Did you know that there are some apps other than Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop- you did know that, right? It’s always good to know what your other options are, so here’s a review of two applications that can help you to do so!
One of the companies also dedicated to develop such programs is Xara, who has been on the field since 1981. A little story about them: Xara, a company based in London and their first Windows illustration software, Xara Studio, was licensed to Corel and distributed for many years as CorelXARA. Now back under Xara control this product has been enhanced and relaunched and is now sold in two versions, Xara Photo & Graphic Designer and Xara Designer Pro. Xara was acquired by Magix in 2007 and are one of the top competitors in the graphic business in the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Netherlands. Now, they’ve relaunched Xara Photo & Graphic Designer, and Xara Designer Pro.
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6
Previously known as Xara Xtreme, it’s an all around complete application that offers both vector and pixel power under one hood. This is a bundle of new things wrapped together! With powerful image editing and photo tools and (very) flexible page layout features it’s a very intuitive program. Coming from the Adobe school, you can find yourself a bit lost, but after 30 minutes or so, you see that many of the tools offered on other applications, have found their match on Xara Photo & Graphic Designer.
Photo Editing:
With RAW support out of the box, you can give your pictures the retouch details that you want to without thinking too much. Smart cropping, resizing, and One-Click tools like Exposure, White Balance, Auto Color and Color Saturation you can get the job done in less time. Xara also offers Red Eye Removal and Image restoration tools. A very wide selection of tools to choose from when working your pictures. One of their New features is the Selective Optimization tool, that brings selection masks (cut out and edit areas flexibly while the rest of the image remains protected). They also bring to the photography editing playground the Intelligent Zoom, a tool not shy to compete against Photoshop’s Content-Aware Scaling. They also offer selective content fill, making it a contender to Content-Aware Fill in it’s early days. The last improvement that brings out amazing results is the Panorama Montages, taking your pictures and turning them into a Panorama worth framing!
Graphic Design:
This is were you see a merge of a layout and a vector app. Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6 brings so much to the table. They offer vector tools, from importing files such as PDF, EPS, AI, CDR, DRW (though the Illustrator file imports go up to CS2), it’s a relief to have an application that can handle multiple file formats! With powered Text tools, you can create impressive layouts for the real world in little time. You can easily import your creations to PDF or EPS, with CMYK color support for optimal printing. The offer the Magix Print & Online service (powered by MPix) that offers really good pricing, take this Calendar for example, 3.5 x 2.5″ for Under $2.00
Extra Bits:
One of the best new features is the ability to use your tablet with Xara Apps! Now you can get the power of the tablet and touch sensitive graphics to create stunning results. But not give Xara a rest yet, this app also can make powerful interactive presentations that will get some Oohs and Aahs from your audience. They even offer 500 MB free online storage for your presentations, and give you a unique web address for your presentations. Another sweet bit, is that you can upload your pictures directly to Flickr and a big win on my book is the Automatic backup and restoring for opened documents, all are saved automatically and restored when the program is restarted! The best thing, the price! It’s a full on application for $89.99. You can find more information on Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6 site and look for all the videos and tutorials!
System Specs & Minimum configuration:
- Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
- PC with Intel® Pentium® or AMD® Athlon® 700 MHz or higher
- 256 MB RAM, 150 MB disk space for program files
- CD-ROM or DVD drive, Microsoft® compatible mouse
- SVGA graphics card with min. 32 MB RAM (min. resolution 1024 x 600, 16-bit high-color)
- Integrated online services and video tutorials require an Internet connection and up-to-date web browser
Xara Designer Pro 6
This application comes up with a full new look, both on the user interface and the icons. One other nice add to the user interface are the fly-out tools and buttons, to offer time saving shortcuts.
Design, Drawing & Text:
Many features are making this a major overhaul to the application, but a few worth mentioning are the line/arrowhead tool, which provides a really simple way to draw single-segment straight lines and a new way to control the arrow head and tail on any line. The New Sketch Mode button on the Info bar of the Freehand tool removes the automatic line joining feature, so that you can rapidly draw lines without worrying about them being automatically attached, great for sketching. Also on these lines, is the support for pressure sensitive tablets, which is more accurate and responsive. This also works as solid real-time variable-width rendering as you draw with a pressure pen on a tablet. The other big enhancement has been the addition of bullets, numbered lists and indents, along a Find and Replace function that can search for text on a single text flow, page or all pages of the document.
Photo Editing:
Content Aware Scaling/Zoom and the Clone area tool have found their way from Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6, adding special and precise functionality to the application when handling a much more demanding picture editing job. The addition of the EXIF viewer, semi transparent and configurable, brings the embedded EXIF values of a JPEG photo. My favorite tool on the Photo section of Designer Pro (as a Photographer) has to be the Curve over the Levels Dialog, which gives me spot on detail and a much stronger control of the brightness levels of the pictures. This app also has an Auto-downsizing of imported photos and JPEG Optimization tools. All around, the updates have been good.
Web:
For the web section of Designer Pro, you have an enhanced NavBar handling and DHTML support, being able to drag around the bar as a floating object around the page for placement. You can make all the buttons look the same with a few clicks. With the Drag and Drop function for themes, you can change the color scheme of a site in a breeze, and also, why not add some of the popular Media Widgets like Picasa or YouTube, or maybe a shopping cart or Maps. Another big plus is that you can save the FTP Details of your server within Xara, saving time if you have several websites and projects!
Extra Bits:
As well as with Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6, there are some extra bits of sweetness into the app, such as an optimized photo dialog, the Panorama tool, PDF export and import improvements, and RAW support. Xara offers too 500 MB free online storage for your sites, as part of Magix-Online world. You can get the application for $299. This is a much more robust and complete application comparing it to Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 6, adding Web authoring and a much wider selection of design tools to help you on your design, along Pantone color books. You can find the complete details and lists of improvements in this version on their site.
System Specs & Minimum configuration:
- Microsoft® Windows® XP/Vista/7
- 256MB of RAM
- 200MB of available hard-disk space