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Have any of you tried or used either (or both) of the xa-brushes or xa-fills that Sapphire Innovations sells? If so, how do you like them? Are they worth the money? Also, would you recommend certain collections over others? Or is it best just to buy the whole bundle, since there is a price break? Do any other companies sell collections for Xara X?
Thanks,
Kimi
Have any of you tried or used either (or both) of the xa-brushes or xa-fills that Sapphire Innovations sells? If so, how do you like them? Are they worth the money? Also, would you recommend certain collections over others? Or is it best just to buy the whole bundle, since there is a price break? Do any other companies sell collections for Xara X?
Thanks,
Kimi
Hello Kimi,
Have you tried the free textures at http://www.geocities.com/imagine656/texture.html
------Joel--
Yes, thank you. I checked out that site earlier today. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
I decided to go ahead and order the xa-fills and xa-brushes bundle, and placed my order this afternoon.
Which brings me back to my original question....Has anyone here used the xa-brushes or xa-fills sold by Sapphire-Innovations? If so, how do you like them? Are they pretty good quality? Any drawbacks?
Thanks again. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
Kim
Kimi,
Christine Farrely started a thread some time back about the brushes that you are contemplating.
You will find the original thread that Christine started if you go back to August 16.
This is what she had to say.................
.........quote by Christine Farrely:
Sapphire Innovations - Xara Brushes.
I received the CD I ordered from Sapphire the following day, not really too surprising as we are both in London.
The brushes come in self extracting zip files which are password protected and need the password from Sapphire to unlock them - a reasonable precaution.
As the web site suggests there are 1600 (no I did not count them) brushes in 63 Xar files and although I havent had time to inspect all of them closely - none appear to be ones posted either at the Xarazone or the Swap Shop. They can be purchased in lots of 400.
However - with no disrespect intended for the effort that has gone in to creating so many, they all appear to be just vector shapes or groups of vector shapes made into brushes with no brush editing to change the output and no transparency, shading or bitmap effects in the brushes as far as I can ascertain (i.e not really Xara brushes as Xarans know them). Some very interesting and unusual shapes which give rise to other possibilites but many that appear to be just created using the quick shape tool.
Quite a few of the brushes which are groups of shapes make quite effective spraygun brushes after a bit of brush editing and being just vector do not slow Xara down.
I do not regret my purchase as I am an avid collector of all things Xaran, but unless you also are a 'collector' I would not say that this is a 'must have'.
There are a number of demo's of other offerings on the CD which may tempt some of you, plugins etc for Photoshop and PSP and even some brushes for CorelDraw.
I intend to send a copy of this review to Andrew at Sapphire as I think it only fair that he should be able to respond - perhaps he may even be persuaded to put demo versions of the Xara brushes and fills on the Xarazone.
Christine
===================================
Good Luck!
Risto
diri@videotron.ca
Thank you for posting Christine's comments on the xa-brushes. I found the comments very helpful. Not sure now if I should have bought the CDs or not. *VBG*
Kim
When I ordered the XA-Fills and XA-Brushes, I requested the educational discount (I am an elementary school reading teacher). Andrew gave me a discount of 50%. I then decided to go back the next day and order some brushes and tubes for PSP7, with which I also received the educational discount. All in all, I am very pleased with my purchases, as well as the total price. I am awaiting the CDs, and am looking forward to trying them out.
Also, I'm not sure how many of you have ever come in contact with Andrew (at Sapphire-Innovations), but I found him to be very helpful, and he answered my e-mails very quickly. He even amended an order I'd placed that I later wanted to change, before it was shipped, and didn't charge me extra (the item I changed to was a little more expensive than the original one I'd ordered). From what I've seen so far, I'm very happy.
I'll let you know how I like the brushes and fills once I receive them.
Kim
I got the CD with the brushes and fills today, and all in all, I'm happy with them. There are some that I really like, and some I may never use, same as with any other graphics library CD that one might purchase. I was careful not to load too many at once, but the results so far are great!
Also, as a side note, the problems I was having adding brushes went away with the installation of the Xara X CD version. Seems that, at least for me, the problem only occured in the downloaded version of the program.
Kim
Hello Kimi
Andrew sent me several sets of his Xa-Fills about a year ago for me to evaluate and to offer as drawing prizes in the WebXealot. The quality of the fills was quite good. Andrew is one busy fellow.
There are a number of free fills and brushes posted in the XaraXone as well.
Gary
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