DETAILS

Xara Designer Pro 7 is the solution for all types of graphic design work, whether it's vector illustrations, DTP, photo composition, Web graphics or Flash animation. There are 2 versions, Photo & Graphic Designer and Designer Pro, whereby Pro offers advanced print and Web design features.

It has the world's most sophisticated, highest performance vector rendering engine. For the user this speed means less wait, and a more satisfying working environment. It also means more productivity and the ability to create more complex drawings, in less time. Many graphics packages will keep you waiting a few seconds while objects are drawn on the screen. In a complex document that can mean you waste a significant amount of time. When you create an image it appears instantly on the screen. Speed isn't just restricted to creating and moving objects though - any time you manipulate an object by using one of the Direct Action Tools or the Color Editor, any changes you make also appear instantly.

General Speed Import and Export PSD Support PDF Support Direct Action Tools Drag and Drop Solid Object Editing Undo / Redo Zoom Anti-Aliasing Color support Text handling Multi-page documents Printing The Designs Gallery Spell Check Templates Page and Layer Gallery Shortcut key configuration - Pro version PANTONE® color support - Pro version Color Separation Support - Pro version PDF/X export - Pro version XPS Support - Pro version Multi-core processors - Pro version

Photo Photo Handling Overview File Size Magic undo Maintaining Photo Quality Integrated Photo Tool Easy photo enhance Crop & Rotate Photo Panoramas Red Eye Removal External Photo Editors Content-Aware Scaling and Zoom RAW photo import Bitmap Tracer Adobe Photoshop® Plug-ins Levels control Magic Photo Erase tool EXIF info Perspective Correction HD Photo import - Pro version Panorama Studio - Pro version

Illustration Illustration Overview 3D Extrude Drawing tools Transparency Blend tool Soft vectors Shadows Bevels Contours Fills Live effects Molds / Envelopes ClipView Brushes Pressure sensitivity Profiles Opacity masks Line length and area information Live copies - Pro version

Web Web Overview Animated Flash Export Flash export (.swf) GIF Animation Dreamweaver integration Hexadecimal RGB web color Image slicing Image maps Exporting and optimizing Linked stretching Web Templates Photo Galleries Free hosting Widget Support HTML Website Creation - Pro version Navigation bars & menus - Pro version Pop-Ups and Slideshows - Pro version Presentations & Webinars - Pro version

Import/Export

Xara Designer supports all the common graphics formats, including bitmap types like GIF, JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF and PSD, and the import of photos as RAW or the new Photo HD (Designer Pro only). Plus it supports the key vector types like PDF and AI (Adobe Illustrator)/EPS, EMF (extended metafile) and WMF (Windows metafile), SVG (export only);early versions of CorelDRAW CDR and CMX and many others that are not so well known. For text Xara Designer supports RTF (Rich Text Format). You can import and export text in RTF format so it includes style information such as font, font size, color, margins, special and foreign characters (Unicode supported).

PSD support

Xara Designer offers full support for importing and exporting Adobe Photoshop® PSD files including layer support (Designer layers are exported as PSD layers and PSD layers are imported as Designer layers), including alpha channel and (in Designer Pro only) 16-bit color and CMYK layer conversion.

PDF support

The PDF export tool creates super-clean, very compact PDF files. This includes support for graduated color fills, for flat transparency and graduated transparency. And when you export as PDF everything remains pixel perfect, resolution-independent vector graphics. The PDF exporter has also been designed to allow the files to be opened by Adobe Illustrator®, so providing significantly improved Illustrator compatibility which means that vector artwork including graduated color and transparency can now be imported cleanly into Illustrator versions 9 onwards. Xara Designer also offers reliable PDF import.

Direct Action Tools

The Direct Action Tools allow you to create effects such as transparency, bevels or gradient fills by selecting the tool then dragging over the image itself to affect the required change. For example you can drag across an object to apply a graduated color (in the fill tool) or transparency (in the transparency tool), or drag on a shadow to position it (in the shadow tool), or drag on an object to rotate it in 3D (in the 3D extrude tool). Direct Action Tools include the Bevel, Shadow, Transparency, Fill, Contour, 3D Extrude and Blend tools.

Drag and Drop

Many tasks in Xara Designer benefit from being able to use the drag and drop principle, which is more intuitive and a great time saver. For example, when changing the color of an object, you can just drag a color from the Color Line and drop it onto the object, or its outline. And with color gradients, you can drop colors along the gradient path and make multi-color fills. Drag and drop also comes into play when using the galleries. You can place any gallery item on a page simply by drag and drop. Designer also supports drag and drop import of files, such as photos.

Solid Object Editing

Xara Designer offers one of the world's first live solid dragging, scaling and rotating of objects, for the ultimate in WYSIWYG editing. That means that as you reposition, resize or rotate an object the whole object moves, rather than just an outline, making it far easier to judge the effect of your edits in real time. You see a solid line or quickshape as you draw it, complete with line and fill colors and other attributes, not just an outline. Completely WYSIWYG drawing.

Zoom

The Zoom Tool allows you to alter the magnification of the current document, giving you a closer, or more distant view. You can zoom to the whole page, so you see the complete document, you can zoom to the drawing, which magnifies just the drawn image as opposed to the whole page, or you can select an object and then zoom to that selection. Another method is to zoom to a particular area by clicking and dragging the tool over the area. The Zoom Tool is capable of zooming in to 25,601% - that's over 25,000 dpi (dots per inch).

Anti-aliasing

Xara introduced the world's first vector anti-aliasing to bring maximum screen quality. It still pioneers with the fastest, highest quality anti-aliasing available in any drawing program. Anti-aliasing improves the quality of on-screen images by smoothing the edges of objects. This has the effect of smoothing lines and edges and of appearing to improve the resolution of the display. Anti-aliasing is particularly useful for web graphics. It works in real-time so you can see the effect straight away. You can use anti-aliasing when working with vector and bitmap images.

Color support

Xara Designer has a comprehensive color system which enables you to alter the colors of objects directly or create your own colors, with names, which you can apply to multiple objects. With Xara Designer unique Linked Colors feature, it is very easy to create a drawing containing many shades of a color and with one alteration, immediately change the color of the whole picture. Simply pick a new master theme color and all linked shades and tones adjust automatically. You can work in CMYK, RGB, HSV, greyscale or Hexadecimal RGB web color mode.

Xara Designer Pro includes PANTONE® color libraries for use as both spot color and PANTONE® process color equivalents.

 

 CONCLUSION

Xara Designer Pro 7 is ideal for any type of designing, drawing, photo editing, or Web site creating job. We have tried all the functionalities and found them to be easy to use, and easy to learn. It handles all the functions of editing vector graphics extremely well. The Web site creation feature is astonishing and it's probably the only program that offers true WYSIWYG editing. Xara Designer Pro 7 is definitely worthy of our SimplytheBest Gold Award.

 

 MORE INFO

For more information, online demos or to order: Visit the Xara Designer Pro 7 Web site