Remi's thread got me thinking as to what a 'professional' tool actually is? What do different people consider to be professional tools (within a software application like Xara), and more importantly: why?
Printable View
Something that you have to pay more money for!:mad:
hehe, quaint. Xara's price is always likely to steadily rise. It's just a law of the universe.
Interest question!
The answer could be, "How long is a piece of string?";)
We may have to first consider, "What is a professional?"
Then again we can ask, "What is Xara Xtreme?"
I am not a "professional" but I have always consided Xtreme to be a "Vector" based drawing program and believe that any and all future developments/improvements need to be of a vector nature.
Of course, if one is a "Professional designer" and your client requires that you produce a bitmap based product then you would want something entirely different out of Xtreme:confused:
Very interesting question but the string is getting longer:D
I would say, a professional tool is software that provides state-of-the-art features and solutions for typical activities, with professional and reliable results (in other words, to work quickly and efficiently) Typical activities include creating, editing, and arranging graphic components (text, photos, vector art, ...) - for screen or print. So we have vector-based illustration programs, bitmap processing programs, page-layout programs, and some specialty software types (3D effects etc.)
I think Xara progresses in the right direction. Illustrator may be ok for artwork, InDesign or QuarkXPress for very long documents, but IMHO for a wide range of graphic design tasks a multipage software with illustration capabilities and various effects is the answer. That's Xara, FreeHand, or CorelDraw. With FreeHand dying and Corel being traditionally buggy and not too fast, hopefully Xtreme will become a new industry standard. And while now it is really pro in many ways, at the same time it is so intuitive, fast and yet not too expensive, that I can even imagine it being a popular text editor or presentation tool!
44 magnum with an 8 inch barrell. Pro. :)
A professional is someone who gets paid and an amateur doesn't, but what does this have to do with the price of fish? Van Gogh was an amateur for most of his life, 'cos hardly sold a painting.
OK, the word "professional" has been hijacked to suggest higher quality or more capable or heavy duty. But, I think the whole question is redundant. In fact, you could argue, that as a so-called professional, your talent and capabilities are such that you don't need any of the flashy tools.
I therefore present a sneak preview of the toolbar from, the soon to be released, "Xara Super Mega Xtreme Professional Pro", which will allow the true professional unprecendented control. The price of this the new improved version will be $699.
(Note: Amateurs may still purchase the cheapo version with all the bells and whistles, to hand-hold them through their pathetic scribblings.)
I know here I am stating the obvious, but "tools used by professionals".
Xara was and still great for the web and a lot of people used it for this but is slightly let down by its slicing and maybe its java script is a bit iffy in places but it is a great all round performer for preparing all sorts of artwork for the web.
While in the print area of its work used by professional here it went wrong as if you wanted to take something to print you had to jump through all the hoops to arrive at the correct output. Then Xtreme arrived at it had PDF export and it was nearly right but it had no Pantone and it was still really RGB colour output and to get CMYK there was still work arounds. Now we have XPro which has just about sorted all of our demands made here on this forum it has multi-pages, import & export of PDF and control over pre-press, spot & pantone colours the list goes on and on.
I use Illy at work and most of my work mates only use about 4 category of tools from the main tool menu and as we have the brand new ver. on all machines you would expect to see loads of use of live colour, meshes, small 3D, graphs and the use of complimentary colour mode but they all use the programme as if it was Ver. 8 with only the very limited of transparencies. This is due to many factors, so called illustrators don't like to learn new software, they know from experience that printers don't like transparencies and why slow your output down by doing something different.
The whole point of this non-cohesive ramble is that I think that Xara listens to its users and in most case comes up with the goods. I think now that we have a very fast drawing (vector) programme which just about competes with the best and to have features which are seldom used is pointless as you can see from the recent "Live Effect Poll". What I think that Xara should concentrate on is getting the tools that we use now bug free and improved and the one that I think is the worst is the Brush Tool instead of trying to bust its guts to develop let's say a Gradient Tool.
I'm guessing that in this context the "professional" tool is the one with the greatest following among industry professionals, thus providing a commonality of problem solving, file sharing and jargon, salvation to any industry where a lot of head scratching goes on.
Sadly, the resultant "industry standard" is not always the best or most deserving, merely the first to achieve critical mass. From my admittedly short aquaintance, it seems to me that Xara, despite it's initial superiority in speed (and a few other things) due to the brilliance of it's original programmers, has made a couple of wrong business turns in the last decade, allowing it's better funded competition to gain an unassailably dominant position.
