Some excellent programs, Paolo. The difficulty is making the decision about which one, although Pixelmator is different from the other three, being an image/raster editor rather than a vector drawing program, which the other three are. These programs are drawn from a number which rely on the technologies built into OS X, so to a fairly large extent, they are all putting a front end on to the same capabilities. It is difficult for any of them to claim a significant advantage.
As a Canvas and (to a lesser extent) PhotoLine 32 user, though, I am looking at the work of these developers in Cocoa and wondering where on earth their heads are at. They have great vector, raster and text capabilities to draw on and they are not bringing them together into one program under one interface. Even the Stone man
http://www.stone.com/ with his drawing and publishing program, Create, didn't incorporate image editing but produced a separate image program, iMaginator, of (it appears to me) limited capability.
An integrated workspace. Why not??? THAT would make a difference! The integrated workspace in Canvas is so precious that I am one of many Canvas users sticking to it like glue, even though the shortsighted company which bought Deneba (the company which originated Canvas back in the day) a few years ago has ended development of the Mac version and seems to be fiddling while Rome burns on the PC version (and while it mines Canvas for features to add to its ridiculously generic photo editing programs for PCs).
Now, if we had a good integrated vector/raster graphics/DTP program, with Linkback both ways to NWPro -- THAT would be ideal.
In the meantime, we devotees of the integrated workspace will continue to behave like a mob of penguins on the edge of the ice, knowing that the seals and orcas are circling. We knew it worked on OS X.3.9, so when OS X.4.x came out, we all shuffled around until one of us got impatient and took the leap, tested Canvas and found it worked on Tiger. Just recently, we have all been shuffling around at the edge of the ice again, pushing and shoving ... ah! -- there goes Rikchard! Hey, does it work or did the seals get you? It worked. Now we're leaping in (well, I'm not yet, Leapard costs money and I'm not sure I can put up with the new eye candy; I find it irritating).
Cheers, Geoff
Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher
"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- the secrets of how type can help you to sell or influence, now at the new low price of $29.95. See the book at
http://www.worsleypress.com or Amazon.
