Xara Designer Pro as a Professional app for Pro work?

[tovokas]

Xara has been my tool of choice for all my illustration work within a large corporation for the last 5 years. But I bring things into Adobe CS programs all the time: it's basically a requirement in certain situations and for sharing work. So if you're asking if you could survive with just Xara to replace Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign in most professional environments with multiple designers, then no. Most of us are still slaves to the machine.

But Xara is hands down the most productive vector program I've ever used, and it's raster tools have improved to the point that I find I'm using Photoshop less and less for quick fixes. If you're doing contract work, and are just delivering end product, then Xara is a fantastic all-in-one tool for a great price. (Though as others have stated, certain cmyk print situations can get tricky. Don't have much experience there myself: all my print stuff eventually ends up in InDesign or the like.)

[huorn]

I think biggest problem is that almost all basic tools that we have never been improved.
Just because of this we have fast, easy to use but useless bitmap tracer.
We have mould tool that cannot mould photos.
We have calligraphic tool without presets and stabilization.
Anyone can continue this list.

Still i have faith in Xara, after 5 years of whining we have band new alignment buttons.

[WilliamHere]

I think biggest problem is that almost all basic tools that we have never been improved.
Just because of this we have fast, easy to use but useless bitmap tracer.
We have mould tool that cannot mould photos.
We have calligraphic tool without presets and stabilization.
Anyone can continue this list.

Still i have faith in Xara, after 5 years of whining we have band new alignment buttons.

Wow, it sounds like its time for a major upgrade.
How often does the software get updated or upgraded? Yearly?
Do the people at Xara ever go on this forum to talk about future improvements to the software?

[WilliamHere]

Xara has been my tool of choice for all my illustration work within a large corporation for the last 5 years. But I bring things into Adobe CS programs all the time: it's basically a requirement in certain situations and for sharing work. So if you're asking if you could survive with just Xara to replace Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign in most professional environments with multiple designers, then no. Most of us are still slaves to the machine.

But Xara is hands down the most productive vector program I've ever used, and it's raster tools have improved to the point that I find I'm using Photoshop less and less for quick fixes. If you're doing contract work, and are just delivering end product, then Xara is a fantastic all-in-one tool for a great price. (Though as others have stated, certain cmyk print situations can get tricky. Don't have much experience there myself: all my print stuff eventually ends up in InDesign or the like.)

Hi tovokas, thanks for the notes.
I am surprise on how many people so far don't work with CMYK jobs.

I did some testing yesterday and exported some vector art from XDP as a .AI file, but when I opened it in Adobe Illustrator CS6, there were some problems with the gradients. They were not smooth the way they were in XDP. There must be a workaround for this. Have you had this problem?
Can you or anyone here tell me what is the best way to prepare vector artwork in XDP so that when it gets exported as a .AI file, all the gradients look good in Adobe Illustrator?

Thanks.

[steve.ledger]

when I opened it in Adobe Illustrator CS6, there were some problems with the gradients. They were not smooth the way they were in XDP. There must be a workaround for this.

Try exporting from DPX as PDF.

See attached (a PDF/x-1a)

[WilliamHere]

Try exporting from DPX as PDF.

See attached (a PDF/x-1a)

Thanks sledged, I will try this.
Cheers!

[ad1066]

I've been using XDP for many years (ever since back when it was called Xara X), and like most here, it does about 90%+ of what I need. For most bitmap graphic work, I use Paint Shop Pro (since about v5), because I hate Photoshop with a passion. My only major complaint with XDP is that once you get past a certain page count, it slows to a crawl. When putting Spookybeans together for print, I had to split the book up across about 7 files, no more than 15-20 pages each, export each one as PDF, and combine them into one PDF using Acrobat Pro (granted, Spookybeans was extremely vector art heavy. I don't anticipate these kind of problems with the next project). But as far as the export itself, it always did fine, the PDF/X-3 files passed Acrobat Pro's preflight checks with no problems.

-- Ben

[pauland]

The discussion about what is missing from Xara in the professional arena seems to have a common theme of CMYK support, amongst the other topics.

[WilliamHere]

The discussion about what is missing from Xara in the professional arena seems to have a common theme of CMYK support, amongst the other topics.

Hi Paul,
Welcome to the XDP conversation!
Do you have any experiences with XDP and CMYK jobs? What can you share with us?
What do you use XDP for?

Cheers!

[WilliamHere]

I've been using XDP for many years (ever since back when it was called Xara X), and like most here, it does about 90%+ of what I need. For most bitmap graphic work, I use Paint Shop Pro (since about v5), because I hate Photoshop with a passion. My only major complaint with XDP is that once you get past a certain page count, it slows to a crawl. When putting Spookybeans together for print, I had to split the book up across about 7 files, no more than 15-20 pages each, export each one as PDF, and combine them into one PDF using Acrobat Pro (granted, Spookybeans was extremely vector art heavy. I don't anticipate these kind of problems with the next project). But as far as the export itself, it always did fine, the PDF/X-3 files passed Acrobat Pro's preflight checks with no problems.

-- Ben

Hi Ben, thanks for the info! It looks like the AI/EPS export from XDP is not too good and PDF export is the way to go. I will be trying this later today.

I have heard a lot of good things about Paint Shop Pro.