I suspect also that the fight back has not been helped by the very thing that provided Xara with it's original edge, namely the courageous use of "bare metal" machine code that gave it the aforementioned speed. Those that live by the sword however, tend to die by the sword. Programmers, specially gifted ones, are wont to move on and ten year old indifferently documented assembler must be of the stuff that nightmares are made.
These factors have led to Xara spreading it's substance between professional and hobbyist, trying to be all things to all users and, severely handicapped by the inability to alter fundamentals, limited to rearranging whistles and bells (or deckchairs?).
Yes, it is, Minimiro. Even in the latest X3 version. Buggy and slow.Quote:
I think that you are in some mistake Josie.... Now Corel isnt that it was.
I've seen plenty of amature Web designers use Dreamweaver where professionals use Notepad.
In my universe, a professional is a person who is skilled at their work and likely derives their primary income from that work.
The tools they choose to carry out their work has very little to do with it.
I'm with Albacore too.
Theory:
A professional tool allows you to "create" in a easy way (lessest mouse clicks possible) a specifc result and to reuse its data (by exporting) it for further processing in todays modern formats to be compatible within a workchain.
Today's tools are not designed to solve solutions in one program only - therefore - input and output options must be given to import and export data to communicate and be compatible with other modern/todays programs for further editing and modification.
Hi,
A proffesional tool is what men use to reach the endgoal
It could therefor be anything you want.
If i would hang a painting on the wall,a proffesional would put a nail in with a hammer
But if you only have a screw and no screwdriver what then?
U still can put the screw in the wall by using your shoe.
So in the end the tools you use don't matter just your imagination
Hans
This is a really important point. Xara needs to integrate into a professional workflow seamlessly. Whatever anyone thinks about Adobe, it is the de-facto industry standard toolset and Xara needs to bring in and export content from modern versions of these products to be able to establish itself in commercial pipelines. It's not really satisfactory to only support very old versions of Adobe software.
Nope I cant agree with that
X3 is a biggest positive step created once from Corel or someone other in this business.
I cant remember where I read some statistics, but if I remember well it was word about 100 000 adobe fans transformed to Corel X3 users
Believe, this is not small pain to adobe ;)
If we talk about speed.... if you can say that X3 is slow I cant imagine how you would name Illustrator
Here I have one friend and colegue pre-presser which is one of the biggest hard-liners of Illustrator, so with him we always have dispute which is better corel or Illustrator.... believe me he still cant believe that corel X3 work without any problems with transperency over pantone, alpha transperency tif with dropshadow over pantones, photoshop PSD with pantone channels imported (imported not linked!) direct in X3 and etc etc.... and everything this work just perfect.
Like was said in one review in inet, Corel again notify that they are still one of the biggest players in graphics professional business...
I have dream that someday Xara can be 3th player...
I'd go along with Sledger's definition of a professional... golf pro's don't give lessons for free and and most everywhere else but Talkgraphics, people don't give their trade secrets away!
Professional... sometimes read "overkill", the majority of the time these so-called professional apps are used at a very low level of expertise. OK, top-notchers will extend Illustrator, Corel or Xara but most end-users only scratch the surface. What really does me in is when somebody is spouting that they use Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and I know full well that it's a hooky copy off the net. I use Xara because I can afford it, it's licensed and it's mine... as I would suspect is the case with the majority of Xara users.
I couldn't agree more!:D
I remember a story from way, way back when I was a kid. this nobleman wanted to have a portrait done and he gathered together all the great artists and had them each submit a sample picture for him. The artist who won just walked in with no painting and when asked to submit a picture he took out his brush and drew a perfect circle freehand.
It is not the tool but the skill of the artist that truely matters. If the tool mattered, then velvet Elvis paintings would be fine art...:cool:
I consider myself a design professional. I attended and graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles with a Bachelor's Degree in Advertising. From 1967 to 1986 I earned my living as a print and TV art director, and since 1986 as a graphic designer and a website designer.
I use Xara Xtreme Pro for about 99% of my work. I used CorelDRAW for a while because it had multi-page support and PDF support. And CorelDRAW was more well suited for handling and formatting text. I used Illustrator for a while to filter my Xara projects into what would appear to a printing professional as an Illustrator file.
Today, I use Xtreme Pro almost exclusively with a small amount of work done in Photoshop.
