TAREED  Intaglio's main strength is that it has a moderately powerful set of vector drawing features at a price that is much lower than something like Adobe Illustrator. I've found it particularly good at creating web graphics. It also seems to work just fine on Snow Leopard.

However, I've also found some strange problems. It has crashed on me a few times since I've been using it. I've lately been working with a very large document (large in terms of length and width, not file size), and the visual artifacts are awful! The little dotted blue lines that indicate when an object being dragged is lined up with another object don't get properly erased, so I end up with a bunch of them scattered all over my document. Scrolling erases them, but this is still a pain. Some of the floating palette windows also have gone white, forcing me to close them and reopen them. (While I'm on it, those windows are awfully awkward... I don't really like them at all. They take up a lot of space, there's no easy way to group them together and some of the functions don't need to take up space on screen in a window.)

I tried to contact the developer, using the support e-mail address provided on their web site, and after 5 days it bounced back, with the error from qmail saying that it had "been in the queue too long."  
(Version 3.0.1)

DREMWKR  Overall, the program does well in basic drawing functions, easy to use, and does most things well, however, it is a bubble off for top marks, exactly for the problems identified by previous users, and I agree 100% with the last reviewer, he is on the mark.

In regards to pricing: For a basic drawing program 39 USD is about right, and for this program that is about right. Its current pricing is for a Prosumer level program, and it just doesn't make it there. I already paid for the program once for v2.97, and it says upgrade price is $39 more, but there is no upgrade option in the online store. Just full price. To me that sounds like bait and switch at worst, and bad site design in the least.

I suggest the developer has some explaining to do. This review site would be a good start.  
(Version 3.0.1)

M-RICK  I don't see any improvement in the drag and drop the library.

Libraries can now be exported/imported

but it is still laccking of the following anyway :

- Snapping much be improved, when starting to draw from a point, it is not highlited, no way to force a perdicular from any line or drawing to any line, no tangent, no parallels tool.

- Snapping to intersection, middle, extremity works only when it is the destination point, but not when it is the initial drawing point.

- No Snapping enabling with a modifier key.

- No linked dimensions.

- No dimensioning tool like area or perimeter, no dimensioning style settings.

- No numeric input for objects.

- No B-Spline.

- When applying effect to image or vectors they are downscaled in bitmap objects ...

- If a scale has been set for the current document, the objects dragged from the library to the document are not adjusted to the current scale of the document ...  
(Version 3.0)

BLUEPOLO  This is so close to being such a good application. But that makes it soooo infuriating!

Set the scale, draw your plan.

Save, close.

Reopen.

All meaurements are now totally bogus.

Create new file. Copy and paste from old (bogus) into new. Measurements show OK, until you close.

Doh!  
(Version 2.9.7.1)

M-RICK  It is a very good software but it is lacking of this :

- Snapping much be improved, when starting to draw from a point, it is not highlited, no way to force a perdicular from any line or drawing to any line, no tangent, no parallels tool.

- Snapping to intersection, middle, extremity works only when it is the destination point, but not when it is the initial drawing point.

- No Snapping enabling with a modifier key.

- No linked dimensions.

- No dimensioning tool like area or perimeter, no dimensioning style settings.

- No import/export symbol collections.

- No numeric input for objects.

- No B-Spline.

- When applying effect to image or vectors they are downscaled in bitmap objects ...  
(Version 2.9.7.1)

JAYHAWKBABE  This is a great illustration/SVG application. I acquired it through the MacUpdate promo this summer and it has turned out be a gem. I am a scientist and use Intaglio to touch up graphs that are exported from various graphing programs. Intaglio is the only application thus far (besides Illustrator) to import the PDFs generated from these programs correctly. I have tried Zeus Draw, Lineform, and OmniGraffle, but Intaglio is the only one which can convert the PDFs to curves correctly and without crashing. Love it!  
(Version 2.9.7.1)

BLUEPOLO  I got this as part of the previous Macudate bundle, and its nice. I am unable to get the scale feature working at all. Also the object inspector and rotation features don't seems to work very well.  
(Version 2.9.7)

APPLEDOGX  This is the finest draw application on MacOS X outside of Illustrator. If it had better rotation and duplication tools, Illustrator would really not be all that much better. It beats Lineform with its much more complete and functional bezier tool. The developer is very good at supporting this product and responding to user emails.  
(Version 2.9.7)

FREEBSD  Appears to be running fine in Leopard!  
(Version 2.9.6)

BRUCE_Y  just FYI, Intaglio website states that its current Universal Binary versions require either 10.3.9 on PPC chips, or 10.4.7 on Intel chip Macs.

