Cranach Studio preVision

GmbH, Regensburg, Germany, the makers of Cranach Studio preVision, is no longer in business. Much of the code seems to have been carried over to Computerinsel's PhotoLine after the seven-man Cranach team disbanded in 1993 (PhotoLine v1.00 first appeared around the same time). Although PhotoLine supports a more modern GUI and added file formats, the two programs are almost identical in function and design. Missing from PhotoLine, however, is Cranach's AutoDraw, a highly configurable filter generator. Besides the TOS version, PhotoLine is also available for Windows and Mac OS.

DMC Publishing (now called MGI) was poised to release Cranach in North America as a companion program for Calamus, but the deal fell through because of the price TMS wanted for their software. DMC even released an English-language demo in 1991 (v1.10/r1.29):

Cranach demo 277K

Sample ESM graphic 101K

This early demo is not Falcon-friendly and is missing important features added and improved upon over the next two and a half years: histogram; CMYK support; TIFF 6.0; AutoDraw filters; MultiTOS-, Falcon-, graphics card-compatibility; GDPS support; Epson scanner driver; Calamus printer driver module and more. The demo, however, does include the wonderful Display TT Optimum, which allows 256-color previewing in TT medium resolution.

I was lucky enough to buy a registered copy (v3.00/r2.10) from someone who had purchased the program while on holiday in Germany and found it too complicated. Over the period of a year, the program was carefully translated to English. Almost all the graphics on this site were created using Cranach.

Cranach v3.0 in lasso mode

Cranach's powerful AutoDraw, used to create custom filters and effects.

Cranach's histogram is almost identical to PhotoLine's except no realtime display.

Using GDPS, Calamus printer drivers can be used directly within Cranach.

Credits