You can argue up one side and down the other about what is a professional design tool. All I know is Xara lets me do what I do to earn my living. So for me, it's a professional design tool.
I review graphics software for Communication Arts Magazine and so I get free copies of all the latest software software. And it is all installed on my computer. But in all honesty, I hardly ever have occasion to use it.
Gary
From the consensus so far (and lack of specific examples as to what a 'professional' tool (i.e. feature) is), it seems that my original question is meaningless; the concept of a 'professional' tool is a fallacy.
I think there are two sides to the notion of a professional tool:
1) A tool you can use to make money with professionally,
2) A tool commonly accepted within a profession as part of a pipeline/work practice.
I think that the first isn't a problem for Xara tools at all, while the second is. If I go somewhere to do some Flash work, it's usually assumed that I know how to use Photoshop or Illustrator (and Fireworks, of course).
Paul.
Well. I am a professional and I use whatever software it takes to get the job done - whatever its price. Remember. Once upon a time we used to use pencils - Kids use them - Bah!
Seriously though. There is this move by software companies to add a few features, up the price and slap the name 'Pro' on everything. I usually take this to mean that the added features are only really of any use to the professional user.
Much though I love Xtreme to bits I'm not overly impressed with the 'pro' name. I use it mainly for print at the moment and it's print preview feature is pretty basic as it doesn't work with colour profiles (Though you can export profiles with PDF export you can't actually see what they are going to look like. Hmm)
For me that means when an illustration is finished hopping back and forth between Photoshop and tweaking colours. This is very tedious and not at all professional.
Now I think about it the PSD output is pretty lame too. If I work on a doc with print preview on The PSD output ignores it and exports RGB. So if I have multi layer files I have to export them as individual PNG's and re-assemble them in Photoshop. - Yawn
Little things like this mean a lot to pro's as time is money.
That negative aside I'd say Xtreme is the best graphics swiss army knife out there and I use it on just about everything. I just think that calling the 'Pro' version 'Pro' was maybe a little permature.
Xhris
You are confusing the idea of a professional tool with what the software industry likes to call "killer features", or the feature that is so desirable a user just has to buy or upgrade to get this capability.
One of the things that makes Xara such an excellent tool is the intelligence that went into the UI of the product. It is not a drop dead gorgeous design, but it does not have to be. It is logical, clean, simple and designed to work intuitively as compared to Illustrator which relies a lot on dialogs to do what you can do on-screen with Xara. The context sensitive Infobar is an excellent example of this which now has even been adopted by Illustrator and the rest of the Adobe Creative Suite. But Xara had it first.
Deneba Canvass probably wins the prize for the greatest number of features, but it is like pulling teeth to use. CorelDRAW is a close second in terms of features. But it is slow and bloated with too many bells and whistles. And they change the way it works with almost every new release.
If you look at the featured artist gallery in the Xara Xone or the Xara Gallery, you will see the answer to your question. Professional work done with a professional design tool.
Gary
AS long as the tool does the job, that it the important thing.:)
I don't know, about what this discussion is really about. In my original post I said, that I would like to see progress with new professional tools within Xara Xtreme. Nobody said a word about beeing a professional or hobbiest. Nobody said, that Xara Xtreme isn't a tool for professionals.
I'm sure, each user would be happy, if Xara Xtreme owns more new or more enhanced tools (no, I'm not talking about the already available and great tools within Xara Xtreme - I'm talking about new tools/functions or enhanced tools, which you'll also find in other vector graphics editors). The progress on this side is slow since years and that means, that you're almost able to find more new/clever/timesaving functions in Open Source vector editors, than in our beloved Xara Xtreme - albeit together with the problem, that Xara Xtreme don't support the SVG format completely to interact with such Open Source programmes in a professional (=timesaving in this meaning) manner.
The problem seems to be, that there are not enough resources available to outcompete the competition. The result is, that some of the more complicated innovations and/or changes cannot be developed (for example nested layers, a own CMYK mode, program automation via scripts,... - you know the list). But on the other side there is enough time to develop/integrate new goodies here and there.
Xhris wanted some examples for new necessary professional tools/functions/enhancements within Xara Xtreme. Unfortunately I don't have the time to repeat all the good and valuable improvement suggestions from TalkGraphics-Members, but I'm sure, the developers keep a complete list.
