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  1. #181
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    Default Re: Xara Designer Pro X10 Released

    Quote Originally Posted by katemoir View Post
    there’s Gary Priester’s First Look on the Xara Xone @ http://xaraxone.magix.net/XDPX10/page-1.htm.
    I've been wanting to read this first look review of Xara XDP10 for ages and haven't found the time. Well I read it this morning and have discovered some things that I wasn't aware of and some things I'd forgotten were so useful. As always, Gary, a well-written, if slightly over-enthusiastic ( ) review of all of the new features of XDP10. I enjoyed reading it.
    If someone tried to make me dig my own grave I would say No.
    They're going to kill me anyway and I'd love to die the way I lived:
    Avoiding Manual Labour.

  2. #182

    Default Re: Xara Designer Pro X10 Released

    Hi Everyone.

    I've read through all 19 pages, and it saddens me. I'm not a Pro myself (yet), I've a lot to learn and am taking steps to change that hopefully. I don't think of myself as a photographer nor have a job as a web designer (I'm sure it's nice to have a website via drag and drop, but what if something breaks and you have no idea how to begin to fix it - kind of thinking), but there are probably useful tools available to play with and begin to use in these areas. So having everything in one package is not exactly a negative, for someone new when considering buying it.

    But for someone like me with a lot to learn about drawing, shadows, perspective, design, colours and so on, that if using Xara - this place is the be all and end all for getting help!

    So ................ what 'really' saddens me, and I hope all you guys and gals who have made your views clear in these 19 pages follow my thought process here, is the fact that through the company's change in direction (as I have read and come to understand reading this topic), the actual drawing/vector members with masses of experience and a willingness to help both new and old users improve themselves in the area of vector drawing, could just disappear through feeling undervalued, ignored and unwilling to keep on paying to support Xara to produce the updates they want/need/would like to see/etc & wait any longer when other companies have kept up with the times and are updating their software to meet today's demands. What an ABSOLUTE waste that would be!!!!

    I can understand some members may think it is not my place to say the following as I am a new member here, but I truly hope that Xara takes heed of it's Pro's CORE users and drivers ........... or be prepared to lose them and their "INVALUABLE" experience, without whom, since they actually act as such a massive and FREE support system for your products, people will not buy Xara products.

    Thank you, to all of you that have helped so much for so long


  3. #183

    Default Re: Xara Designer Pro X10 Released

    Another quick (which I'm sure more will come to light as another discussion on Graphics and Pen Tablets develops).

    I think it is important for owners of and Xara users thinking of buying a tablet, to know that Xara will quickly be developing the areas for tablets currently not supported:

    xara does not support the tilt and pitch features of the upper end wacoms, it just supports basic pressure sensitivity; I do not currently sketch in xara because I think there are far better programs for this
    I mean c'mon, afterall - creations on tablets are VECTORS!!!!

  4. #184
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    Default Re: Xara Designer Pro X10 Released

    just to put that in perspective, here is a link for illustrator wacom-settings-in-illustrator

    when I say 'pitch' I mean 'bearing' of the tilt not just the angle, and also 'rotation' - AFAIK 'pitch' is not official wacom terminology
    -------------------------------
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  5. #185
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    Default Re: Xara Designer Pro X10 Released

    Sorry, I'm late the party and newcomer to Xara overall so I'll toss in my outsider's two cents.

    Skimming over a lot of this thread (I decided to generally reply to the thread at post 130, the bottom of my page 13), I see a lot of people kind of moaning about the new Xara over the following and I thought I'd take on each complaint individually from an outsider's perspective because I think it's important to put into perspective some of the complaints:

    1.) XDPX10 didn't add much new and most of all that new stuff went into web.
    So an improvement was made to some existing functionality to the program? *shrug*

    2.) XDPX10's upgrades recently have been dismal.
    Upgrades aren't necessary. As well, even old versions of Xara, as noted by some people here, are easily more productive than any other graphics program, raster or vector.

    3.) The webtools are crap, why does Xara keep updating them and nothing else?
    I appreciate the fact that I bought Xara as a graphics program and it just so happens to have lots of neat features to handle web stuff should I need it. I don't see any problems of looking at the features you don't use as icing. Back to them being upgraded and not much else, as everyone noted here already (as well as my self), upgrades are optional.

    4.) The value for the upgrade isn't worth it.
    However, for someone like me coming in new, the full price for a new license is goddamn amazing...so I wouldn't knock the price specifically especially with the sentiment floating around here that Xara needs new customers. Hey look! Here's one now!

