"Drawing" with Xara

[Egg Bramhill]

Tom,

Remi was only inquiring what was the source you were quoting which I assume is here

[Albacore]

I think Tomos was trying to close this debate in his last post but as someone who uses AI 4 days/week but still prefers to use Xara for his own work I think I have some input here. Tomos states that it took him 15 mins to get the idea of the pen tool in FH which I think is nearly a fair statement to make, with someone showing me I think it took me 1/2 hour. It is the next stage that is the hardest to learn, to finger hop between three keys to get the accuracy that tomos mentioned takes a lot longer and to get to that stage when you only have to concentrate on the design and not on your fingers took me around 9 months. The same exercise in Xara took 1 month using the shape editor and because of at that time the lack of output of PDF from Xara drove me to buy FH which I found fairly easy to pick up after AI because at this time I was still not comfortable with AI pen tool and drawings were taking longer.

Now that we have XPro where I can work on something at work bring it home and with care continue the process at home then re save the work and take it back to my day job knowing that it will open in AI CS without a problem is a great bonus. Many of my work mates mates find xara difficult to use when I tried it with them as they are used to AI but they like some of the tools, like the Fill and Transparency Tools.

What I am really saying here is that I found Xara easy to pick up and I really got comfortable with it quite quickly and if you find a programme that you get comfortable quickly then use it. I can see the problems using Xara for my work as it is all for print but as long as your careful so far using XPro it has stopped me jumping from Xara into AI to get the finished article ready for print.

[Ross Macintosh]

Tom -- The XaraXone website is the private website of the generous, die-hard Xara user: Gary Priester. The site is a resource for Xara users, not Xara marketing, and in his writing Gary tells it as he sees it. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the software developer. I'm sure that Gary feels his comments regarding tool function in other software are completely accurate. You are of course welcome to disagree with him. He invites feedback at his site.

Regards, Ross

[tomos]

@ Egg Bramhill
yes that's right.

Ross -
thanks for that clarification.
It's such a professional site I made the presumption it was Xara official - Xara seems to have a lot of dedicated fans!

Albacore,
I'm very happy to hear from a user of Illustrator and FreeHand as well !

I cant remember to be honest how long it took me to actually get used to using the keys with pen tool - I always have found it fairly easy to get used to using keboard shortcuts but as you say, the combination of mouse and keys is not simple - good point.

"knowing that [Xara file] will open in AI CS without a problem"
That sounds very good.

I'm unclear what you mean by -

I can see the problems using Xara for my work as it is all for print but as long as your careful so far using XPro it has stopped me jumping from Xara into AI to get the finished article ready for print.

Are you saying XaraPro is good enough for preparing stuff for print - if youre careful ??

Could you expand on that careful bit ?!?

As I say in first post above I have discovered problems with FreeHand's PDFs - if for publication/press printing (mainly with certain Fonts but also apparently with colour distortion in TIFFs). So I'm curious about how Xara does in that regard.

thanks for all the responses
Tom

[Albacore]

The careful bit is CMYK in a programme which is really set up for RGB and not for CMYK. With the use of CMYK template and using layers with fonts on the top layer and fonts changed to objects, simulate printer colours selected, an good approx. of your output can be achieved. Some of Xara's bitmapped effects and complex transparencies can cause problems but that is the same in AI with most print companies trying persuade you not use use any transparencies. Xara's files will not open in AI but you can easily export and import with PDF.

For more info have a search in this forum on CMYK will give you more info on the subject but please remember that XPro has made improvements in the print area of the programme.

[tomos]

Thanks for the prompt and helpful response Albacore

at this stage I'm thinking I should probably download the trial version of Xara Pro.

I'm not very experienced with preparing stuff for print (should also add I'm not a designer & I'm mainly self-taught)
I do "illustrations" for archaeologists which can range from contour maps to drawing skeletons !

I have had one major project published/printed (successfully) and a couple of minor ones, but they were all greyscale EPSs which were then brought into book layout by the publisher.

I'm now doing a job where they want the endproduct as PDFs (still greyscale) and having problems with Freehand which *could* be resolved by using Adobe distiller to convert to PDF but I'm not paying (and cant afford to pay) $400 or whatever it is !! for that. Was looking at JAWs PDF converter, but now thinking if this (Xara) works I could -kill-, no, create two birds with one stone!

anyways will do search in forum for CMYK & try trial version of PRO
thanks again,
tom

[amoore]

Hi tomos and welcome!

I'm a big fan of Jaws PDF, but you're correct that Xtreme Pro may be all you need.

Will we get to see some of your work here?

Allison

[tomos]

thanks for the welcome Allison!

do people have somewhere here they display their work?
mine's nothing to write home about (mostly pretty boring to do actually, & unless you're an archaeologist - which I'm not! - it's even pretty boring to look at ) but on the other hand it is a bit out of the ordinary for graphic software.

do you use Jaws with Xara ?

tom

[GeoBen]

thanks for the welcome Allison!

do people have somewhere here they display their work?

Well, certainly!

just back up to the main menu and select The Xara Gallery

You may be surprised by the quality of some of the work.

geo.

[amoore]

do you use Jaws with Xara ?

On occasion. Generally, though, Xtreme's pdf function does just fine. For most xar files, the built-in may be superior because Xara has finetuned it with their usual eye toward quality and efficiency.