Canvas is a precision drawing package for the Mac that lets you create presentation materials, desktop publishing images, or architectural renderings. Its large selection of powerful, easy-to-use tools makes it one of the more popular drawing programs. Icons and menu options provide continuous multipoint Bezier curves, instant autotrace conversion of bitmap images to unlimited drawing layers, 1/65,000th of an inch precision, and text and graphics in 16.7 million colours plus PostScript grey scales in 1% increments.
For touching up clipped or scanned art, Canvas provides a number of painting tools which can be used on the same layers as the drawing tools. Canvas supports 24-bit colour on the Macintosh II, hairlines to 1/1000th of an inch, auto-dimensioning of lines and arcs, and a zoom capacity ranging from 3% to 3,200%. The program adds area and perimeter calculations, a peel-away ruler, PixelPaintcompatible colour palettes, smooth multipoint polygons, and special effects such as object rotation in one degree increments, distortion, and one or two point perspective.
Canvas also features object libraries (macros) that function as extensions to the drawing toolbox. Up to 32 objects can be added to any macro library, and macro libraries can be saved as individual files. A desk accessory version of Canvas can be invoked while working with other programs and provides approximately 80%, of the program's capabilities. The program also has a bitmap conversion option for transforming scanned colour or grey scale images into one of 15 predefined halftone or dithered images (for the Macintosh II only). Research Canvas
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SciTech
Research Canvas