How to develop a killer page with XARA X in less than 60 minutes...

[joroho]

'nuff said.

.joroho.

[jens g.r. benthien]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Jens, great story and great design! (Well, for an hour's work of quickie work, at least . . . )
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sir Nordby life and in color! Is it just a rare mathematical coincidence that you pop up out of the blue (well, ok, not the blue but Sweden) after I returned to the X forum for a while? Or did you and your phone lines get snowed in too much, releasing you to the Internet and the rest of the world for spring now? ;-}

Welcome back bud, good to see you've survived the winter season.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>But your philosophy of life sucks. Neither you, I nor anyone else is reducible to a heap of biomass.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hey my friend, what do you think you will be after your timer will have hit zero? OK, boxed bio mass because you have a brain and can think and we have some culture, but the result will be the same: a feast for worms, bacteria, bugs and gazillion other insects whose names I don't know.

Let's go for a compromise and meet half way down the road: we are a thinking bio mass. Hmm, not too good I guess, because animals can think as well. However, I didn't want to reduce us to bio mass while we are still around and fighting, but in Nirvana we will reach that state.

Geez, if I would have had the slightest idea that you would drop in right here right now I'd never have expressed my thoughts ;-}

Speaking of the devil ;-} - will you post some of your great stuff you've been working on during the long dark winter season?

I can't wait to see some of your gigs... need some food for brain to gain power for the spring and summer season!

FIESTA !

jens

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net

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If you don't know how to dream you'll never be a designer.
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[Klaus Nordby]

Jens, ol' pal, I have indeed survived our almost snowless winter - and I still lurk around here most days!

That I will be biomass when I am dead I do not dispute. But I am very much alive now, so that future fate does not concern me the least. As the old sage Epicurus said: "Where I am, death is not; where death is, I am not."

But enough philosophy - lets get on with designing! Though I have not much to show the world right now. But stay tuned.

K
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/
www.klausnordby.com/xara

[mgeduld]

Now it's your turn. Show me **any** Adobe user who might be able to compete with this sleek application, my 'secret weapon': XARA X.

A) Amazing work, Jens! I agree -- inspirational!

B) I'm a HUGE XaraX fan

C) BUT -- I COULD recreate this design 100% in Photoshop, and I could do it in an hour (easily). What I COULDN'T do in an hour is come up with your great ideas, but the ideas are application independent.

One thing that Xara doesn't have is a repeat command. You can't repeat the last thing you did. Why not? Most of the competition (including Photosoup) has one. Repeat is great for stuff like the ruler lines. Sure, you could make a brush or use a blend, but repeating a copy/move would be much quicker. This command was the one thing I missed, years ago, when I migrated from CorelDraw to Xara.

Again, outstanding job!!!!

Marcus Geduld
{ email me } { visit me }

[gwpriester]

1 hour... and how many years of experience, Jay?

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://www.gwpriester.com">
www.gwpriester.com </a>


XaraXone

[Klaus Nordby]

Jens, like Marcus I could also have done that piece in Photoshop in an hour - and I even thought of doing that, just to shut you up about your Anti-Adobian bull! But, as Marcus also rightly says, the idea-work is the real work, not the technical stuff. And as a matter of fact, I usually use XaraX for quickly throwing ideas around - even though I most often end up producing the working files in Photoshop, ImageReady & InDesign. A bit sad, perhaps, that I relegate XaraX to a comping tool . . .

I quite agree with Marcus about the absent Repeat command, and have in the past often complained to Xara about this!

K
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/
www.klausnordby.com/xara

[roman]

.

[jclements]

If there ever is a Xara conference I would love to see a face-off between PhotoShopper or PhotoPainter and a Xarian on something like this.

I understand how objects and layers could be used in a paint program; but for something like this its hard for me to see how you could do it so quickly. It would seem to me with Xara's tools and interface that it be hard to keep up in a paint program.

Anyway, nice clean design Jens. It should trigger some ideas for readers of this thread; especially those of us who wonder down the path of cluttering our work.

OH, I too reiterate the need for a Repeat function. May be if we keep hinting somebody will listen. : )

[mgeduld]

John, you should take a look at this great book:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...116107-5010300

Marcus Geduld
{ email me } { visit me }

[jens g.r. benthien]

Gary,

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>1 hour... and how many years of experience? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

27 years plus unlimited and never ending inspiration (I still wish I could turn it off for a while). And if I would count the training of my daddy while I was a youngster I'd come up with 37 years.

Marcus & Klaus,

I doubt that you could do it with PhotoSoup in the same time. Reason: in X I can twist, bend and tweak a line, a shape, an object as often as I want to. All in **ONE** single layer, and still have the option to separate it into different layers later. In addition, I started out with a 500 x 300 pixel format which I modified later to 700 x 400 pixels. X is non-destructive and x-tremely fast.

Sure you can rebuild it, but I use X as well as my other apps - especially 3D and CAD - like kids use their playstation or anything else to reach their goals. I **PLAY** with it like my parrots play with to explore a new environment. OK, I do have an almost finished picture in my brain, a vision, but the more I play with X while developing the project, the more I see the points where to adjust, improve, rescale, modify. Due to the nature of pixel based apps they would be too limited. Vector is scaleable.

A nice example: this is 'only' for a web site. But the next days I will re-create the server with X and resize the whole drawing to 40 x 75 cm = 15.74" x 27.56", export it with 300 dpi as a TIF and have it printed as a poster on hi gloss photographic paper.

At this point any of you will be forced to surrender.

Another (important) point is the ability of X to define shaded colors. I can run wild with the color slider after I've finished the drawing and adjust all colors simultaneously.

OK, I admit that I miss a repeat command, but I consider this as a minor bug: the blend works fine for me, and besides this there is a nice tool on the market that allow to record and play macros for all Windows apps - a great way to code missing commands yourself and use them.

Let's take the ruler: one vertical line at 0X, one clone at 200X. Blend 18 steps. Break apart. Select all, group, clone and shift the group + 5X. Scale the group 50% down and the ruler is finished. Now fit it to the server pic. Bingo.

Line width not good looking? Try 1 point, 0.5 point, 0.25 and 0.1 piont. Naaa. Go back. Not to mention the 'flow along a curve' of the blend segments.

Add a shadow here and there. Uhhh, after almost all is finished I discover it doesn't look like what I had in mind. Modify it.

Unless you start working with layers only in PhotoSoup you can't do it. And you'll be totally screwed if you would be forced to resize the whole drawing in the final stage...

Try it with Illustrator or Freehand.

John,

the idea for a shootout is great. I'd go for it, definitely. Best would be a show like 'who wants to be a millionaire'. In this case I'd suggest to throw in an additional obstacle: you have do design the objects yourself. Fiesta. I'd render some realistic 3D objects in no time as well - faster than any photographer could get them onto a plate ;-}

Want a sample? Here we go with the 'custom made' CPU:

jens

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net

----------//--
If you don't know how to dream you'll never be a designer.
----------//--