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[Jon G]

Thanks Richard!

Hi Jon,

If your at all wanting to see the open source continue (ie: Linux and Mac versions of Xara) then get over to the appropriate forums here at talk graphics and speak up. As it is there has been less than favorable support coming from the "community" the very one that was head over heals for this to happen. It would be a shame to see the open sourse version come to a halt with little or no further development!

That's sad :-( maybe not many Xara users are programmers... and switching / setting up a secondary _fully functional_ linux system is not exactly trivial.

PSD and PDF in the Pro version is substantially better than the regular version of Xara. I use it quite a bit and am quite happy. Layers are kept in tact in and in the PDF vector objects are still fully editable. So you could send a version of a Xara file you've created in a PDF to another user and they would be able to open it up in XPro and edit it further. It also comes in handy for print and other uses (I've found). I'm no print expert so I'm not sure what your meaning by "print ready" pdf!

Thanks, I did a stupid mistake and used up my evaluation period in a time I didn't have time to evaluate XXP thoroughly. I'm not an expert yet either... but will be some day. Print ready or ready for print is just a translation of a Finnish term, meaning that a document is 100% ready to be used for a print job. A term used as a pricing basis in commercial printing.

I guess I really can't see unless I buy it :-) even if Pro would not relieve from mandatory Adobing with pdfs, the usability improvements are worth the upgrade price.

cheers!

[handrawn]

Steve,

yes, there is a GIMP plugin called PSPI (PhotoShop PlugIn) that lets GIMP employ most ps plugis, including DeepPaint, which I have tested.

Thanks Geo
I'll check that out


Jon G

I'm not a print expert - but in other threads those that are seem to be impressed with the xarapro pdf/x export, which is specifically for print.

[sgiff]

Like remi, I too believe it's a clever stragegy for Magix. But XXPro is supposedly different from the rest of the extremely low-end products that Magix is good at selling. While the upgrade-every-6-month works for those stuff that got put on every shelf all over the world, I doubt that will work for a software product that costs more than $150 and with a more specialized user group.

It's up to Xara to decide how they want to position XXP. Personally speaking, they will lose me if they go for the Magix model, unless they cut the price of XXP to as low as the normal $20 Magix products...

Photo Clinic is a good news though, becuase XPE doesn't work well here on my machine. (the mysterious progress bar issue)

And for the record, based on the softwares that I'm familiar with, when a software/company is acquired by a new one, they usually would try to ease their existing loyal users' mind by providing some bonus first, instead of trying to charge them for an upgrade in a few month.

Ok, personally I have to agree with everything you say, however there is nothing clever about what they are doing if they are just going to find some code to add to Xara Pro that is part of some package in a MGX product. All they are doing is trying to find an excuse to charge a fee for an upgrade (that no one needs) so that they can feel justified in selling it. Furthermore if they add any component to Xara with the word "Clinic" in it you might as well just forget telling any of your pro-graphics peers who you've been trying to convince for years that Xara is the *@#$!, plus, just the fact that it is being sold by a company that sells $19 dollar apps is already going to make it look less professional.

So what we need here are a few new features that don't have to be big but make a huge difference in workflow like the ability to rotate a group of points around an independent axis. The ability to reset an objects alignment to it's original axis or a zillion other small enhancements that would be easy to implement and then I'll shut up. (by the way, I have an email somewhere from Charles from a long time back that said that was in the work on that first one, .... never happened).

And no please do not ad DVD authoring, or to turn it into anything but an illustration program. I wouldn't mind having the ability to have a bitmap/pixel based spray brush that you could use for shading inside shapes that would mask off automatically. No other program has that and it would be killer!!!!

s.g.

[sgiff]

Just to make one thing clear, I am not unhappy with the really time consuming features that Xara has put in like PDF and better compatibility, flash export etc. (although have no use for animated flash export). I am unhappy with having to wait 3 to 4 years between major upgrades however. Overall this last upgrade to Pro was slim as far as feature improvements. Mainly I think they have ignored smaller workflow improvements. For example I just thought of another one in the last few minutes. You know how you can reshape an object by drawing/dragging the pen from one edge to another? Well how about if while doing that you hold (ctrl) key or something and instead of deleting one of the parts, it just divides it into two... Brilliant, see this kind of thing if they added a few of these workflow improvements would totally make it worth an upgrade and I would gladly pay 30 to 50 dollars for a few of these every few months. And I wouldn't even mind if it was sold by a company like MGX, but if they want to turn it into a swiss army knife of red eye removal tools and cheese ball features, then we all lose.

s.g.

[Jon G]

As what comes to Magix's effect on "professionality", I just want to mention that it has not hindered Samplitude's reputation at all. I think Magix's effect and marketing support has even made Samplitude what it is today. It is widely regarded as one of the top professional audio sequencing packages, and some believe it has especially hi fidelity summing/audio engine. The included plugins are certainly of superb quality.

http://www.samplitude.com/eng/seq/shop.html

Pro version for "only" 1029,00 EUR

I see no reason why Xara's situation would become any worse.

[MarkMyWords]

I wouldn't mind having the ability to have a bitmap/pixel based spray brush that you could use for shading inside shapes that would mask off automatically. No other program has that and it would be killer!!!!

s.g.

Now that sounds like an interesting idea. If you could work on just the fill of an object or group, using all the tools; paths, brushes, objects, that would be great. Instant masking or 'auto-clip view'. Didn't Coreldraw have something like this?

One of the things that makes me feel the need for an airbrush is that it can be very fiddly and difficult to get the right shape of fill or transparency, even with multiple copies of an object and using the elipse transparency tool.

[AntonM]

I'm totally confused now. I had a news email today from MAGIX about £12 off "MAGIX Xtreme Photo & Graphic Designer", now only £47.99! See this page.

Is this the holy grail we have been waiting for? Should I buy it? I've got Adobe Elements already, and XXP. What will the new soon-to-be-improved XXP have in it? Help!

[handrawn]

This is the/a 'non-professional' version. if you have xxp and elements I doubt that you will need it.
see also this thread

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=27234

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=27043

most certainly not a holy grail

IMO

[AntonM]

Thanks Steve -- you've saved me £48, which will go towards the real holy grail when it arrives!