    Overall, I can see why the upgrade isn't underwhelming depending on what you use Xara for, but at the same time, considering the alternatives to graphics editing, Xara is still hands down more technologically advanced and still easier to use than anything, regardless of price range when it comes to illustration. The fact I can make a vector drawing in Xara look like a painting, and create it like a painting too...it's old technology, you guys are all jaded by it, but even still this simple fact still takes a dump all over all other vector programs...and then for Xara to be on the cusp of treating pixels and vectors as the same thing (there's only a few more little tech jumps they need to make before photo and vector are literally indistiguishable from raster images...) which doesn't sound like a big thing, but then when you realize Xara's kinda got the power under the hood to treat each pixel as it's own vector square shape that can be plucked off or treated as a group with photo editing? Whooo boy...

    Basically what I"m getting at is that while everyone here seems to be bummed about the upgrade, no 'useful' upgrade from Xara means what? You're still 20 years in the future in front of every other vector editor? And it's still cheaper than illustrator?

    I don't see that as a loss...
    and to the people complaining about one program trying to do everything, I don't see why that is such a terrible thing if the interface can be customize...and wouldn't you know it...Xara can do that. I don't think I"ve ever used every single feature of any program I've ever owned..so why is it a bad thing to have extras that you can hide until you're ready for them?

    Overall, count your blessings, make your complaints but still realize, Xara's closer to becoming the Magic Bullet of design programs than Adobe's ever been in it's history of being a corporation that buys up other people's good ideas and then ruins them while charging more than any software should cost (and now they're infamous 'rent a program' garbage to make it even lamer). You all could be Adobe fanatics, broke and still thinking the the more icons and menus you have on screen and the more your software costs, the more 'professional' it all is...which is quite frankly stupid and not something we can fix in the consumer mind, but we can at least look at it from over here and see how silly it all is.

    Flame on, guys. *gets a bucket of water ready to put himself out*

  6. #186
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    Default Re: Xara Designer Pro X10 Released

    Quote Originally Posted by hseiken View Post
    even old versions of Xara, as noted by some people here, are easily more productive than any other graphics program, raster or vector.
    that is of course rubbish; it all depends what you are trying to do...

    we have heard all this before, so no flame...

    I can do things in corel painter in 30 minutes that xara cannot even get near without hours of work; nuff said
    -------------------------------
    Nothing lasts forever...

  7. #187
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    Default Re: Xara Designer Pro X10 Released

    Are you doing raster images in a raster-based program? of course you're going to get a resolution-dependant image faster in a program designed specifically for that one single task. In fact Painter does a lot of stuff that Xara can't do, but it's not a general graphics program and doesn't pretend to be and isn't aimed at general graphics, so comparing them is a bit of a stretch. However, if Xara too was a natural media emulation raster image creation tool, then a comparison might be okay. Basically, I'm throwing out there that I never said Xara is capable of replacing everything else out there. I said Xara is better than Adobe's suite of bloatware, hype-ware and menu-diving-ware. I doubt anyone here would actually argue that Adobe's products are less powerful than Xara when it comes to feature list, but the idea is that a feature list = great program is a misnomer...without the workflow, you might as well still be at square one still looking for a tool to use to begin with...no one I know would willingly break their own leg before running a marathon. That said, my argument here is features+workflow = usefuleness and Xara keeps trying to battle Adobe on 'features' when their strength is clearly artist-centric workflow.

    This is going a little off course, but here's my view which is quite a bit more macro than most people here seem to be operating in terms of assessing what Xara is good at and who it's for...and I hope maybe a more constructive conversation can come from this rather than a defeatist attitude that Xara's left us behind becaase while that could and may in fact be true, there's something more important going on here and it's outside of graphic design and in the realm of general computing...

    Xara has quietly pushed (along with W3), whether intentionally or unintentionally, for a digital imagine standard that starts not at the pixel, but at the definition of the forms in an image. With Xara bringing in photo specific manipulation tools, content aware cutting, etc. into the paradigm of general image editing with vectors, that's sort of like, in evolutionary biology, the first land walking fish in terms of 2d imaging and computers. With the internet website features in there as well, it's sort of like saying, 'Yes, HTML5 is right. Soon, pixels will only be a reference to physical display and not the images themselves...If you guys into computer tech and data manipulation talk in the abstract, you should really check out those old Computer Chronicles episodes on archive.org. There's lots of technology showcased on that show that was presented, ignored, died, reborn again now and accepted...and I think what Xara's doing right now with pushing to mix raster and vector so as to be indistiguishable from each other is sort of like watching 1990 episode of Computer Chronicles about 'The Internet'...except we're seeing it in graphics technology...don't be surprised if in 10 years, Xara's first steps which seem to be ignored by the industry at large due to marketing and money, will be mainstream technology everyone's used to...there wont' be jpeg compression or png files with transparent pixels...there simply won't BE pixels, but simply different formats that dictate how they read their forms before being thrown up on a display, whether digital or physical (like a book).