(though, their front page small print states "Intaglio requires Mac OS X 10.2 (i.e., Jaguar) or later. Some features require 10.3 or 10.4." -- so not sure which takes precedence for system requirement accuracy.)  
(Version 2.9.6)

JTEAM  With Canvas now orphaned on OS X, I have been testing Intaglio and Lineform to use with Pages as a substitute.

So far, Intaglio is the clear winner, particularly in its ability to deal with imported pdfs. Lineform chokes on mine (causing both cores to run to 100% for minutes before I give up), whereas Intaglio brings them in, lets you ungroup and get on your way.

Dealing with pdfs is also helpful because that is an easy way to get an eps or ai file into Intaglio for editing. And, it exports in many formats including pdf, epsf and svg.

While some may claim instability, I have just worked with over 100 very complex cad images with tens of thousands of objects per drawing and not had a single crash.

Compared to Canvas, it is really a breath of fresh air!  
(Version 2.9.5a)

ROBERT  I find it unstable and kind of sketchy. Ha ha. But really, in this range, it looks like Lineform > Intaglio.

It depends on what you want to do, and what formats you want to output to. For the best SVG compatibility, it's still all about Inkscape, even though it's an X11 app.   
(Version 2.9.5)

ASH435  Just downloading the fix for the edit path crash - good to see the developer stays on top of things if they crop up.

Overall the program has lots of features but unfortunately I find it a struggle moving from Keynote/Pages/iWeb to Intaglio. In terms of content the compatibility is excellent, pasting between them, etc. However, I wish conventions and keyboard shortcuts were closer. In other words, I wish Intaglio was the drawing app Apple never released! I realise big changes might alienate existing customers but I wish I could customise Intaglio to be more like an iWork app. I own lots of shareware apps and what I love is the way so many follow conventions and style guidelines - that's what makes them so easy to use. Here's some suggestions for a more iWork/Cocoa-like experience:

Make triple click text select whole line

Make command-0 zoom to fit width

Allow move back/front etc on the tool bar

Allow flexible space in toolbar

Preference setting to allow the select tool to select items intersected rather than completely surrounded by the bounding box. This really bugs me!

Allow shift-arrow to nudge 10x

Free rotate. Make this possible by pressing command?

Temporarily ignore guides by pressing command?

Hope that helps. Just a few thoughts.  
(Version 2.8.1)

JOHN F.  Classic Mac fun and ease. You can do great stuff with this app, when you are really ready give it a try. It has a good clean and clear interface, and the developers are also very responsive. There are only a few good Mac drawing apps in this price range. I highly recommend this app. One minus point is that Intaglio has no real trial mode that lets you save files. You must keep your app and window open in demo mode to not loose your work. Because I got hooked the instant I tried to design stuff with this app, I bought a license and the app let me enter the license code in demo mode. So I got to save my work.

Also give the app Lineform a look. That one can do artistic vector brush strokes. And that app has a real trial mode.  
(Version 2.8b1)

ANDRE JODOIN  I have been using Intaglio for over a year. It is my favourite application for drawing, page design and layout. What I find amazing and indispensable is its user interface. When I open Intaglio it doesn't automatically dump all its inspectors on the screen and force me to think about it. Rather, the simplicity and unobtrusiveness of the new canvas and adjacent tool set lets me think with it. The tool icons are not just clearly defined but also aesthetically refined. The logic of the inspectors is easy to grasp when you call them to the screen. For me the advantage of Intaglio over other vector programs is that its organized to let me use it as I see fit; it is not specialized or focussed on pre-defined tasks. I find that it has been well worth the shareware fee and any small problems I have encountered in the past have been corrected in an update.  
(Version 2.6.2)

MICHAEL MORRISON  I have used Intaglio for several years now. It has become my mainstay graphics software for everything from illustrations to page layouts for photographs to making forms. It is intuitive, reliable, precise, and versatile. The price is so low I wonder if the developer will be able to keep going! Upgrades are always without charge. Support is unsurpassed—prompt, accurate, and responsive. This is a much under-appreciated application!  
(Version 2.6.1)

DANIEL FLATIN  I have used Intaglio since version 1. At times I have thought that the price was too high, but I considered it an investment in a promising graphical tool. I have and use Adobe Illustrator and Canvas. These too I have had for many versions. Neither of these big name programs have really embraced the capabilities of Mac OS X, however, while Intaglio does just that. I am a physicist, and I use these tools for diagrams and simple visualizations. Most of the time I just want a graphical tool where the interface gets out of the way of my work. Intaglio does a good job with this (and getting better). Where Intaglio really is an improvement over, say, Illustrator is where it deals with the graphical output of other programs such as equations from LaTeXiT. Illustrator butchers the fonts. Canvas is so sadly unstable that I no longer find it useful.  
(Version 2.6)

MERLIN  I didn't test this app, but the examples are so awfull that it looks like you can't do a correct work with it…  
(Version 2.4)

ICONDESIGNER  The new Icon is much better and tells me what kind of application this is.

