Pro Canvas v1.5

Pro Canvas is a Photoshop plugin designed to enhance and replace the existing Canvas command. While providing you with all of the standard Canvas options (in Absolute mode), Pro Canvas also adds a powerful new Relative mode that allows you to add or subtract from each side independently and simultaneously. Additionally, you may specify horizontal, vertical or full uniformity to add or subtract the defined amount from the width, the height, or all four sides. Pro Canvas even has a New Size display area, allowing you to preview the canvas dimensions while you work within the dialog box.

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Pro Canvas version 1.5 for Photoshop 5.5 and above (38 KB)
Free for personal use.

Features

Installation

  1. Unzip the Pro Canvas ZIP file to your Photoshop Automate Plug-ins folder. The default path is typically "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS\Plug-Ins\Adobe Photoshop Only\Automate\", but it may be different on your machine. Alternatively, any folder within your Photoshop Plug-Ins folder should be fine.
  2. Restart Photoshop

    3. Note: If you already have a previous version of Pro Canvas installed, all you need to do in unzip this into the same location, overwriting the older files.

Usage

Pro Canvas is an Automation plugin and once installed (as described above), it will be available via the File > Automate menu. To quickly access Pro Canvas without going to the menus, press Alt+F-U-V on your keyboard. Alternatively, you may use actions to bind Pro Canvas to a keyboard shortcut of your choosing.

The basic functionality of Pro Canvas is pretty simple. The Absolute mode is the same as the default Canvas Size command; however, in Relative mode, you can add or subtract a specified number of units from any (or all) side(s) of the canvas. For example, if you enter 50 into the Top field and -25 into the Right field and set the Units to pixels, Pro Canvas will add 50 pixels to the top of your document and then it will subtract 25 pixels from the right side of your document.

As a second example, if the Horizontal Uniformity check-box is enabled and you enter a value of 20 into the center field (Uniform), 20 units will be added to both the left and the right sides of the canvas. Finally, if Both (or Horizontal and Vertical Uniformity) is enabled, 20 units will be added to all sides of the canvas.

The New Size feedback area displays the dimensions of the canvas as a result of the values entered within the dialog box.

Testing & Bugs

Pro Canvas has been rigorously tested for all possible combinations of mode, alignment and units. Other aspects such as Action recording and playback have also been tested.

In the unlikely event that you find a bug in Pro Canvas, please mail me.

Registration

Pro Canvas is now free for personal use. Since it was released back in 2002, I estimate more than 10,000 users, out of which less than 20 chose to pay the registration fee of $8 (thanks guys!). I've since completed college and started working, so there's no charge for personal use. For commercial use, see this page.

Credits & Contact

Implementation:
I'm Brian Fernandes and I coded Pro Canvas using Visual C++ and the Adobe Photoshop SDK. Maintaining high standards and default Photoshop behaviour was a bit of a challenge, but I think it was well worth it. I've put a lot of energy into this plugin, so I hope you like it and find it useful. Feedback is always appreciated; you can mail me if you have any suggestions or requests.

Design:
Trevor Morris (GFX^TM) has been the driving force behind this plugin, in fact, it was his idea in the first place. Trevor has been involved during all stages of development, right from conceptualization to quality assurance. He designed the user inferface and conducted most of the beta testing. The high-quality plugin you see before you is the result of him encouraging me to pursue perfection. As a result, many features and enhancements have been incorporated that might otherwise have been omitted, making this a much more "complete" plugin.

In 2005, Trevor asked me to upgrade Pro Canvas to be suitable for the more recent Photoshop versions, and after much prodding, you have Pro Canvas 1.5 :)

Thanks to Don Ashe for helping me with implementation issues through the Adobe SDK mailing list. Don gave me some pointers on how to incorporate actions into Pro Canvas and was invaluable for his assistance on Icons and Bitmaps and the History.