About this time every year, I look forward to the latest refreshes from Gaddesden Place UK, home of Xara software. I have been a dedicated user of Xara’s graphics offerings since the mid-90s and am always amazed at how they manage to deliver such amazing software for such a small price. Although Xara was acquired by Magix AG back in 2007 (a company known mostly for multimedia software), the quality of their applications has not suffered one iota and just keeps getting better and better. Let’s take a look at the latest versions:
Xara Pro X and Xara Photo and Graphic Designer MX
The eighth iteration of Xara’s graphic design tool comes in two flavors: Xara Photo and Graphic Designer MX (their base version product), and Xara Pro X, which includes advanced features targeted to professional graphics designers. That doesn’t mean that you cannot achieve professional results with either tool; you certainly can!
Installation and activation of the apps was quick and easy, and their footprint is comparatively small at less than 100MB. On boot up, the apps look very similar to version 7 with its modern, dark-gray color scheme. The nice thing is that the basic program layout is quite similar to previous versions of Xara, eliminating the steep learning curve that often accompanies new versions of programs.
Among the new features of both programs are: an improved clone/magic erase tool, enhanced panorama stitching, allowing you to knit together up to 8 photos (previously just 6), support for multi-threaded processing, a shape eraser tool, support for inline graphics and improved import/export capabilities. In addition, there is a color select/erase tool, hue adjustment, smarter photo replacement and a media exchange feature, allowing for integration with other Magix/Xara apps, as well as Flickr and Facebook.
One new feature that I am particularly excited about is text styles, which allows you to globally format text attributes just as you can in many word processors and desktop publishing apps. Text handling has always been Xara’s weak spot and this addition gives it a big boost as a graphic design app for documents as well as graphics.
Xara Pro X adds support for chart drawing, QR code widgets, embedded fonts, automatic object positioning and smart resizing, graphic bullet and number lists, resizable Java widgets, presentations and professional web design.
Web Designer MX and MX Premium
If your needs strictly involve web design and you can’t afford Xara Pro X, Xara offers Web Designer MX and MX Premium. These programs allow you to easily create great-looking websites via a library of attractive themes without knowing any HTML, Javascript or other code. If you have web design chops, then you can build pages and sites from scratch using Xara’s powerful design toolbox.
The program is completely WYSIWYG and web-standards compatible (W3C, XHTML, CSS). You can import all kinds of formats including PDF, RTF, RAW, PSD, TIFF, JPEG, PNG and GIF. Web Designer MX offers many of the new features of Xara Photo and Graphic Designer MX and Xara Web Designer MX Premium adds presentation templates, GIF and Flash animation, animated transitions, additional graphics tools and more.
If you need an app for graphic design, vector drawing, photo editing, compositing, desktop publishing or web design--one of Xara’s apps is certainly up to the task at a price that is refreshingly low in these tight times.
For more information:
http://www.xara.com