The old icon to was unclear and looked unprofessional.  
(Version 2.3.2)

ANONYMOUS  Yes, the old Da Vinci icon was MUCH cooler.  
(Version 2.2.2)

ANONYMOUS  great app, but i liked the old 'da vinci' look better than the new one  
(Version 2.2)

AUTOMATONE  An excellent drawing application that handles page layout, text, special effects, and simple scaled 2D CAD very well.

The palettes and functionality of the menus are very intuitive. Support and updates from the developer have been excellent and prompt.

For purely desktop publishing tasks (photos and text, for instance), Apple's new "Pages" might be better suited, but I haven't done a comparison of the two yet. Intaglio excels as a very quick drawing and layout tool and integrates very well with OSX and PDF workflows.

It's a perfect example of a great application tuned to a great OS.  
(Version 2.2)

KWAK  Outstandingly useful app. I find myself turning to it more than Illustrator.  
(Version 2.2)

HERB ELLIS  I tried Intaglio today for a few hours and had some issues with the app:

1.) it crashed frequently while editing vector-points

on my G4 iBook/256MB RAM/Panther/Quicktime 6.5.1

2.) Vector-Shapes do not redraw after moving single points.

Besides of these bugs I like Intaglio a lot, to me this is the best concept of an native OSX-Drawing application I've seen so far, easy, clean, usefull, fast and perfectly integrated...

...like TextEdit for drawing.

I'm really looking forward to the next versions.  
(Version 2.0)

HERVĂ© S.  excellent drawing application, with a very clear interface, the only one up to now that allows to "ungroup" pasted vectorial pdfs. Such a feature only can be found in packages ten times costlier like Canvas...

HervĂ©  
(Version 2.0)

MACMEND  While this is a good drawing package, it certainly does continue a line that started with MacDraw and Claris Draw....incompatibility with the other 95% of drawing packages.

Oh come on lets face it, most other people doing drawing are doing CAD/D or cutdown CAD/D style drawing and they save or export or at least have the optoion to save or export to DXF or DWG formats.

Pdf is great but CAD compatible it aint.   
(Version 1.9.1)

PURGATORY DESIGN  As the principle developer of Intaglio, I'd like to respond to the comments by Michael PM below. We're constantly working to improve Intaglio based on user feedback. Suggestions are always welcome at Intaglio@PurgatoryDesign.com.

-----------

While endorsing High Design you unfairly imply Intaglio can't do many things that it does, in fact allow. I'm sure High Design is a fine product but it's aimed at a somewhat different audience than Intaglio. In particular I'd like to clarify the following from your comments.

Intaglio can currently import and export 11 bitmap formats including Photoshop. It can also import and export vector graphics as PDF and can import vector PICT and EPS. Vector PICT can also be converted to native Quartz graphics for editing.

Intaglio can perform any graphic transformation (e.g., scale, rotate, shear, mirror) on text while maintaining it as editable text. Version 1.8 (when running Mac OS X 10.3) can also apply a wide variety of shadow and lighting effects to editable text.

All graphic elements in Intaglio support varying opacity (i.e., transparency). For PDF this requires Mac OS X 10.3.

Intaglio fully supports multiple layers and drawings that span multiple pages.  
(Version 1.8)

ANONYMOUS  "I guess I don't understand all of the glowing reviews about Intaglio. After using this app for 8-10 hours, I admit,it is easy to use right off the bat,but a bare bones basic vector drawing app should be a snap to use,Mac or otherwise."

Well Michel PM, I guess I don't understand the constant spamming of web reviews praising HighDesign.

You used Intaglio for "8-10 hours"? You said this of version 1.8 just now.

Did you use version 1.6.3 for "8-10 hours" too? You said you did on 12-2-2003: http://www.versiontracker.com/php/feedback/article.php?story=20031202122011672

Hm...post looks like the one you just made.

Your review for HighDesign is 9,513 characters long on VT. You have spent over 5,000 words slagging other apps/praising HighDesign here and elsewhere.

