Xara Xtreme 6

**Xcellent** · 27 April 2010, 01:25 AM

Originally Posted by taccom

[...] I really do believe that the day will come when it will be THE software to own!!

I am too a very loyal Xara customer and used it from when it was Artworks. But I have a different view here. If you wait for that day, it will never come: Adobe is bigger and releases and clutters (more or less) useful tools into AI every year, just concentrating on improving vector tools.

Xara does not aim to be Illustrator and plays on various fields such as webdesign. Xara simply can't be compared to anything else out there. PDF export is a very complicated topic and I'm very grateful Xara supports it - but it's not the same as in Illustrator/Indesign and will never be.

alexbozhenov, I do know where you come from because I'm in a similar situation. Luckily I have found alot of workarounds and Illustrator/Indesign are good companions to Xara for me. It's great tool to use as a single user. In a collaborative studio environment you'll find pretty much yourself the only staff member using Xara though.

**Albacore** · 27 April 2010, 02:14 PM

If I can amplify what I was trying to say on post #68, Handrawn has got it right, I was referring to the way Xara describes and uses brushes and not as it is done in Illy where each type of brush is clearly defined. In Illy you can libraries for calligraphic, scatter, art, and pattern but in Xara you are limited to using a new/existing brush and then selecting the stroke/pressure profile. This is fine for simple drawings but in my job I am doing quite a few cartoons to enliven boring national health service newsletters to make people want to read the info in them.

My illustration style is to try and make them look if they were done by hand or that they were done using a certain type of media and they have to have the ability to be enlarged or I would just use a paint programme. Now the rub is like Xcellent I started using the computer for a drawing tool from ArtWorks onwards and I have become very comfortable with this programme. Because of work people would like me to use Illy and now I am just as comfortable with that and have the ability to use the very expressive brushes that are available in AI which makes that programme better for drawing cartoons. Now I am talking about either about the Paintbrush & Pencil Tool and not the Pen Tool here a long with the ability to copy & paste from PS.

What I would like people to do is if they have a copy of AI on their machine is to use any of the above tools a long with some of the brush libraries that are available and then try to get the same effect using any of the similar brushes which were made available by Xhris a few years ago which were great at the time. I would also ask people to change the colour of the supplied brushes and use any of the brushes on your own pictures and see how slow your machines runs. As a vector drawing programme I am more than happy with Xpro 5 and I don't think I need a FreeHand pen tool cos I think my speed using the shape editor tool is far quicker least it was in an office only two years back and if I can make a suggestion have a look at one of Bob Hanns videos if you don't believe me.

**Regular** · 27 April 2010, 02:58 PM

I am happy to see that Xara Xtreme is continuing to develop.

I am upgrading my Windows Vista system to Windows 7 and was pleased to see that Xara Xtreme was on that Microsoft compatibility list. I am also purchasing a new 64 bit Windows 7 system.

The one thing that concerns me is the new system will be 64 bit (old system is 32 bit.)

I gathered that Microsoft would not make the claim of compatibility of Xara Xtreme in the Windows 7 operating system if such did not apply to both 32 and 64 bit systems?

Is this a correct assumption on my part. Thank you in advance for addressing my concern.