMYK - in resolutions up to 1,200ppi. You can then apply plug-in filters from the image menu so that a text heading can be converted to a bitmap and given a Gaussian blur to create a realistic shadow effect.

Such controls are becoming more common - even the budget Micrografx Draw (reviewed issue 29, p168) offers similar power - but Canvas takes things several stages further by allowing the user to create their own bitmap areas anywhere on the page and then offering near Photoshop-style control over them. More than 20 photo-editing tools can be accessed from the toolbox, including paint tools like the brush and airbrush, and eraser and retouching tools like dodge and burn. These will be immediately familiar to anyone who's used Photoshop, and they work in similar ways - even down to pressure sensitivity and the 14 transfer modes in which the brushes interact with the underlying pixel information.

About the only area that Canvas doesn't cater for is the creation of advanced photo compositions. Although masks can be built up and saved as channels, there's no ability to control multiple image sections on their own layers. This would be asking a great deal, however, and for most design purposes the tools on offer are more than sufficient. More power would always be welcome, but simply marking off a section of a design as a bitmap and beginning to paint is a liberating experience and shouldn't be underestimated.