Hm..Michel PM...the name sounds familiar.

Oh, you are "Michel P. Morrisette", the only person showcased on www.ilexsoft.com's gallery? http://www.ilexsoft.com/highdesign/gallery/communicator.html

Quite the enthusiast. Funny, the only two instances of "Michel P. Morrisette" on Google are the ilexsoft pages.

You would think that someone that specializes (sic) "in medium & large format illustration (computer and conventional) Other titles include Graphic, product, product packaging and furniture designer." would have a website or an email that isn't a generic hosting account such as "the-spa.com".

Please state your relationship with ilexsoft. All this is highly questionable.  
(Version 1.8)

MICHEL PM  I guess I don't understand all of the glowing reviews about Intaglio. After using this app for 8-10 hours, I admit,it is easy to use right off the bat,but a bare bones basic vector drawing app should be a snap to use,Mac or otherwise. I question its price point vs what you get for a feature set (seem slightly pricey).Perhaps,if someone is only a casual user of Mac drawing programs,then this app probably fits their needs,but if you use this app as your regular vector drawing app,I think you could do better. I too have been on the search for an easy to use,but powerful vector drawing app for Mac and I whittled it down to two. Intaglio's gallery showed how floor plans can be done in this program.Plus,varoius things that can be done with text. For about $50-$75 more you could purchase either MicroSpot MacDraft or Ilexsoft High Design Cad for Mac. Both are easy to use and have alot of drawing and text flexibilty. These are Cad/drawing/Illustration apps that both have much more powerful,but easy to use tools and interface that make it very easy to get great results and drawings. Both offer different pricing for different version levels of their apps.While MacDraft has been with the Mac community for awhile (it's up to version 5.5),Ilexsoft's High Design Cad for Mac is relatively new (ver1.1.1),but built from the ground up to be an easy to use app for Mac OS X. This is the program I chose. It has a simple,elegant user intuitive interface also (similar to Intaglio's) but has a lot of flexibilty for both technical and free-form drawing. Plus,High Design has better support for using bit-mapped images. It can import/export to every concievable bit-map format in existence.including native Photoshop file format,plus it has a decent feature set for editing and enhancing of bit-mapped images. It is not as flexible with text,but you can still do some good effects with text like non-uniform scaling (stretching) of text for giving fonts some extra character. Plus the text is still editable. You can copy and layer text for creating hard drop shadows and you can reverse and mirror text. There are basic enhancements for text as well. Plus high Design has support for transparency of text, geometry, and bit-maps. Plus layers support and Multi-sheet drawing within the same file. If you're using Intaglio as your primary drawing program,you're really doing yourselves a disservice,in my opinion. Check out the apps I mentioned. Try the demos and get back to me at this post. I don't think you'll be dissapointed,honestl  
(Version 1.7)

JOHN  Version 1.6.3 has been released, which fixes the launch bug in 10.2.x  
(Version 1.6.2)

JL  Intaglio 1.6.2 refuses to run. Its icon appears briefly in the dock, but that's it! I logged in with the shift key as recommended in case of problem, to no avail. My version 1.6.1 works correctly.  
(Version 1.6.2)

BRUCE WALKER  I personally love Intaglio. My Mac was almost completely OSX except for an easy to use, intuitive drawing program to replace my Classic ClarisDraw and MacDraft. I don?t need the powerhouses that cost $$$ and I tried the others like iDraw etc. and while they were good they just didn't feel right to me. Intaglio is still young and features still need to be added but if the developer waited until it was 100% complete we would never have the chance to use this nice drawing program. No program is prefect and complete at introduction, that's why we have ever increasing version numbers.

Bottom-line ? It is a very good drawing program that is easy to adapt to, sporting a great interface, has a very good help file, contains many of the features I was use to using and the developer is very open to feedback on how to improve Intaglio. Try it, play around with it. If you feel it is missing something, drop the developer a note. You might see it in v1.2.2 (currently v1.2.1).  
(Version 1.2.1)

NCIANCA  Reported bugs to developer and they were fixed in a few hours, great response. Program runs much better now (version 1.2.1).  
(Version 1.2.1)

NCIANCA  Looks like an interesting program, but this version has a bug when you click on the "Measure" tool that goes into an infinite loop with an error dialog (and force quiting is the only way out). Speaking of dialogs, this program has way to many dialog's that appear when actions can't be done and the author should really disable icons and other functions if they are not available rather then presenting error dialogs.  
(Version 1.2)