By Michael Gluckman

The idea for Ananya Curves was born when I worked in the prepress department of a printing company in California. At that shop, we worked on large catalogs with lots of pictures. I distinctly remember working on a catalog filled with many pictures of strange electronic machines such as voltmeters and oscilloscopes with waves running across their screens. One of our tasks was to remove the background from these pictures and put in a drop shadow. Often times, to make a selection of these machines, we had to use the pen tool.

Frustration with the pen tool

If you ever tried to use the pen tool in Photoshop, Illustrator, or any of the myriad programs that draw Bézier curves, you know that they can be quite difficult to control and use. It's like trying to make a curve out of a stiff wire. That's because in order to adjust the curve you pull on lines outside the curve called tangents. It's really hard to predict how pulling the tangent lines will affect the shape of the curve.

With Bézier Curves you pull the Tangent Lines to adjust the shape of the curve.

So we struggled to outline these machines. The day shift tried to pass this job off to the night shift, and the night shift tried to pass it off to the day shift. We would outline the machines and then correct the outlines and then correct the corrections. Finally we would give the proof to the customer and the customer would ask us to correct the corrections some more. We found this whole process to be tedious and frustrating.

A secret weapon

There is another part to this story. My wife, Brigit Ananya, has a PhD in mathematics. Her specialty is differential geometry — dealing with curves and surfaces.

Given her specialty, I asked her if she could develop a curve-drawing tool with all the control points right on the curve. I was even more particular: I asked her if the curve could have three control points. Five years and two patents later she gave me Ananya Curves.

As with many inventions, Ananya Curves has gone through many iterations before we finally got it just right. At first we tried to develop a program where the curves connected in the smoothest way possible, but we found that those curves were much too restrictive for a creative artist. Finally we discovered curves that had much more freedom than the Bézier curves. We call these curves Ananya curves.

We also found a way of drawing curves so that they connected in a smoother way than the Bezier curves used in Photoshop. Now you don't have to worry about creating unwanted bumps between the curve segments.

How does Ananya Curves work?

How do Ananya Curves work anyway? The secret is the peak point. This is the point on the curve that offers maximum flexibility with maximum control.

With Ananya Curves all the control points are right on the curve.

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