Regards,
Remi
Hi Gary,
I'm not confusing anything - I set the question. :) It is everyone else that is confusing things. The original question was what is a professional tool (within Xara), based on a comment that 'more professional tools' are wanted in Xara. So I wanted to know what a 'professional tool' was. But to be honest, I'm not sure it matters much anymore, as I appreciate better the context the original question was asked in. What is 'professional' is subjective. Interesting discussion though above.
Unless by "very long document" you mean a magazine in which every page is different, you'd be much better off with Ventura or FrameMaker for very long documents. InDesign has some of the features and workflow needed (although you're still dealing with the slow and unintuitive Adobe interface). But using Quark for something like that is a serious waste of time, money and hair.
What are some of the professional features that are missing? And how would they make Xtreme (& Pro) more professional?
Xhris - Point. ;)
Gary
- 3D Extrusion (more advanced than bevel, akin to functions in 3D6)
- Acquisition of Digital Data (scanners, cameras - I think the more professional is obvious here)
- Animation Plug-in (at an extra cost to the user apart from the main prog) (with advanced features such as multiple time line, action script capable, sound/music time line,
- Exporting Filters (advanced filters for AI, PSD, etc. formats)
- Gamma Correction Software (perhaps as a plug-in with an option to buy) (with International standards utilized)
- Importing Filters (advanced filters for AI, PSD, etc. formats)
- Layering Advancement (very sophisticated Layering with the ability to treat each layer with all the accouterments of anything that Xtreme offers)
- SDK Kit (for programmers to buy separate and market their goods)
More later. :D
3D Extrusion ~ I believe this is not very far away.
Acquisition of Digital Data ~ Basically a request for more import filters ~ no argument, but how do you keep up with these ever changing standards?
Animation Plug-in ~ Personal view: Xtreme can do a very good basic swf but if you really want vector animation go with Flash or Swish.
Exporting Filters ~ The export options have never been better.
Gamma Correction Software ~ I've no knowledge of this subject
Importing Filters ~ The import options have never been better.
In my opinion you have to disregard calls for an updated EPS import. This file type has been superceded by PDF
Layering Advancement ~ Reservations.
SDK Kit ~ no comment.
professonal is any one getting paid to do a job.
jim
That pretty much sums it up. Anything else is just ego stroking.
We would all like for the term "professional" to mean something in terms of the quality of our output and the depth of our knowledge. Unfortunately, it doesn't. And with the general dumbing-down of software that's been going on for the last few years, the term means less and less, particularly in regard to quality and knowledge.
A few years back, I had a conversation with the owner of an agency we were using for an ad. He's a very nice man who truly tries to serve his clients well. He's well-respected in our particular niche. Of the four comps he presented, two were nightmarish, one was mediocre at best, and one was acceptable but no better.
When the layout arrived, I was not happy with the typesetting on the text block. It was way too ragged. Not only was it unattractive, it was hard to read because the line-endings were so far apart from line to line. After getting two "corrections" that were worse, I duplicated the text box and typeface in Ventura and gave him a couple of solutions so he could see exactly what I wanted. When it came back wrong yet again, I asked if the problem was his software. His response was, "It's the best software available. It cost me $18,000."
Is that what qualifies as "professional"?
Animation in XX/XXPro is pretty good right now, and as has been mentioned by many before (and Egg a couple of posts up in particular) if you want something that's more powerful, it's probably best to go with a tool that's custom made for that purpose.
That being said..
It would be cool if you had the ability to generate an animated gif the same way as flash; i.e. you name objects on frames and have Xara create the intermediate tweens for you automatically. I can see why this would not be added, since for a large-ish animation at a decent frame rate the Gif could get quite huge (also I don't know how many frames an animated gif can actually have).
Or, how about a modification to the way that the blend tool works when you're working on an animation? What if you could create an animation with 10 frames, put a shape in the top left corner, another in the bottom right, and create a blend between them. Then you right click on the shape and pick some option that tells Xara that you want to convert this blend to a tween across 10 frames. The end result would be that Xara automatically sets the blend to 10 steps, converts to editable shapes, ungroups, and then puts one step of the blend in each frame for you automatically.
The problem with putting effort into making XX/XXPro do this more sophisticated animation stuff is that it's going to be at the expense of not doing other stuff such as layer improvement.
It may be fun doing animation in XX/XXPro and I've enjoyed seeing what people have done, but Xara is never going to reach the sophistication of it's animation rivals and most Xara users aren't that interested in the animation features and I think from what I've seen Xara has it about right now. In terms of a thread about professional tools I don't really want Xara going down that route - the competition from Flash is just too hot.