    This is where I think maybe I'm excited a lot more than everyone else because I'm a computer technology junky and one of the things I love is abstraction and melting of separate ridged ideas into a more fluid one. For this reason alone, I think I'm probably up about 50% more in Xara fandom than the old hands here. That being said, I hope everyone is more sad about Xara the brand itself and not dispappointed in the product. Even if people don't agree with me that it's much more forward thinking than people here believe it is, you still have to admit it's influence has been felt since adobe's since adopted a lot of features into photoshop and illustrator that Xara pioneered.

    Xara might end up being Altavista to Adobe's Google and that wouldn't be a bad thing to me...because in the end, I want a good program and Adobe isn't delivering, but is an obstacle I still have to deal with professionally. So if Xara died and sold off it's patents, technology and what not, I wouldn't see it as a loss...so maybe right now is a transitional period. I remain optimistic because at least there are people out there taking new approaches to old problems...Being on the outside allows more freedom to take chances because you have less installed user base to piss off...

    Again, sorry for randomly ranting and giving out verbal diarrhea. Xara as a product and technology showcase remains a beacon for the rest of the industry, despite it's dimness in the night and programs like it need our support as artists. That's about all I can say to wrap it up neatly.


    EDIT: To clarify my 'vision' of a pixel-less future, let me state that obviously vector graphics in general are that, but what I meant by true pixel-less digital imaging, I mean technology that reaches outside of what we do (create images from scratch and our minds) to photography...such as a camera that when it takes pictures, they create the photo out of vector graphics principles, but you still cannot tell that it's a vector drawing unless you do one of those ridiculous 20,000% zooms. The counter argument is that at a certain PPI in terms of printing and pixels on a screen, they eye cannot discern pixels..however, that has nothing to do with resolution because those images become apparent that they're not infinitately zoomable when you try to crop and enlarge a part of a smaller picture to fill up a larger page. We've all been there with that problem...I have this photo, it's good, but I cannot blow it up without it becoming either fuzzy, pixelated or otherwise distorted, however subtle. The plus side to all of this is that even with this fantasy technology, file sizes would likely still shrink...again, because you're not saving every point in the picture, the photograph is a collection of non-square-grid-based forms...

    So that's what I mean that Xara is sort of like an early step to a larger end result which benefits us as artists and other industries as well.

  8. #188
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    Default Re: Xara Designer Pro X10 Released

    Quote Originally Posted by hseiken View Post
    In fact Painter does a lot of stuff that Xara can't do, but it's not a general graphics program and doesn't pretend to be and isn't aimed at general graphics, so comparing them is a bit of a stretch.
    painter as a program is designed for painters rather than designers, but it is every bit a graphics program as photoshop; people use it for painting, illustrating, cartooning, advertising and more besides

    I said Xara is better than Adobe's suite of bloatware, hype-ware and menu-diving-ware
    that might be what you meant; it was not what you said

    my argument here is features+workflow = usefuleness and Xara keeps trying to battle Adobe on 'features' when their strength is clearly artist-centric workflow.
    first off xara the company have said on more than one occasion that they are not trying to compete with adobe [serif is with affinity on mac]
    secondly - there is absolutely nothing wrong with illustrator as a program [leaving aside the subscription issue] I use it a lot - it's workflow is often a lot better than xara, eg: live trace / live paint

    generally speaking:

    I can usually draw a cartoon better in raster than vector - vector lines are not as precise when you draw freehand fast; in fact I can get more subtle results [without chopping and changing] using a chisel nib fountain pen for inking than a wacom a lot of the time, they do not behave the same way - I am no fan of technology for it's own sake, and artists come in many different flavours
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  9. #189
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    Default Re: Xara Designer Pro X10 Released

    One feature I miss from Artworks (Acorn's version of Xara DP) is the ability to have "internal" arrows instead of the external arrows we have now. The arrowheads can start at the end of a line (external) or finish at the start of the line (internal). I used that feature a lot for technical design.
    I now have to fiddle with the positioning of the line end when I change the line width (because the arrowhead will get bigger and go a bit too far).

  10. #190
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    Default Re: Xara Designer Pro X10 Released

    Quote Originally Posted by speedsterharry View Post
    One feature I miss from Artworks (Acorn's version of Xara DP) is the ability to have "internal" arrows instead of the external arrows we have now. The arrowheads can start at the end of a line (external) or finish at the start of the line (internal). I used that feature a lot for technical design.
    I now have to fiddle with the positioning of the line end when I change the line width (because the arrowhead will get bigger and go a bit too far).
    It may not heelp but if you convert the line to Editable Shapes you have a measure of control as the arrow point is now a control.

    Also the SmartShape arrows have a control point at the tip.

    Acorn
    Acorn - installed Xara software: Cloud+/Pro+ and most others back through time (to CC's Artworks). Contact for technical remediation/consultancy for your web designs.
    When we provide assistance, your responses are valuable as they benefit the community. TG Nuggets you might like. Report faults: Xara Cloud+/Pro+/Magix Legacy; Xara KB & Chat

 

 

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