Intaglio - 3.0.1

I feel a little taken advantage of that this version's upgrade cost is so high, and the new features so few. It seems the business model of some of these promo-bundlers is to release a pay-for upgrade to make the real dough. I don't begrudge them their money-making opportunities...but from the customer's POV, it's a little off-putting.

I first tried Intaglio as an OS X substitute for MacDraw and ClarisDraw. It can import old graphics files without any problem and has more than enough functionality for my straightforward drawing (after using Intaglio for over a year, I'm still discovering new/useful features). For someone who doesn't need Illustrator or heavy-duty CAD software, it would be hard to find anything better or more cost-effective.

If I could, I'd add an extra star for customer support: I recently contacted Intaglio about a problem with re-installing the software after reformatting my hard drive, and got help within a couple of hours. Pretty good!

I've just popped to version tracker to check for updates and was surprised to see any negative comments. I've been using Intaglio since very early and while it was good to start, I now cconsider it a jewel!

I started on MacDraw and moved onto ClarisDraw and I used these to make fairly simple, but increasingly complex diagramatic illustrations. I tried Illustrator but found it overwhelming. In contrast Intaglio seems just right, a natural successor to these basic drawing packages.

I use it 2 or 3 times a year for a few weeks at a time, and every time I use it I think it was the best $89 I ever spent.

Definitely worth a try.

I just tried it and encountered the first annoyance after 30 sec - I draw a rectangle, select a fill colour (it turns red) and a fill pattern - and the fill pattern is in black. Same for the stroke pattern. Maybe I'm wrong but patterns should have the selected colour and not only be available in black.

I first tried Intaglio a couple of years ago. I thought it was OK, but it seemed a bit pricey, so I didn't buy a license. I continued to play with it in demo mode occasionally, each time discovering that its apparently simple interface contained more functionality than I had previously realized. Every once in a while, I would come back to it and find that it allowed me to do things more easily than I could do them in other drawing apps, and in some cases allowed me to do things I couldn't do at all in other apps. It has an excellent range of output formats, great customizability, and some very powerful features. I especially like its guides and alignment functionality, and its gradients editor is superb.

Eventually I discovered by degrees that Intaglio is much more powerful than I had first realized, and I bought a license. Gradually I have come to rely on it as my principal drawing tool. It's intuitive, conforms well to the Mac interface, and has excellent on-screen Help.

I have one small gripe. Earlier versions had a user definable gradients palette, which has disappeared in recent versions. I probably wouldn't miss that feature if Intaglio's gradients editor weren't so good. It enables the user to create some very complex gradients. It was very handy to be able to save them in a palette for reuse without having to rebuild them from scratch. But that's a minor complaint. The app is on an aggressive development path, and each update brings useful new features. The developer is very responsive.

If you're looking for a versatile, reasonably powerful mid-range drawing application, take some time to play with Intaglio. You'll find that it grows on you